Stefan Schaefer is an American writer, director and producer of films and television.

Biography

Early life and education

Schaefer was born in Boston. He spent his childhood in Sussex, England, and he spent his teenage years in Michigan and New York. He studied theater and political theory at Wesleyan University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. After a year and a half in Germany where he studied as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Kiel, he returned to New York and co-founded the production company Cicala Filmworks. He is the maternal grandson of polar explorer and ornithologist Carl R. Eklund.

Career

Schaefer's films have premiered and won several awards at festivals such as the Berlin International Film Festival and SXSW, and have been released theatrically and via outlets such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO, PBS and the Sundance Channel. He has over fifteen feature film credits and has worked with Melissa Leo, Ali Larter, Zoe Lister-Jones, Ken Duken, Nicole Beharie, David Harbour, and Michael Imperioli. In addition to indie features, Schaefer and writing partner Chris Silber have written four TV movies for European networks ARD and ZDF, two of which were filmed in Hawaii. Schaefer directed the one-hour television documentary Contested Streets, which looks at what New York can learn from London, Paris and Copenhagen in terms of organizing its streets and public spaces. The film was screened at environmental film festivals and aired as part of "The Green" series on the Sundance Channel. In 2015, he released a feature documentary on Poet Laureate and environmental activist W.S. Merwin, titled Even Though the Whole World Is Burning. A one-hour version of the film, W.S. Merwin: To Plant a Tree, was broadcast on PBS in 2016.

Filmography

Awards and nominations