Noah Buschel

Writer-director Noah Buschel explored the intimate details of lives under duress in such critically praised independent films as "The Missing Person" (2009) and "Glass Chin" (2014). Born May 31, 1978 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Noah Buschel was raised in Greenwich Village, New York with his fraternal twin brother, Marin. He attended high school in New York before heading west to Los Angeles, where he wrote the screenplay for "Neal Cassady" (2007). Upon returning to New York, he made his directorial debut with "Bringing Rain" (2003), a coming-of-age drama with then-up-and-coming stars Adrian Grenier, Paz de la Huerta and Merritt Wever. The film, about a car accident that affects the lives of a group of boarding school students, earned several prizes on the national film festival circuit, and led to Buschel's opportunity to direct "Neal Cassady." The meta-biopic, about the Beat Generation muse (played by Tate Donovan) and his conflicted relationship with Dean Moriarty, the character inspired by him in On the Road, earned a modest response from critics and audiences. His third film, a neo-noir titled "The Missing Person," topped several best film lists and earned Buschel a Best Breakthrough Director nomination from the Gotham Awards. Three years passed before Buschel released his fourth film, "Sparrows Dance" (2012), about a severely agoraphobic actress (Marin Ireland) who enters into a relationship with the plumber (Paul Sparks) who comes to fix her broken toilet. Another critical hit, "Sparrows" was named Best Narrative Feature at the Austin Film Festival. In 2014, Buschel scored another hit with his second noir-inflected drama, "Glass Chin," with busy character actor Corey Stoll taking a rare lead as an ex-boxer tangled up with a criminal element. The critical praise that followed the film increased Buschel's profile on the independent circuit and led to two new projects, a sports-themed drama titled "The Phenom" (2015) with Ethan Hawke and Paul Giamatti, and "The Situation is Liquid" (2015), starring Liza Weil as a drug-addicted war journalist on the trail of a serial killer.