Marni Zelnick

Marni Zelnick is an award-winning writer, director and producer of independent film. She was the recipient of a $100,000 Sloan Foundation Feature Film Production Award and a Roger King Foundation Award for her directorial debut "Druid Peak" (2014). Set against the backdrop of the wolf reintroduction program in Yellowstone National Park, "Druid Peak" is a coming-of-age story about a troubled teen who finds a home for himself tracking wolves in the wild lands of Wyoming. The film screened at festivals worldwide, winning multiple Best Narrative Feature awards as well as the celebrated Jack London Spirit Award. It was selected as the opening night feature at the Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival.

In addition to writing and directing, Zelnick has served on the production team for a slate of independent films, including producer/line producer on "The Adderall Diaries" (2015), starring James Franco, Ed Harris, Amber Heard and Christian Slater. She was producer/line producer on Franco’s "The Clerk's Tale" (Official Selection 2010 Cannes Film Festival); assistant director on "Homewrecker"(Best of Next 2010 Sundance Film Festival); assistant director on "William Vincent"(Official Selection 2010 Tribeca Film Festival); associate producer on "Camp Victory, Afghanistan" (2010 SXSW Film Festival); producer on New York visual artist Carter’s feature debut, "Maladies" (Official Selection 2013 Berlin Film Festival), starring James Franco and Catherine Keener; and producer/line producer on "The Letter," written and directed by Jay Anania and starring Franco and Winona Ryder. As a screenwriter, she has worked on projects in both film and television, including an adaptation of Dan Zegart’s groundbreaking book "Civil Warriors," chronicling the legal battle against Big Tobacco in the 1990s.

Zelnick earned her MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She graduated with honors from Dartmouth College, with a double major in English literature & creative writing and film & television studies, where she received the Lockwood Prize for Poetry for her collection "Love, War and Other Childhood Memories."

She began her teaching career at Boston University, where she started as assistant professor of feature and television writing and later served as associate chair of the Department of Film & Television. At BU, she developed a new three-part course path in social purpose filmmaking that broke new ground in collaboration, partnering graduate MFA screenwriting students with advanced undergraduate production students. Films from this course won two Director’s Guild of America Student Film Awards, the first in BU’s history.