Biography

Director Steven Bernstein DGA, ASC, WGA wrote and directed the award-winning feature film "Decoding Annie Parker" (U.S. theatrical release Summer 2014) which won Best Actress for Samantha Morton at The Seattle International Film Festival and also won Bernstein The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Feature Film Award at The Hamptons International Film Festival. Bernstein was also nominated for best screenwriter and best director at the Milan Film Festival. Bernstein was a 2013 nominee for The ASC Award for outstanding achievement in Cinematography for his work on Magic City.

Bernstein began his film career as a cinematographer in the United Kingdom shooting award-winning commercials ( winning among others the Cannes Golden Lion ad the DA&D awards). He went on to shoot many landmark films including the highly acclaimed "Like Water For Chocolate" and the Oscar-winning "Monster." He shot iconic comedies like "White Chicks", "Half-Baked" and "The Waterboy", but also the early films of Oscar nominee Noah Baumbach and other important independent films. He also specialized in big action material for studios, shooting 2nd Unit on films like "S.W.A.T." and "Blade" as well as being the principal cinematographer on big studio films like Wesley Snipe's "Murder at 1600". Bernstein has shot nearly 50 films.

More recently Bernstein has become known as a screenwriter. He has had 11 major commissions in the last 6 years, including "Last Call" (Dominion) about the last days of Dylan Thomas, which Bernstein went on to direct. Last Call stars Rhys Ifans, John Malkovich, Romola Garai, Rodrigo Santoro, Tony Hale and Zosia Mamet. It was released theatrically in late 2020. It was shown as a work in progress at the Rio Film Festival where it was called "Oscar worthy" by the major papers there and then won the best actor award for Rhys Ifans at the Tallinn Black Nights festival, again shown as a work in progress. The script is written partly in free-verse and it's remarkable quality and poetry attracted the singular cast. Many viewers thought the script was based on the writing of Dylan Thomas, but it's Mr. Bernstein's original inventive work.

Bernstein has worked as a judge in literary and film festivals, he lectures widely about film and is also a motivational speaker.

He is also the author of the best selling book "Film Production" (Focal Press) about the process of film making, he writes for various film magazines and he has a new book, Creative Process (Routledge) coming out at the end of 2022.
- IMDb mini biography by: R. Barth