Leilah Weinraub is a film director and artist who creates films, performances, and cinematic worlds across documentary, narrative cinema, and installation.
Her practice began in documentary filmmaking, where long-term observation grounded her work in lived experience and narrative truth. Her feature documentary Shakedown was filmed over more than a decade inside a legendary Los Angeles nightlife community, capturing performances and cultural worlds rarely seen on screen.
Alongside her film work, Weinraub was a co-founder of Hood By Air, where she helped shape the brand’s emergence as a defining cultural force of the 2010s. Through runway shows, films, and public events, the project treated fashion as a form of performance and collective image-making.
Today her work spans narrative film, theater, video installation, and commercial image-making, including fragrance and beauty campaigns. Across these forms, her projects explore the relationship between labor and spectacle, documenting and constructing images that reflect tensions within contemporary American life.
Her films and video works have been presented internationally at the Whitney Biennial, the Hammer Museum, MoMA PS1, Tate Modern, the São Paulo Biennial, and the Berlin International Film Festival.
Weinraub is the founder of Texarkana and lives and works between Los Angeles and New York.
LEILAH WEINRAUB
Film Director
Los Angeles / New York
FILMS
2025 — SEEK NO FAVOR
Short Film
Director, Producer
2018 — SHAKEDOWN
Feature Documentary, 72 min
Director, Producer
Premiered at the Whitney Biennial
Screened at the Berlin International Film Festival
Distributed by Grasshopper Film
Streaming on the Criterion Channel
PROJECTS IN DEVELOPMENT
Bad Liquor for Bag Ladies — Short Film
Written by Ottessa Moshfegh
The Kids — Feature Film
Adaptation of the stage work
PROFESSIONAL
Founder & Principal — Texarkana
2020–present
Co-founder & CEO — Hood By Air
2010–2018
AWARDS, GRANTS & RESIDENCIES
2025 — NewFest
Emerging Black LGBTQ+ Filmmaker Award (Seek No Favor)
2025 — BlackStar Film Festival
Nominee, Best Short Narrative (Seek No Favor)
2024 — New Theater Hollywood, Los Angeles
Artist-in-Residence
2019 — Cinereach
Post-Production Grant (Shakedown)
2019 — Sundance Institute
Art of Nonfiction Fellow
2018 — Indie Memphis Film Festival
Best Documentary Feature (Shakedown)
2018 — Outfest
Special Programming Committee Award (Shakedown)
2018 — Images Festival, Toronto
Can’t Get You Out of My Head Award (Shakedown)
2018 — Berlinale
Nominee, Teddy Award — Best Documentary Film (Shakedown)
2015 — CFDA Fashion Awards
Swarovski Award for Menswear (Hood By Air)
2014 — LVMH Prize
Special Jury Prize (Hood By Air)
2014 — Frameline Completion Fund
Completion Award (Shakedown)
Film Independent — Project Involve Fellow
Wexner Center for the Arts — Artist Residency
PERFORMANCE
2025 — The Kids
Play / Performance
Writer, Director, Performer (Role: Tits)
Hammer Museum commission — Made in L.A. 2025
2023–2025 — Theater
Episodic Film
Role: Kennedy
2021–2025 — The Restaurant
Episodic Film
Role: Leilah
2022 — Everything But the World
Film
Role: Shock Jock
2006–2020 — Collaborations with Ryan Trecartin
Performer
LECTURES & VISITING ARTIST
2026 — Hunter College, CUNY
Lecture — Documentary Film Program
2026 — University of Pennsylvania
Weitzman School of Design / Institute of Contemporary Art
Lecture — Visiting Artist Series
2026 — University of Pennsylvania (MFA Fine Arts)
Studio Visits — Visiting Artist
2025 — Columbia University School of the Arts
Lecture + Studio Visits — Visiting Artist
2025 — Yale School of Art
Lecture — Visiting Artist
2025 — Rikers Island Jail Library Program (New York Public Library)
Artist Talk + Workshop
2023 — Bard MFA
Visiting Artist
2019 — UCLA Graduate Art
Studio Visits — Visiting Artist
2018 — Southern Methodist University
Meadows School of the Arts — Visiting Artist
JURY SERVICE
2023 — Athens International Film + Video Festival
Jury Member, 50th Festival Edition
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2018 — Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Harlem, New York
2018 — What Pipeline, Detroit
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 — Made in L.A. 2025, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
2025 — Made in L.A. 2025, Hammer Museum / New Theater Hollywood
The Kids (performance installation)
2023 — São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo
2021 — Moving Image Biennial
Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève
2021 — LEAN
Kunsthall Stavanger
2021 — LEAN
Performa, New York
2019 — RE:WORKING LABOR***
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
2018 — Putting Out
Gavin Brown’s Enterprise
2017 — Whitney Biennial
Whitney Museum of American Art
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY & PRESS
2025 — Los Angeles Times
“With The Kids, Leilah Weinraub Creates Performances for the Future,” by Fariha Róisín
2025 — Made in L.A. 2025 Catalogue, Hammer Museum
“A Nonviolent Choice,” essay by Terence Nance
2024 — Interview Magazine
2022 — BUTT Magazine
2021 — Marfa Journal
2021 — i-D Magazine
2021 — May Revue
2020 — TIME Magazine
2020 — IndieWire
2020 — Variety
2020 — Film Comment
2020 — Vanity Fair
2020 — The New York Times
2018 — The New Yorker
2018 — Dazed
2018 — Cultured Magazine
2016 — The New Yorker
2014 — The New York Times
EDUCATION
Bard College
Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Antioch College
Media and Social Change
Yellow Springs, OH