Talent Guide

Lou Pepe

  • Discipline:Director
  • Program Year:Fast Track 2015

Bio

Lou Pepe directs both documentary and fiction films, among them Lost in La Mancha, shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary and winner of the Evening Standard’s Peter Sellers Award for Best Comedy; Brothers of the Head, winner of the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature; and Malkovich’s Mail, an original documentary special for AMC. La Mancha and Brothers were distributed theatrically by IFC Films in the U.S. and screened at international film festivals including: Berlin, Toronto, Telluride, Chicago, IDFA, Edinburgh, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Tribeca, SXSW, San Francisco, and Cinema Jove Valencia. Pepe holds an MFA in Film & Media Arts from Temple University, has attended the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Directors Lab, and is currently a fellow of the Sundance Documentary Film Program. He has collaborated with co-director Keith Fulton for over 20 years. As Low Key Pictures they have received commissions from the Gates and Participant Foundations to create documentary programming about public education, including The New Teacher Experience (WNET, www.TeachingChannel.org) and the web-series I Am Education (www.TakePart.com). Pepe’s interest in education also extends to practice, and he serves as the Faculty Director of Temple University’s L.A. Study-Away program for aspiring young filmmakers.

Current Project

The Bad Kids

Logline

At a remote Mojave Desert high school, extraordinary educators believe that empathy and life skills, more than academics, give at-risk students command of their own futures. This coming-of-age story watches education combat the crippling effects of poverty in the lives of these so-called "bad kids."