Q&A with director Debra Granik

Thursday, Jun. 4 2026, 7:15

• Debra Granik works in fiction and nonfiction, always borrowing from one to inform the other. She is greatly influenced by social realism and is drawn to stories about how people make life work. For her upcoming narrative fiction, she is researching current trends in corporate labor practices which are deranging the lives of working people. This project is inspired by the work of a renowned labor sociologist and political activist, Barbara Ehrenreich. She is also writing on a comedy set in a small town in upstate New York, once again delving into the pleasures of witnessing brotherhood and mutual aid, directly inspired by 10 years in the trenches on a longitudinal nonfiction film about New York street-hustling survivors coming home from prison. Her filmmaking training comes from originally working on industrial and educational films and then through the rigorous practices presented by a charismatic Eastern European film professor, who taught at New York University film school. To this day, she admires the work coming from the East.

Tickets: $15 (members), $20 (nonmembers)

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