Gil Kenan

Gil Kenan (born October 16, 1976) is an Israeli-British-American film director and screenwriter, best known for his work on the films Monster House and City of Ember.

Kenan was born in London. When he was three, his family moved to Tel Aviv. At age eight, they moved to Reseda, Los Angeles.

He studied at the film division of the University of California, Los Angeles where he received a MFA degree in animation in 2002. For his graduate thesis, he created a 10-minute stop-motion/live-action film, The Lark.

At the first public screening of the short, it caught the attention of Jordan Bealmear, who was an assistant at Creative Artists Agency. The agency sent hundreds of copies of Kenan's short to anybody they could, and after a few months of interviews, Robert Zemeckis offered Kenan the director's chair for the 2006 film Monster House. Executive produced by Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg, it was nominated for a 2006 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Kenan's film, City of Ember, is the screen adaptation of Jeanne Duprau's 2003 novel The City of Ember. Produced by Tom Hanks, it was released in October 2008 to mixed reviews and poor box office results. In 2015, Kenan's Poltergeist (2015 film) released to mixed reviews, but respectable box office results.

Personal life

In 2005, Kenan married Eliza Chaikin, who served as art director on City of Ember.