About The Director

Born in New York, Johnny Taranto is a director, screen writer, and production designer, dividing his time between Brooklyn and Stockholm. He graduated with honors (BFA/Fine Arts) from Parsons, The New School for Design in New York City, and with an MFA in Cinema Arts, with a concentration in Directing, at the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College, in 2024. His work is darkly humorous, gritty, kinetic, and combines a general sense of apathy colored by childlike wonder. 

Johnny has had, like, every kind of job imaginable, from intern at NYC City Planning, to busboy, to studio assistant, visitor services, brand strategy, and tech. A history nerd, a well spring of facts and figures, and a wiz at making treasure from trash on a budget. Entering the film world by accident, Johnny believes film to be the ultimate form of storytelling, and the best amalgam of art, craft, and collaboration. Really, he’s just happy to be here.

His thesis film, “More Money,” (2024) has recently completed post production, and will be screened publicly in the near future. In addition to “More Money,” Johnny has several other short films under his belt:

“Junk It,” (2023): An experimental, multi-camera comedy short chronicling a day on the set of a press junket from the POV of the boom operator. The short features an ensemble performance of actors portraying television stars, and incorporates the entire real crew as cast as the wall between on camera and behind the scenes is blurred throughout the film.

“Wank God,” (2021): After a shocking jolt of pure sex, an all-but invisible office worker trys and fails to get a moment alone to rub one out in the office bathroom. His success is manifold when his drive for self pleasure secures his self preservation. The short has amassed 46K views on YouTube, organically, sans any promotion nor festival play, and is used as a teaching aid in effective short filmmaking sans dialogue. Made during the waning days of the Pandemic, “Wank God” had a crew of one, with Taranto having to do everything from building an office and bathroom set from scratch, lighting, filming, directing, and even filling in as an extra body.

“Double Virgo,” (2019) follows a young woman sluggishly surviving through the early days of the COVID-19 Pandemic. With her SSRIs having run out, and unable to get access to the pills, or even to successfully place a phone call to her Psychiatrist, she descends into a booze soaked, brain zappy realm of alternating cope and collapse. Made during lockdown, with just the director and actress, who moved in with one another during production,the short was selected as part of a digital showcase of New School student art made during the Pandemic, an unusual move speaking to the quality of the work, as Taranto was only taking a continuing ed class one night per week at the time.

UPCOMING WORK:
Taranto is in pre-production on an as-yet untitled experimental dramatic short that will blend opera and film. Set within a salon, and casting entirely mature actors and older voices, the short will explore the platonic relationships and affirming spaces we build our “homes” within, and the more stoic and cerebral nature of grief in advanced years. The project is being made in collaboration with award winning Canadian librettist, Royce Vavrek, whose work includes operatic adaptations of Lars von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves,” and Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander,” as well as critically acclaimed and prolific Swedish composer, Mikael Karlsson, who, in addition to the operatic adaptations of “Fanny and Alexander” and “Melancholia,” has composed multiple full evening ballets at houses such as the Swedish Royal Opera, Opera Garnier, and the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet.

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