TONY GERBER

Tony Gerber is an Award-winning writer, producer & filmmaker.

Tony Gerber is an Emmy and PGA award-winning writer, producer and filmmaker. He has written and directed over a dozen documentaries for National Geographic, shot in some of the most remote and dangerous regions of the world. He has collaborated with artists Matthew Barney, Allora & Calzadilla, and Ann-Sofi Sidén (on various film and installation projects). Most recently he directed and produced Kingdom of the White Wolf, a 3-part natural history series for National Geographic (and Disney+), filmed on location on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic. He is a producer of the critically acclaimed, PGA award-winning film Jane about the life and work of Dr. Jane Goodall. For CNN Films he directed and co-wrote with Meryl Streep We Will Rise, chronicling former First Lady Michelle Obama’s trip to Africa to raise awareness of the importance of girl’s education, which won an American Television Academy Honor and a Cine Golden Eagle.

His independent films include Full Battle Rattle directed with Jesse Moss (Berlinale premiere and SXSW Special Jury Prize), and The Notorious Mr. Bout (Sundance 2014) about the Russian arms dealer proffered in an international prisoner exchange for WNBA star Brittany Griner.

He recently produced the Emmy-nominated, Academy Award short-listed, documentary Takeover (Tribeca, 2021) about a group of Puerto Rican activists, the Young Lords, who take over a decrepit hospital in the South Bronx launching a battle for their lives, their community, and healthcare for all. This award-winning doc is being adapted into a feature film produced by Gerber, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage, and the independent studio Sister, with Oscar-nominated screenwriter José Rivera writing the adaptation.

In 2005, Gerber co-founded NY-based production company Market Road Films with Nottage. In 2017 the pair collaborated on the ambitious, site-specific multimedia installation This is Reading, which blended live-performance, dance, and a series of short films directed by Gerber exploring the decline and rebirth of Reading, Pennsylvania.

In 2024, War Game will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The film, co-directed by Gerber and Jesse Moss, follows a bipartisan group of U.S. defense, intelligence, and elected policymakers in an unscripted role-play exercise, in which they confront a political coup — backed by rogue members of the U.S. military — in the wake of a contested presidential election.

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UPCOMING PROJECTS

Set in a world largely unseen in mainstream media, utilizing non-actors, combining fiction and documentary techniques, Atautchikun (which means “all together as one” in Inupiaq) tells a story of a deep connection between humans and whales. Transcending cultural differences and assumptions, the film will showcase how the practice of hunting can convey love, respect, and wisdom through the generations and across an entire community. The project will be a rare, human-scaled window onto a global crisis, finding grounding, meaning, and truth in a world riddled with uncertainty.

In Utqiaġvik, Alaska, the northernmost city in the United States — where the Arctic landscape is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet — the local community has long grappled with the effects of climate change. But while America at large has struggled to formulate any kind of coherent response to climate change, the native Iñupiaq culture in Utqiaġvik has, for centuries, demonstrated a singular ability to adapt to a changing environment and maintain a sustainable economic and social structure. In this small whaling community on the frontlines of the climate crisis, co-directors Rachel Naŋinaaq Edwardson, a native of Utqiaġvik, and Tony Gerber, an outsider, tell a profoundly human story from an Iñupiaq perspective, grounded in Iñupiaq spirituality.

Anonymous Content and Boat Rocker have partnered to co-finance and co-sell an untitled political thriller feature documentary by Emmy Award-winning filmmakers Jesse Moss (“Boys State”) and Tony Gerber (“The Notorious Mr. Bout”).

Produced by Boat Rocker’s Matador Content, the project was shot over the course of two days last month in Washington, D.C.

While details on the project are being kept under wraps, Moss teased it as a “an utterly unique story that is equal parts political thriller, dystopian science fiction and intimate cinema vérité.” Read the full article in Variety here.

After making its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival, the gripping documentary “Takeover” is set to be adapted into a narrative feature from Sister and Market Road Films.

“Takeover” marks the first Market Road Films project to come out of its first-look deal with Sister, which was co-founded by Elisabeth Murdoch, Stacey Snider and Jane Featherstone.

The short-subject documentary — directed by Emma Francis-Snyder and produced by Market Road Films’ Tony Gerber — chronicles the 12 historic hours in 1970 when 50 members of the Young Lords Party stormed the dilapidated Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and made their cries for health justice known to the world. Read the full article in Variety here.

Tony is represented by Britton Rizzio of Curate Management: britton@thisiscurate.com