Joe Berlinger

Joe Berlinger is one of the leading storytellers of his generation, drawing attention to social justice issues in the U.S. and abroad and creating landmark films such as: Brother’s Keeper, a DGA Award-winner that broke new ground with its narrative storytelling techniques; HBO’s Paradise Lost trilogy with resulted in the freeing of the wrongly-convicted West Memphis Three after almost two decades in prison; and Some Kind of Monster, an intimate portrait of Metallica that redefined the rockumentary genre, one of seven Berlinger films to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. In addition to his feature work, Berlinger has created or played pivotal roles as executive producer, director &/or producer of many acclaimed and award-winning television series. Berlinger’s passion for using media to bring attention to the issue of wrongful conviction continued with Wrong Man for Starz, which took an in-depth look into six separate cases of alleged wrongful conviction over two seasons. In 2019, Berlinger broke new ground for himself by covering the same subject in scripted and unscripted forms simultaneously with Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes and Extremely Wicked, Shocking Evil and Vile, which starred Zac Efron as Bundy. Both aired on Netflix and attracted enormous audiences around the world, with Conversations becoming the network’s highest-rated nonfiction title last year, and Extremely Wicked landing in the top ten of most-streamed titles in any genre for 2019. Berlinger maintained his streak of social justice filmmaking with the Netflix docuseries Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, a victim-focused look at the sordid life of one of the world’s most vile serial pedophiles. The series reached the #1 spot on the network’s chart of most-streamed shows or movies across all genres in May of 2020.