James Spione

About

Academy Award® nominee James Spione is an independent filmmaker based in New York City. His most recent work, the powerful Oscar-nominated war film Incident in New Baghdad, premiered at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won Best Documentary Short. The film went on to screen at many other festivals, winning top honors in its category at Rhode Island, Boulder, and Tallgrass, and winning Best Picture at the 2012 Fargo Film Festival. In February 2012, Incident in New Baghdad was nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject. The film premiered on the Documentary Channel in May 2012.
Mr. Spione’s first documentary feature, American Farm, detailed the demise of his family’s fifth-generation homestead in central New York State. The film played theatrically from New England to the Midwest, and was subsequently released on DVD by Passion River Films.
In conjunction with the Barrier Island Center and Museum, Spione next created the poignant portrait film Our Island Home, about the last surviving denizens of a vanished settlement off the coast of Virginia. The movie is part of a planned trilogy on the Eastern Shore region, and the director is currently in production on the second film in the series.
Jim Spione has also made a number of fiction films. Perhaps his best-known work was the eerie Sundance favorite Garden, a suspenseful drama starring Oscar® winner Melissa Leo (The Fighter) and veteran character actor Matt Malloy (Six Feet Under); the film screened at festivals worldwide. His next movie, The Playroom, starring Pamela Stewart (The Reception), was shown at New York’s Walter Reade Theatre as part of the “Independents Night” series, and was featured on the national cable program Reel Street.
His first film Prelude earned a Student Academy Award® from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and was seen at numerous international film festivals. Mr. Spione also produced the acclaimed independent feature Parallel Sons (Sundance ’95), directed by John G. Young.