Celebrated Filmmaker Lisa Cholodenko ’97 to Address School of the Arts Graduates

May 07, 2025

Sarah Cole, Dean of the School of the Arts, has announced that celebrated screenwriter-director Lisa Cholodenko ’97 will speak at the School’s convocation, hosted on Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at 7pm. The ceremony will recognize MFA graduates in Film, Theatre, Visual Arts + Sound Art, and Writing, and MA graduates in Film and Media Studies from the 2024–2025 academic year.

Lisa Cholodenko is an Academy Award–nominated filmmaker and a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program in Film. Over the past two decades, she has built a body of bold, nuanced storytelling in film and television that explores the complexities of identity, family, and desire with humor, pathos, and a clear-eyed humanity.

Her debut feature, High Art (1998), won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival and earned several Independent Spirit Award nominations, establishing her as a distinctive voice in intimate, character-driven storytelling. The film also screened in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.

She followed with Laurel Canyon (2002), a sly, sun-drenched portrait of music, sex, and generational rifts in Los Angeles, starring Frances McDormand and Christian Bale. The film premiered at Cannes in the Directors’ Fortnight, further cementing her reputation as a chronicler of the quietly subversive.

Cholodenko’s best-known film, The Kids Are All Right (2010), was a critical and commercial breakthrough. It received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, and won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. The film, starring Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, and Mark Ruffalo, was widely praised for its humor, emotional insight, and fresh take on modern family life.

In television, Cholodenko directed the acclaimed HBO limited series Olive Kitteridge, starring Frances McDormand, which won eight Emmy Awards—including Outstanding Directing for Cholodenko—and the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award for Directing. She also directed and executive-produced Netflix’s Unbelievable, a sharp, compassionate portrayal of a real-life sexual assault investigation, which won a Peabody Award. Most recently, she executive-produced and directed Hulu’s The Girl from Plainville, starring Elle Fanning.

Beyond her directing work, Cholodenko has served as an advisor at the Sundance Institute’s International Film Labs, mentoring emerging filmmakers from Latin America and Southern Europe.

She is currently adapting Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking for HBO and developing additional projects for film and television.

A native Angeleno, Cholodenko divides her time between Los Angeles and New York.

Join us here at 7 pm ET on Wednesday, May 21, 2025 to watch.