Alex Ross Perry

Alex Ross Perry was an independent filmmaker whose third feature, "Listen Up Philip," premiered to overwhelmingly positive praise at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Having grown up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, a suburb just outside of Philadelphia, Perry lived a relatively normal middle-class childhood. His only solace from the doldrums of suburbia was movies. While still a young teen, he obsessed over AFI's list of the 100 Greatest Movies, carrying the printed list with him wherever he went. Perry always knew he wanted to make movies, and after high school, he was accepted into the prestigious film program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Perry honed his craft inside the classroom, studying film theory as well as the technical aspects of filmmaking, while immersing himself in movies outside the classroom through a part-time job at popular video rental store in Manhattan. The dual education paid off, and with the numerous accolades paid to his feature directorial debut, 2009's "Impolex," Perry was highlighted as an indie director to watch. His follow-up to "Impolex," a dark comedy called "The Color Wheel," hit the festival circuit in 2011, and was singled out by such esteemed publications as the Village Voice and Film Comment as one of the Top 10 undistributed films of the year. Given the wave of positive press, The Color Wheel went on to receive a limited theatrical release in 2012. For his third feature, 2014's "Listen Up Philip," Perry enlisted top-tier talent, including Jason Schwartzman and Elisabeth Moss, to act in the film. "Listen Up Philip" had its world premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, and, like Perry's two previous films, was once again praised for its wonderful blend of comedy and drama. Despite being made for under $200,000, "Listen Up Philip" had a theatrical run in the fall of 2014, gaining appreciative reviews in the process.