Josh Penn, the Academy Award-nominated producer for Beasts of the Southern Wild, has launched a new production company, Serenade, focused on documentaries and narrative films. Serenade’s first film, The World’s Oldest Man, directed by Sam Green, premiered at this year’s Sundance and received glowing reviews from critics.
Penn’s work includes “Monsters and Men,” “32 Sounds” and “The White House Effect,” the latter of which earned him two Emmy nominations.
Serenade begins with more than a dozen films already in various stages of development, production and post-production. That includes a fiction side, “Dave, Dave, Ruth & Dave,” directed by “The Wicker” creators Alex Fisher and Rachel Walther. “Here for the Weekend”, Jane Casey Moderno’s debut novel. and “Edge City,” a hybrid western by the Ross Brothers. On the documentary side, the company’s productions include Captions Will be Needed, a new film by two-time Sundance Best Director winner Natalia Almada, and Assata, a feature documentary about political activist Assata Shakur directed by Gisele and Stephen Bailey. Blue Sweater With a Yellow Hole is a documentary by Ukrainian director Tetiana Kodakivska whose development was supported by Cannes, Sundance Institute and Berlinale programs. A live documentary, “Trees,” directed by Academy Award-nominated director Sam Green, is also in production. The massive production, which combines live performance, symphony orchestra and film, features music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, and has just announced its world premiere at London’s Barbican Centre. It will also be released as a traditional theatrical and streaming movie.
Penn and Serenade also launched a business unit that provides consulting services to filmmakers, investors, and organizations across the independent film ecosystem. Their consulting work has supported films that premiered at Sundance and Cannes, and were shortlisted for the Academy Awards. Penn has consulted for leading institutions including Sundance Institute’s Narrative and Documentary Production Lab, Sundance Catalyst, Film Independent, Impact Partners, and Skoll World Forum.
Prior to founding Serenade, Penn served as co-founder and CEO of Ministry of Film for the past 10 years, producing or executive producing more than 20 films and earning credits at Sundance, Telluride, and Cannes. His work has distribution deals with Netflix, Neon, Searchlight, Paramount, and more. Since 2012, as a producer or executive producer, he has premiered more than a dozen films at Sundance, which combined to win six awards from the festival. He won a Peabody Award and a Sundance Producer Award. Penn was nominated for Producer of the Year by the Producers Guild of America.
