Lisa Cholodenko

Lisa Cholodenko (born June 5, 1964) is an American screenwriter and director of film and television. She wrote and directed the films High Art (1998), Laurel Canyon (2002) and The Kids Are All Right (2010). For the latter film she won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay in 2010. She has also directed numerous works for television, including the 2014 miniseries Olive Kitteridge for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special and the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Miniseries or TV Film. 2Early life Cholodenko was born in the San Fernando Valley of California, the daughter of Marcia Cholodenko (née Elins) and Paul Cholodenko. She is the middle daughter of three sisters: her older sister is Karen Kardan, her younger sister is Laura Cholodenko.Cholodenko is from a liberal Jewish family. Her paternal grandparents emigrated from Ukraine. Cholodenko's paternal great grandfather was from Kyiv, Ukraine.Cholodenko studied anthropology, ethnic studies, and women's studies at San Francisco State University. She travelled to India and Nepal and spent 18 months in Jerusalem after graduation.She then enrolled at Columbia University School of the Arts in 1992, earning an MFA in screenwriting and directing in 1997, where James Schamus was one of her professors, who would later become the CEO of Focus Features. 2Career She got her start in the film industry in New York in the early 1990