Irene Taylor — Director | Biography, Movies & Career

Biography

Irene Taylor is an Oscar-nominated, multiple-Emmy, duPont and Peabody-winning director and producer.

Her most recent film Trees And Other Entanglements was released by HBO at the end of 2023 and explores of our human obsession with the arboreal world.

In 2022, Irene won a Columbia-duPont Award for her tragic investigation into one of the most trusted institutions in America, Leave No Trace: A Hidden History of The Boy Scouts (Hulu).

Premiering at Sundance 2019 and later nominated for Special Merit in Documentary Filmmaking at the 2020 Primetime Emmy Awards, Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements tells Irene's very personal story about her deaf son, her deaf father and Ludwig Van Beethoven, as he went deaf while composing his famous sonata.

Irene began her documentary career in photojournalism. Her first feature documentary, Hear and Now, a documentary memoir about her deaf parents, won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2007, a Peabody and top awards at festivals around the world. It was also nominated by the Producers Guild of America in 2008 for Documentary of the Year.

Her HBO true-crime documentary about two adolescent girls obsessed with an internet bogeyman, Beware the Slenderman, received nominations for an Emmy in 2017 and two Critics' Choice Awards, for Best Director and Best Documentary.

Irene's additional credits include several theatrically-released short films, all with HBO. The Final Inch, about the global effort to eradicate polio, was nominated for an Academy award, multiple Emmys, and won the IDA's Pare Lorentz Award. After the 2010 Mexican Gulf oil spill, she followed the life of a single bird found coated in oil, and made Saving Pelican 895, which won an Emmy for its affecting music. Irene directed One Last Hug: Three Days At Grief Camp, which won the 2014 Prime Time Emmy for Best Children's Programming and in 2016 she released Open Your Eyes, about an aging couple living in the Himalayas determined to regain their sight. Irene's short opinion film on the impact of hearing technology and the human experience, Between Sound and Silence, was released by The New York Times Op-Docs.

Irene's early career began in Kathmandu, Nepal, working as a Himalayan Mountain guide and author. Her book of photographic essays, Buddhas in Disguise, became the basis for her first documentary film, made in 1993 with UNICEF. She is a graduate of New York University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and was a producer for CBS Sunday Morning in 1998-2001. Irene founded Vermilion Films in 2006 and is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and The Television Academy. She lives in Portland, Oregon.