Award-Winning Director Nanette Burstein Signs with Institute
Production company Institute today welcomes acclaimed director Nanette Burstein to its renowned roster for commercial representation. Nanette effortlessly blends authenticity, empathy, and humour, creating poignantly crafted worlds that resonate in her documentary, scripted, and commercial work.
Her commercial projects include campaigns for global brands such as Verizon, Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Facebook, and JP Morgan Chase. Nanette has won multiple awards for her advertising work, including two Emmy nominations and a Silver Lion at Cannes. A cinephile from a young age, Nanette relishes filmmaking’s creative possibilities, whether profiling iconic figures through documentaries or telling compelling narratives in short form.
Nanette's latest feature documentary film, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes for HBO, premiered to widespread praise at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. In 2022, she directed the three-part Netflix documentary series Killer Sally. In 2020, she directed the four-part series Hillary about Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, which earned the Critics’ Choice Award and an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Non-Fiction Series. Granted exceptional behind-the-scenes access, Hillary is a portrait of a political force, considered divisive and polarizing by many, simply by being a woman who pushes boundaries in a male-dominated system. Burstein also directed the feature documentary for Showtime, Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee, about the eccentric millionaire who was implicated in a murder. Her contribution to ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, The Price of Gold, about Tonya Harding, won an Emmy Award and Best Documentary at the Cinema Eye awards.
“I’ve known Lauren for quite some time and admired Institute’s vision and diversity,” said Nanette. “In an industry long dominated by a singular voice, it’s exciting to be a part of a movement to challenge the status quo. What Lauren, Frank, and Tori have built is inspiring, and I’m so happy to be a part of it.”
“Nanette is an amazing filmmaker who continues to surprise, enlighten, and move audiences with her work across genres,” said Lauren Greenfield, founder and creative director at Institute. “Her undeniable talent, professionalism, and passion for storytelling have caught our attention for many years, and we’re thrilled to collaborate with her now. I’m always excited to see what she is doing next and thrilled to make some incredible work together.”
Nanette began her career directing the award-winning film On the Ropes with Brett Morgen. They received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary, won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance, and received the DGA award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. Since then, she has produced and directed a five-part documentary series with Quincy Jones, Say it Loud: Black Music in America; co-directed the award-winning Robert Evans biography, The Kid Stays in the Picture, using hallucinatory animation to illustrate the dramatic life of the producer; and chronicled the lives of high schoolers in Warsaw, Illinois every day for ten months in American Teen, which earned the Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Her narrative film debut was the romantic comedy Going the Distance, starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long.
Nanette is currently in production on a feature documentary about Carl Sagan for National Geographic; it is a timely exploration of the universe and the implications of humans' destructive actions.
For more information and to view Nanette's latest work, please visit:https://institute.pictures/director/nanette-burstein/.
