---
name: "Greg Kwedar"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/greg-kwedar"
fi1m_id: "greg-kwedar"
imdb_id: "nm3613117"
tmdb_id: 1572120
wikidata_id: "Q113443047"
roles: ["Writer","Producer","Director"]
born: "1 January 1985"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 3
average_as: "writer"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-20T08:41:00.140919+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Greg Kwedar

## Identity

Greg Kwedar

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/greg-kwedar
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** greg-kwedar
- **IMDb ID:** nm3613117
- **TMDB ID:** 1572120
- **Wikidata ID:** Q113443047
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Kwedar, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q113443047, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3613117/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1572120

Writer and producer. Born 1 January 1985 in Fort Worth, Texas, USA.

## Details

- **Work:** Writer, Producer, Director
- **Born:** 1 January 1985, Fort Worth, Texas, USA
- **Active:** 2024–present
- **Also known as:** Грег Кведар
- **Titles on Fi1m:** 3: 1 directing, 1 writing, 1 other
- **Frequently works with:** [Clint Bentley](https://film.one/person/clint-bentley.md)
- **Academy Awards:** 2 Oscar nominations
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Kwedar, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q113443047, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3613117/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1572120

## Streaming the US now

- **Apple TV:** [*Sing Sing*](https://film.one/film/sing-sing.md) (84)
- **Netflix:** [*Train Dreams*](https://film.one/film/train-dreams.md) (79)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Greg Kwedar

> Greg Kwedar writes films that treat a man reading a line, or felling a tree, as an event worth our attention. With Clint Bentley he has made two quiet, good films whose scripts are strongest close to the work and weakest whenever they leave it.

The first two shots of *Sing Sing* (2024) tell you what Greg Kwedar is for. Colman Domingo stands on a stage in costume, speaking Shakespeare to an audience we never see, and then he is locked back into a cell. After that the camera goes into a bare hall with plastic chairs and mostly stays there, while men who have been through the real thing read lines badly and then read them better. The fights and cell searches other prison films are built from happen at the edge of the frame or not at all. We were not sure a rehearsal room could hold a film for 107 minutes, and by the second time a man got a line right we had stopped checking.

Kwedar came to that room the slow way. His first film as director and co-writer, *Transpecos* (2016), was a border thriller drawn from time spent volunteering along the US–Mexico border, and it set the method: years in a real place first. Since then he has worked almost entirely with Clint Bentley, and the two of them swap chairs. Bentley directed *Jockey* (2021), which Kwedar wrote and produced; Kwedar directed *Sing Sing*, which they wrote together from a story shared with two men who had been through the programme; Bentley directed *Train Dreams* (2025), which they wrote together from Denis Johnson’s short novel. *Sing Sing* took eight years to make. Clifton Collins Jr. has appeared in three of the four. The partnership is close enough that we would not try to say which line belongs to which man.

What the scripts do well is trust the work. A labourer felling trees in the Idaho panhandle, a prisoner learning a speech in front of other prisoners: Kwedar and Bentley write these as events and let the actors, professional or not, be watched rather than explained. Joel Edgerton in *Train Dreams* barely speaks and needs nothing else. Divine Eye Maclin in *Sing Sing* never once looks like he is acting.

The weakness is the same in both, and it is a writer’s weakness. Around Domingo’s Divine G, the plot of *Sing Sing* is thinner than the rehearsal room it circles. *Train Dreams* loses a little every time Will Patton’s narration tells us what a silence meant, when Edgerton had already shown us. Kwedar has said he is interested in “work that has a hard-won optimism”, and both films have it. What they do not always have is faith that the pictures will carry it unaided.

If the pattern holds, Kwedar directs next. On this evidence the place he finds will be worth sitting in. Whether he and Bentley can write the parts of a film that happen outside it is the open question.

## Biography

Greg Kwedar is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, he graduated from Trinity Valley School in 2003 and attended Texas A&M University before pursuing filmmaking in Austin.

Kwedar made his feature directorial debut with *Transpecos* (2016), which he also wrote and produced; the film premiered at SXSW. He co-wrote and produced *Jockey* (2021). He directed, co-wrote and produced *Sing Sing* (2023), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He co-wrote the screenplay for *Train Dreams* (2025).

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (3)

### Directed (1)

- *Sing Sing* (2024), Fi1m 84, Story, Producer, Director, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/sing-sing.md)

### Wrote (1) — the average rests on these

- *Train Dreams* (2025), Fi1m 79, Screenplay, Executive Producer — [page](https://film.one/film/train-dreams.md)

### Also credited (1) — thanks, archive footage, uncredited

- *Heretic* (2024), Fi1m 70, Thanks — [page](https://film.one/film/heretic.md)

## Complete filmography (24)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Train Dreams* (2025), Executive Producer, Screenplay — Fi1m 79, [page](https://film.one/film/train-dreams.md)
- *Heretic* (2024), Thanks — Fi1m 70, [page](https://film.one/film/heretic.md)
- *Between the Temples* (2024), Thanks
- *Sing Sing* (2024), Director, Producer, Story, Screenplay — Fi1m 84, [page](https://film.one/film/sing-sing.md)
- *Jockey* (2021), Writer, Producer
- *One Small Step* (2021), Thanks
- *WILDMAN* (2021), Executive Producer
- *Running with Beto* (2019), Producer
- *1985* (2018), Thanks
- *Ghost Fleet* (2018), Co-Producer
- *9 Races* (2017), Producer, Writer
- *Transpecos* (2016), Director, Producer, Screenplay
- *Dakota* (2015), Director, Screenplay, Producer
- *I'll Remember Everything* (2014), Producer
- *Rising from Ashes* (2013), Producer
- *Dared* (2012), Producer
- *Manos de madre* (2009), Writer, Director, Producer
- *Guest Room* (2009), Director, Writer, Producer
- *La pluma* (2009), Director, Writer, Producer
- *N.A.R.*, Writer, Director
- *Free Byrd*, Director, Producer, Writer
- *Untitled Simon Rex Short Film*, Director
- *Possum Song*, Director, Producer
- *Saturn Return*, Director, Writer

## Gallery

- ![Greg Kwedar attends a screening of "Train Dreams" at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival](https://film.one/media/person/11071/gallery-31315dce87c3.jpg) Greg Kwedar attends a screening of "Train Dreams" at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival — Gabriel Hutchinson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Greg_Kwedar_at_TIFF_2025_01.jpg/1280px-Greg_Kwedar_at_TIFF_2025_01.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Greg Kwedar attends a screening of "Train Dreams" at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival](https://film.one/media/person/11071/gallery-0b1ecdadb3d3.jpg) Greg Kwedar attends a screening of "Train Dreams" at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival — Gabriel Hutchinson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Greg_Kwedar_at_TIFF_2025_01_%28cropped%29.jpg/1280px-Greg_Kwedar_at_TIFF_2025_01_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Greg Kwedar attends a screening of "Train Dreams" at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival](https://film.one/media/person/11071/gallery-1b64e904596d.jpg) Greg Kwedar attends a screening of "Train Dreams" at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival — Gabriel Hutchinson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Greg_Kwedar_at_TIFF_2025_02.jpg/1280px-Greg_Kwedar_at_TIFF_2025_02.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)

## Awards

### Academy Awards — 0 won, 2 nominated

- 2026: Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated), for *Train Dreams*
- 2025: Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated), for *Sing Sing*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/greg-kwedar