---
name: "Ry Russo-Young"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/ry-russo-young"
roles: ["Director"]
born: "16 November 1981"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
average_as: "director"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-17T16:41:06.658711+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."
---

# Ry Russo-Young

Director. Born 16 November 1981 in New York City, New York, USA.

## Details

- **Work:** Director
- **Born:** 16 November 1981, New York City, New York, USA
- **Also known as:** Ри Руссо-Янг
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry_Russo-Young, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7383775, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1735543/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/45419

## Streaming the US now

- **Apple TV:** [*Shrinking*](https://film.one/tv/shrinking.md) (61)

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

## Fi1m on Ry Russo-Young

> Ry Russo-Young gives difficult people a sympathetic hearing and teenage stories careful visual attention. We value her patience with actors, though her fiction can leave too much unexamined when it needs to ask harder questions.

In *Before I Fall* (2017), moody, layered lighting and anamorphic lenses give a teenage story depth without flooding it with brightness. Russo-Young’s care with the image is a strength, and cinematographers Michael Fimognari and Christopher Blauvelt are among her collaborators. She gives performers similar attention, encouraging nuanced portrayals rather than sorting people into good and bad. We like that generosity, though it can leave difficult behaviour insufficiently examined.

The early independent features *Orphans* (2007) and *You Won’t Miss Me* (2009) led to *Nobody Walks* (2012), co-written with Lena Dunham. That film brought wider recognition, though its storytelling could be clearer about what is happening between its characters. The move into studio young-adult adaptations began with *Before I Fall*, followed by *The Sun Is Also a Star* (2019). The change of scale did not mean abandoning her interest in how people behave around one another.

In episodic television, those concerns turn up again in *Shrinking* (2023), with more uneven results. We warmed to Harrison Ford’s dry comedy; it made us want to stay with a programme whose hurried treatment of grief was testing our patience. Jason Segel’s vulnerability also makes the therapist worth attending to. There is value in asking us to sit with somebody whose behaviour is difficult to defend.

The problem is how readily *Shrinking* lets that therapist’s broken boundaries pass without sufficient scrutiny. The writing needs to spend longer considering the harm those breaches can cause. That weakness cannot fairly be laid at Russo-Young’s door simply because she directed for the series, nor can we give her sole credit for Ford’s comedy. The performances make it worth trying, with the reservation about its treatment of grief firmly in place.

Her move into the personal documentary *Nuclear Family* (2021) complicates any view of her as a director settled into safe fiction assignments. Its attention to multiple perspectives develops her interest in people who cannot readily be labelled villains, with more personal material to examine. For a clearer look at her visual judgement, begin with *Before I Fall*.

## Biography

Ry Russo-Young is an American filmmaker and director. She was born in New York City on 16 November 1981 and attended Oberlin College and Saint Ann's School.

Her early independent features include *Orphans* (2007) and *Nobody Walks* (2012), the latter co-written with Lena Dunham. She later directed the features *Before I Fall* (2017) and *The Sun Is Also a Star* (2019).

On television she has directed episodes of *Everything Sucks!* (2018), *Sweetbitter* (2018), *Marvel's Cloak & Dagger* (2018), *And Just Like That…* (2021) and *Shrinking* (2023). She also directed and appeared in the HBO documentary series *Nuclear Family* (2021).

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

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Shrinking* (2023), Fi1m 61, Director — [page](https://film.one/tv/shrinking.md)

## Complete filmography (19)

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

- *Call Her Alex* (2025), series, Director, Executive Producer
- *The Serena Variations* (2024), Producer
- *Shrinking* (2023), series, Director — Fi1m 61, [page](https://film.one/tv/shrinking.md)
- *And Just Like That…* (2021), series, Director
- *Nuclear Family* (2021), series, Producer, Director, Creator
- *PANIC* (2021), Director
- *The Sun Is Also a Star* (2019), Director
- *Sorry for Your Loss* (2018), series, Director
- *Marvel's Cloak & Dagger* (2018), series, Director
- *Sweetbitter* (2018), series, Director
- *Everything Sucks!* (2018), series, Director
- *Before I Fall* (2017), Director
- *Nobody Walks* (2012), Director, Writer
- *The Color Wheel* (2012), as Zoe
- *You Wont Miss Me* (2009), Director, Writer, Executive Producer, Editor
- *Hannah Takes the Stairs* (2007), as Rocco, Additional Writing
- *Orphans* (2007), Director, Writer
- *Marion* (2005), Director
- *The Last Animal*, Director

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© 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/ry-russo-young