Biography
Jessica Yu (Chinese: 虞琳敏; pinyin: Yú Línmǐn) is an American film director, writer, producer, and editor. She has directed documentary films, dramatic films, and television shows. Yu won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject in 1996 for Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien (1996). Yu's film Last Call at the Oasis (2012) is based on Alex Prud'homme's Ripple Effect. Her more recent films have been Misconception (2014), ForEveryone.Net (2016), a documentary film about...
Known For
Complete Filmography
Quiz Lady
2023
Director
A brilliant but tightly wound, gameshow-obsessed young woman, Anne, and her estranged, train-wreck of a sister, Jenny, must work together to help cove...
Maria Bamford: Old Baby
2017
Director
She's savagely upbeat. Lovably awkward. And full of surprises. A wildly funny trip through a one-of-a-kind comic mind.
Foreveryone.net
2016
Director
Foreveryone.net connects the future of the web with the little-known story of its birth. In 1989, 33-year-old computer programmer Tim Berners-Lee inve...
Misconception
2014
Director, Producer
For almost 50 years, the world's population has grown at an alarming rate, raising fears about strains on the Earth's resources. But how true are thes...
Focus Forward: Short Films, Big Ideas
2012
Director
Focus Forward: Short Films, Big Ideas is an award-winning series of 30 three-minute stories about innovators—people who are reshaping the world throug...
Meet Mr Toilet
2012
Director
For those without access to a simple toilet, poop can be poison. Businessman-turned-sanitation superhero Jack Sim fights this oft-neglected crisis aff...
Last Call at the Oasis
2011
Director
Participant Media’s Last Call at the Oasis is a new documentary from Jessica Yu & Elise Pearlstein. Think water is an infinite resource? Think aga...
Capturing Reality
2008
as Self
From cinema-verite; pioneers Albert Maysles and Joan Churchill to maverick movie makers like Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Nick Broomfield, the worl...
Ping Pong Playa
2008
Director, Author
Streetwise swaggering Christopher "C-Dub" Wang is a suburban guy who waxes political on all things Asian American and clings to pro basketball pipe dr...
Protagonist
2007
Director, Writer, Editor
Jessica Yu's documentary explores the relationship between human life and Euripidean dramatic structure by weaving together the stories of four men: G...
In the Realms of the Unreal
2004
Director
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died hi...
The Living Museum
1998
Director
At the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, New York, Dr. Janos Martin helps treat patients with severe mental illness by encouraging them to expre...
Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien
1996
Director, Editor, Producer
Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien is a 1996 American short documentary film directed by Jessica Yu. Mark O'Brien was a journalist a...
Better Late
1996
Director, Writer, Editor
A middle-aged man sets the table for two. His sister drops by to give him their late mother's wedding ring, and flowers for the table for this special...
Sour Death Balls
1993
Director
People (mostly children) try to keep a very nasty candy in their mouths for as long as possible. For some it's simply an interesting experience; for o...
A Very Jonas Christmas
N/A
Director
Three famous brothers race against time and face mounting challenges during a chaotic journey from London to New York, desperate to make it home in ti...