Emil Benjamin is a filmmaker and educator based in New York City. His work spans dark satire, surrealism, and advocacy-driven documentary, unified by a mission to examine structures of power on both intimate and societal scales. His feature documentary OYATE premiered in competition at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, winning multiple awards across the festival circuit and now streaming on all major platforms. His short films WHITE LIES, WE CAN DO IT, and THE BREAKDOWN PARABLES have screened and earned prizes at festivals worldwide, particularly in the genre space, including a premiere at Fantastic Fest.

He serves as Adjunct Faculty in the Film MFA Program at Columbia University and directs SOCAPA NYC’s prestigious pre-college arts programs, overseeing both its summer intensives and the grant-funded, year-round City Cinema initiative for NYC public high school students. Alongside his teaching, Emil continues to work actively as a writer, director, producer, and editor, maintaining a wide-ranging body of narrative and documentary work through his company Irrelevant Media, an international production company and collective whose films have been recognized at Cannes, Venice, Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, Rotterdam and many more. He holds a BFA in Theatre Arts from Boston University and an MFA in Film Directing & Screenwriting from Columbia University.