‏Jeremiah Birnbaum‏

A first generation American, Jeremiah schizophrenically grew up in both the vibrant bosom of Greenwhich Village in New York City and the frozen heartland of Minneapolis, Minnesota. A working filmmaker for 25 years, TORN is his first major work as a feature-film director.

Educated at Wesleyan University and NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Jeremiah spent the first ten years of his career working as an editor and producer on social issue documentaries. He also started Detour Pictures with his college classmates, an NYC-based music video production company that specialized in hip-hop and rap videos. After working with some of the best filmmakers in the business, including two Oscar-winners, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area 15 years ago.

In 2005, he co-founded Fog City Pictures, which has produced close to a dozen independent films - among them Rob Nilsson's PRESQUE ISLE and James Savoca's AROUND JUNE. Jeremiah is also one of the founders of the San Francisco Film School, an accredited post-secondary college that teaches the art and craft of filmmaking to an international student body.

With its subtle attention to the state of the present world and the myriad ways people are divided not only against one another but divided within and against themselves, the story told in TORN spoke to the most personal things Birnbaum hopes to express in his work.