Hittman was born and raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn. She grew up with her father, an anthropologist, and her mother, a social worker. As she grew up she attended Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, where she was a theater buff. She graduated from Indiana Universityin 2001 with a BA in theater and drama, but later went on to study art and film, and in 2010 received her MFA from the School of Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts. Hittman is Jewish.. While at the California Institute of the arts, she met her now partner Scott Cummings, who she currently has a five year old son with.
Career
In 2010, Hittman wrote and directed a short film while in grad school titled, Second Cousins Once Removed. This short film premiered at Oberhausen festival in Germany, and was the first film she ever submitted to any festival. Her short film Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and was on Indiewire's "The Best of the Best" list. Hittman's first feature film, It Felt Like Love, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and opened at the IFC Center in New York in March 2014. It has received positive reviews, with a score of 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was a New York Times and Village Voice Critics' Pick. She was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Indie Film in 2013. Her second film Beach Rats, was selected for the 2015 Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab, had its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2017, and was acquired by Neon. Her third film, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, is about two teenagers in rural Pennsylvania who travel to New York City to access an abortion for an unwanted pregnancy. It premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it won a Special Jury Award for Neo-Realism. The film was also selected to compete for the Golden Bear in the main competition section at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival and won Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, the second most prestigious prize at the festival. In a 2020 interview with FF2 Media, Hittman explains the balance she struck between documentary cinema vérité and narrative: " read drafts, gave me access to people to interview, and allowed us to shoot in their facility. It was a balance, I think, because obviously, I’m not a documentary filmmaker. The film is ultimately a character study. I really tried to absorb as much perspective and information as I could but then sort of shape it into a unique fictional story."
Awards
In 2014, for It Felt Like Love, she was nominated for the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award, and for the John Cassavetes Spirit Award. With her sophomore film, Beach Rats, in 2017 Hittman won the Directing Award: Dramatic at the Sundance Film Festival, Best Screenwriting in a U.S. Feature at Outfest, the Grand Jury Prize at the Independent Film Festival Boston, and the Future/Now Prize at the Montclair Film Festival. Beach Rats was nominated for several more awards during its premiere season. In 2017, Beach Rats premiered in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, where she won the Directing Award, and internationally premiered at Locarno in the Golden Leopard Competition and was the Centerpiece Film at New Directors / New Films. In 2018, it was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Male Lead at the Independent Spirit awards and a Breakthrough Actor Award for the Gothams Awards. Beach Rats was also the winner of the Best Narrative Film at the 2017 Independent Film Festival of Boston, the Best Feature Film at the 2017 Hamburg Film Festival, and the Outstanding Screenwriting in a U.S. Feature at the L.A. Outfest Awards.. This film was very accomplished in 2017. She was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for film-video in 2018.
