Yoni Brook
email: yoni (at) ybpix.com
voice: 917.250.2762
Yoni Brook is a film director and cinematographer. He recently spent two months in Kashmir shooting VALLEY OF SAINTS, a feature fiction film directed by Musa Syeed. He regularly shoots interviews with personalities ranging from the Dalai Lama to Willie Nelson.
His recent film, BRONX PRINCESS, about a teenager reuniting with her father, a chief in Ghana, broadcast nationally on PBS’s POV series in September 2009. The film premiered at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and at the Berlinale. BRONX PRINCESS is co-directed with Musa Syeed, with whom he also co-directed THE CALLING, a four hour PBS/ITVS film about young religious leaders broadcast nationally on PBS’s Independent Lens series in December 2010.
His directorial debut, A SON’S SACRIFICE, won Best Documentary Short at the Tribeca Film Festival and broadcast nationally on PBS’s Independent Lens series in January 2008. The film was named the Best Documentary Short by the International Documentary Association. The US State Department has distributed the film to over 130 consulates and embassies around the world as part of its religious diversity initiative.
Brook's photography at the New York Times and the Washington Post received the field's highest honors at the Pictures of the Year International and Best of Photojournalism competitions. He was named the national College Photographer of the Year by the Missouri School of Journalism and was the youngest ever to be selected for Photo District News' “30 Photographers to Watch”.
He speaks regularly about filmmaking and photojournalism at college campuses such as USC, Colgate, and Wesleyan. He has served as an adjunct at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and an instructor at the Barefoot Workshops in the Mississippi Delta. He has mentored high school students at Reel Works Teen Filmmaking in Brooklyn and served as a consulting producer for Cinereach's Reach Film Fellowship.
Brook is a 2004 alumnus of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts Film & Television Department. He was selected to attend the CPB/PBS Producer’s Academy at WGBH and the Berlinale Talent Campus.
