Greenwald’s first feature film, Home Remedy, from her original screenplay, premiered at the Munich Film Festival before screening at the London and TorinoFilm Festivals, and opening at the prestigious Film Forum in New York. The next film she directed was The Kill-Off, which she adapted from Jim Thompson’s noir novel of the same name. Acquired by Channel 4 in Britain, and released theatrically by Palace Filmed Entertainment, the film also appeared at film festivals around the world, including: Sundance, Munich, London, Florence, Deauville, Toronto and Edinburgh, before winning the Best Director Award at the Torino Film Festival before its release in the US. The film is listed in the BFI Screen Guides as one of the 100 best American Independent Films. It established Greenwald’s as a significant independent filmmaking voice. Greenwald went on to write and direct her groundbreaking Western, The Ballad of Little Jo, which was released worldwide by Fine Line Features and Polygram Filmed Entertainment. Star Suzy Amis was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award while co-star David Chung won the award for Best Supporting Actor. A great deal has been written about the film by scholars of the Western who consider The Ballad of Little Jo a landmark revisionist film within the genre. The film is also one of the primary subjects of Modleski’s Old Wives Tales and Other Women’s Stories, which explores “the phenomenon of female authors and performers who ‘cross-dress’ - women, that is, who are moving into male genres and staking out territory declared off-limits by men and by many feminists.” Subsequently, Greenwald wrote and directed Songcatcher. An unconventional, naturalistic musical, the film premiered in Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival, where it garnered a Special Jury Award for Ensemble Performance. The film received the first Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Feature Film Prize, Deauville Film Festival Audience Award, two Independent Spirit Award nominations and a GLAAD Award nomination. Greenwald’s most recent film, Sophie and the Rising Sun, is based on the novel by Augusta Trobaugh. She adapted, produced and directed the film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2016, Salt Lake City Gala World Premiere. Throughout her career, Greenwald has shifted back and forth between directing feature films and directing television. Her numerous TV movies include What Makes a Family, starring Brooke Shields, Whoopi Goldberg, and Cherry Jones. It was produced by Barbara Streisand and Whoopi Goldberg, with Academy Award winning producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron. The Lifetime Television Channel movie went on to win a prestigious GLAAD Award for Outstanding Television Movie and a Humanitas Award. Other TV movies include Get A Clue, starring Lindsay Lohan, Tempted starring Virginia Madsen, Comfort and Joy, Lifetime Television’s Christmas standard, and Good Morning, Killer, starring Catherine Bell, based on April Smith’s Ana Grey novel. Recent television episodic work includes Episode 15, Season 3, of Madam Secretary, titled “Break in Democracy,” which aired on March 12, 2017 on CBS in the US, and was banned in the Philippines for its controversial depiction of a fictional Filipino President. Her episode of Nashville will air during the show’s fifth season on CMT in 2017. Earlier forays in directing for episodic television expanded Greenwald’s work to include children’s television. For Nickelodeon she directed several episodes of The Adventures of Pete and Pete, created the look of the showThe Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, for which she directed six episodes over two seasons. She also directed the non-air pilot for a show that evolved into Backyardigans and an episode of Wildfire for ABC Family.
