Meet Marc Smolowitz

Marc Smolowitz is a multi-award winning director, producer, and executive producer with a focus on powerful social issue filmmaking across all genres. With nearly three decades of experience in the entertainment and media business, his films have screened at top-tier festivals and have been released worldwide theatrically, across all forms of television, and on VOD, Digital, and Educational platforms.

He is the founder of 13th Gen, a San Francisco-based company. An entrepreneurial boutique company, their slate typically includes 10-15 high quality projects, both fiction and nonfiction, all at different stages. They work with a dynamic range of independent film partners to oversee the financing, production, post-production, marketing, sales, and distribution efforts of a vibrant portfolio of films and filmmakers. 13th Gen believes strongly in the power and potential of beautifully produced social issue films to speak to every generation. We welcome pitches from both established and emerging talents.

In 2016, Smolowitz received a prestigious IFP Fellowship to attend the Cannes Film Festival’s Producers Network and Marche du Film, marking him as one of USA’s most influential independent producers.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, he was widely known as the President & Founder of Turbulent Arts — a boutique indie film financing, distribution and sales company based in San Francisco. In 1998, Turbulent Arts was ranked by The Hollywood Reporter as the 26th largest film company in North America and 14th among independents. The company’s roster included some of the world's most talented directors including John Greyson, Petr Vaclav, Karim Dridi, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld, Yuri Mamin, Jochen Hick, and Greta Schiller.

Smolowitz has taught undergraduate filmmaking at the University of California, Santa Cruz (2011-2013) and the Art Institute of California, San Francisco (2008-2012). He has proudly served on the Board of Directors of the Community Technology Network of the Bay Area, the San Francisco Public Press, and as senior leadership at Full Circle Fund. He is the Board Chair of The HIV Story Project: an award-winning film and media arts nonprofit co-founded with filmmaking partner Jorg Fockele in 2009.