Marnie Ellen Hertzler

Marnie Ellen Hertzler is a filmmaker based in Baltimore, Maryland. Influenced by her background in psychology, fine arts, and childhood in the American South, she creates films that act as cinematic platforms for the exploration of interpersonal relationships, isolated landscapes, symptoms of the climate crisis, lessons learned from listening, and the inevitable end of it all.

Her first feature film, CRESTONE, is a hybrid-documentary set in a dystopian future where the last people alive are a group of SoundCloud rappers. CRESTONE premiered at True/False in 2020, and went on to play at SXSW, CPH: DOX, and many national and international programs and film festivals, including The Bellwether Series, Boiler Room, Dock Yard, Maryland Film Festival, Denver Film Festival, American Film Festival, and Oak Cliff Film Festival. CRESTONE was released digitally and on BluRay in February of 2021 by Utopia Distribution. The original score composed by Animal Collective was released digitally and on vinyl in April 2021 by Domino Records. Her previous award-winning short films (DIRT DAUGHTER, HI I NEED TO BE LOVED, and GROWING GIRL) have screened at renowned film festivals such as Locarno, and IFFRotterdam, and have been programmed on The Criterion Channel, and in MoMA NYC. In 2018, Marnie was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. She is a Bemis Fellow, IFP Narrative Lab Fellow, Vermont Studio Center Fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow. She is currently in post-production on her second feature film, ETERNITY ONE, about a disappearing island community in the Chesapeake Bay, and the ways we imagine possible futures.