Wilder
Director Kate Novack, Producer Joanne Nerenberg
Young Holocaust survivors Ruth and Izzy Wilder begin to rebuild their lives as refugees on the grounds of a former Nazi concentration camp, where they run a lucrative black market and save up to emigrate to the United States. Their journey spans four generations, as they build a luxury shopping-bag business in New York City and grapple with what it means to be part of a new Jewish-American middle class.
Phase of Support: Development
Kate Novack
Director, Producer
film Hysterical Girl (New York Times Op-Docs), revisiting the legacy of Sigmund Freud’s theory of hysteria, was shortlisted for an Academy Award and nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Writing. New Yorker critic Richard Brody described it as “extraordinary…strikes at the very foundations of the field of psychology, and the historical failure to believe victims which has not yet been righted.” Kate’s feature The Gospel According to Andre (Magnolia Pictures), about the legendary fashion editor Andre Leon Talley, was nominated for best LGBTQ documentary of the year by the Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics. A former print journalist, Kate wrote and produced the Emmy-nominated Page One: Inside the New York Times (Magnolia Pictures, Participant Media) on the existential challenges facing news media, and The Guy Who Got Cut Wrong (The New Yorker), featuring bestselling novelist Gary Shteyngart.
Joanne Nerenberg
Producer
Joanne Nerenberg produces and edits documentary films. She produced Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb in 2022, directed by Lizzie Gottlieb, and distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman called it “Enthralling. Meticulously even-handed and revealing. Breathtaking.” Joanne co-edited Kate Novack’s Hysterical Girl, a documentary short on The New York Times Op-Docs, shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2021. She is Co-Producer of the forthcoming The Animated Mind of Oliver Sacks, directed by Dempsey Rice. Most recently, she wrote and produced The Guy Who Got Cut Wrong, a tragic-comic documentary short featuring the bestselling Soviet-Jewish novelist Gary Shteyngart. The Guy Who Got Cut Wrong is coming soon to The New Yorker in 2025.