Rob Nilsson

Rob Nilsson is an independent director, based in San Francisco. Nilsson and co-director John Hanson won the Camera d'Or at Cannes for Northern Lights a road movie, personal essay on the life of Leon Trotsky. Nilsson's film criticism has been featured on Ifilm and the Adobe Motion Channel and in a regular editorial column in RES, once the world's leading magazine on digital filmmaking. Nilsson received a Rockefeller Artist's Grant in 2002. Retrospectives of Nilsson's work have taken place at the Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley, Chicago Institute of Art, Resfest, Seoul, Korea, Digital Talkies Festival, New Dehli, India, MOV Festival and Cinemanila, Manila, Philippines, Hong Kong IFF, and the Kansas City Filmmaker's Jubilee. He had recent retrospectives at the Yerevan International Film Festival in Armenia, the Moscow International Film Festival, and the Love is Folly Film Festival, Varna, Bulgaria. Recent awards include the Ted M. Larson Award for "outstanding contributions to the film industry" from the Fargo International Film Festival, the Indie Pioneer Award from the Kansas City Filmmaker's Jubilee, a Filmmaker of the Year award from the Silver Lake Film Festival, Los Angeles, the Milley Award from the city of Mill Valley for achievement in the Arts, the Filmmaker's Award from the Mill Valley Film Festival, the Master's Award from the Golden Apricot International Film Festival, Armenia, the Golden Aphrodite from the Love is Folly Film Festival, Bulgaria and the Sophia Lifetime Achievement Award from the Syracuse International Film Festival. His book of poetry, From a Refugee of Tristan Da Cunha was released in 2007 and is available at Authorhouse.com and Wild Surmise, A Dissident View, his book about the cinema was released in 2013 and is available on Amazon and Authorhouse.com. Nilsson is also an artist with an extensive body of work.