Biography

Elia Schneider was a Venezuela-born US-based filmmaker, writer, and director. Her most recent films as a director were Tamara (2016), Desautorizados (2010), and A Dot and a Line (2004). She was nominated four times for the Venezuelan Official Selection to the Academy Awards. Tamara (2016) won more than 10 international film awards. A Dot and a Line (2004) won more than two dozen international film awards. Desautorizados (2010) was nominated for the Golden Goblet Award at the Shanghai Film Festival-Category "A".

The founder of Joel Films, Schneider produced Sicario (1994), which won 34 international awards; Oro diablo (2000), which won 10 international awards; El Don (2006); A Distant Place (2010); God's Slave (2013); and Solo (2014). Her film Glue Sniffer (1999) was censored by Venezuelan authorities before being released to huge success at the box office.

Schneider graduated with a degree in Psychology from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (UCAB) and then attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she earned her MFA in Theater Directing. Since 1982, she had written and directed award-winning plays based on Kafka, most of them opening Off-Broadway in New York. She founded Teatro Dramma (in 1982). Her stage plays ("A Petición del Público", " Blumfeld", " Gaz", " Stasis", "Rooms", "Oedipus Rex", "The Lesson", and "Emigrants") received favorable critical notice of relevant press. Her play "Judgment on the Gray Beach" opened at La Mama in 2015 and received excellent reviews.

Schneider was a Faculty Member at the Stella Adler Academy of Acting in Los Angeles where she taught her prestigious workshop ( Fundamentals of Theater-Adler Technique). At the time of her death from cancer at age 68 in 2020, she was in pre-production for her next film project, "The Black Stork".
- IMDb mini biography by: Joseph Novoa/Robert Sieger