Donna Deitch

Donna produced and directed Desert Hearts, the landmark, award-winning lesbian love story and hit of the 1985-86 Sundance, Berlin, Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals.

Oprah Winfrey, after seeing the film, hired Donna to direct the Emmy-nominated four-hour miniseries The Women of Brewster Place. This was the beginning of 35 years and counting directing in television — ranging from five network pilots to cable and network films: HBO’s Prison Stories: Women on the Inside, ABC’s sexual harassment–themed Sexual Advances, Showtime’s gay/lesbian-themed Common Ground, and Holocaust-themed Devil’s Arithmetic, starring Kirsten Dunst, for which she won an Emmy for directing.

She has directed many hours of episodic television drama, including numerous episodes of NYPD Blue, ER, Heroes, Law and Order: SVU, Private Practice, Gray’s Anatomy, Judging Amy, Oprah’s Greenleaf, and many others.

Beginning as a still photographer, she won first prize in a photo contest in Mademoiselle magazine. The judge was Diane Arbus. She was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, where she received her political education on the battlefields of People’s Park and the steps of Sproul Plaza. She was a graduate student at the UCLA Film School and received her MFA for her thesis film, Woman to Woman: A Documentary about Hookers, Housewives and Other Mothers.

Donna occasionally goes back to her documentary roots, as she did with Angel On My Shoulder, about her best friend, the actress Gwen Welles’ (Nashville) experience with dying, which has toured the festival circuit and won the Gold Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival. She just completed Roastin’ Gloria, a short film that invents a new film genre: “Roast Film.”

She’s currently working on Desert Hearts: An Unconventional Sequel; Strange Piece of Paradise, a series adapted from Terri Jentz’ award-winning true-crime memoir, the true story of Terri’s 1990s return to the American West to investigate and solve a famous crime never solved by local police — her 1970s attempted axe murder in an Oregon camp site; plus The Catcher, Donna’s script adapted from the book Stella — the hushed-up, untold, tragic, true story of a young, Jewish woman who in World War II Berlin, caught Jews so she and her parents could survive.

And she’s developing a TV series to end all war.

Donna is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Directors Guild of Canada.

Follow Donna on Twitter @DesertHearts.

Donna was the recipient of the 2024 WMC Ahead of Her Time Award at the 2024 Women's Media Awards.