Filmmaker and PresidentVermilion Films
Irene is an Oscar-nominated, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker whose documentaries have shown theatrically, at film festivals and on television worldwide. She has collaborated with diverse global partners, including HBO, Google, the Gates Foundation, UNICEF, the US State Department, and numerous broadcasters and foundations.
With filmmaking partner, Dr. Larry Brilliant, Irene most recently made Open Your Eyes, a short film following one Nepali family’s struggle to regain their sight. Together they also made The Final Inch, about the global effort to eradicate polio, which in 2011 was nominated for an Oscar, three Emmys, and won the International Documentary Association’s Pare Lorentz award for social justice filmmaking. In 2014, she directed One Last Hug: Three Days at Grief Camp, a short film exploring how children grieve that won the 2014 Prime Time Emmy for Best Childrens Programming. In 2011, she made Saving Pelican 895 which also won an Emmy for its affecting music score and followed the life of a single bird rescued from the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill. In 2007, Irene turned the camera on her own family to make her first feature-length documentary Hear and Now, which won the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award, received numerous Audience and Jury awards around the world, a 2008 Peabody Award, and a nomination for Documentary of the Year by the Producer’s Guild of America.
Irene’s passion for documentary portraiture began as a still photographer following lives of the Deaf and the Blind living in the Himalayas. While living in Kathmandu, she published her first book “Buddhas in Disguise” and made her first film, Isharra, in 1993. She later returned to New York to produce and shoot award-winning documentaries and work as a Producer with CBS News Sunday Morning.
Irene is a graduate of New York University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Portland, Oregon, USA with her husband, Matt, and their three sons.