Joan Stein

While at Columbia, Joan Stein won the Student Academy Award for Best Narrative Film and the Directors Guild of America’s Student Film Award for her thesis film, “One Day Crossing.” The short film, about a Hungarian Jewish woman who poses as a Christian to save her family during the Holocaust, was also nominated for an Academy Award in 2001 and chosen by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art for the New Directors/New Films series. The film won Best Film at the Columbia University Film Festival and was awarded a prize by the National Board of Review. Stein then directed the short film “Solidarity,” set at a wedding anniversary celebration in 1982 communist Poland. She also has directed an episode of Law and Order. She served as production coordinator for 3 Backyards, which won the Directing Award for Eric Mendelsohn at Sundance and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize.

Stein is an associate professor in the Communications Department at Adelphi University, where she teaches film and video production.