Josh Penn, the Academy Award-nominated producer behind “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” has launched Serenade, a new production company focused on documentary and narrative films. Serenade’s first film, “The Oldest Person in the World,” was directed by Sam Green and premiered at Sundance this year where it earned an enthusiastic critical reception.
Penn’s credits include “Monsters and Men,” “32 Sounds” and “The White House Effect,” the latter of which earned two Emmy nominations.
Serenade launches with a slate of more than a dozen films already in various stages of development, production, and post-production, including on the fiction side “Dave, Dave, Ruth & Dave,” directed by Alex Fischer, who was behind “Wicker,” and Rachel Wolther; “Here for the Weekend,” the debut of Jane Casey Modderno; and “Edge City,” a hybrid Western from the Ross Brothers. On the documentary side, the company’s slate includes “Captions Will be Needed,” two-time Sundance Best Director winner Natalia Almada’s new feature, “Assata,” a feature documentary about political activist Assata Shakur that will be directed by Giselle and Stephen Bailey; “Blue Sweater With a Yellow Hole,” a documentary from Ukrainian director Tetiana Khodakivska that was supported in development by programs at Cannes, the Sundance Institute, and Berlinale. Also in production is Academy Award-nominated director Sam Green’s live documentary “Trees,” a large-scale work combining live performance, symphony orchestras, and cinema, featuring a score by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, which just announced its world premiere at London’s Barbican Centre. It will also be released as a traditional theatrical and streaming film.
Penn and Serenade have also launched a wing of the business to offer consulting services to filmmakers, financiers, and organizations across the independent film ecosystem. Their consulting work has supported films that have gone on to premiere at Sundance and Cannes and be shortlisted for Academy Awards. Penn has consulted for leading institutions including the Sundance Institute’s Narrative and Documentary Creative Producing Labs, Sundance Catalyst, Film Independent, Impact Partners, and the Skoll World Forum, among others.
Prior to founding Serenade, Penn spent the past decade as co-founder and CEO of The Department of Motion Pictures and has produced or executive produced more than 20 films, earning credits at Sundance, Telluride, and Cannes. His work has garnered distribution deals with Netflix, Neon, Searchlight, and Paramount among others. Since 2012, as a producer or executive producer he has premiered over a dozen films at Sundance, with those films collectively earning six awards from the festival. He won a Peabody Award and the Sundance Producers Award. Penn earned an Outstanding Producer of the Year nomination from the Producers Guild of America.
