Max Winkler

Winkler’s knack for storytelling was born out of necessity. He suffered from severe dyslexia as a kid, making school essays and standardized tests nearly impossible. That’s when he developed a hustle that would turn into a career: he used short films in place of papers and reports to satisfy academic requirements. Winkler tapped friends and favors to craft visual poems for assignments from William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” to conceptual physics representations of planets exploding using miniature styrofoam models. Through these early experiments in film, Winkler found his voice and his calling.  

Working as a writer/director, Max Winkler excels at telling the kind of character-driven stories that inhabit those rarified spaces outside of the expected. His heroes exist in worlds of their own creation, remaining steadfast and resilient even as real life and all of its concerns come crashing in around them. These outsider fables bring to mind the work of American masters like Mike Nichols and Sydney Pollack, two of Winkler’s cinematic heroes. Winkler moves effortlessly between genres without ever losing his voice, displaying a keen eye for characters who view themselves differently from the rest of the world while remaining undeniably relatable at the same time.

Using a real-life experience as inspiration, Winkler crafted his feature directorial debut, Ceremony. The film centers on an unlikely hero pursuing the woman of his dreams by crashing her wedding weekend. Winkler’s next film, Flower, starring Zoey Deutch, depicts the unlikely relationship between a damaged young girl and her awkward step-brother. Winkler wrote and directed the gripping Jungleland starring Charlie Hunnam, Jack O'Connell and Jessica Barden. The feature follows a reluctant bare-knuckle boxer, "Lion," and his manager/brother, "Stanley," who must travel across the country for one last fight.

In television, Winkler continues his ongoing collaboration with Ryan Murphy, directing and executive producing on Murphy’s projects, including the most recent, Love Story, chronicling the whirlwind courtship and marriage of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, starring Sarah Pidgeon, Paul Anthony Kelly, Naomi Watts, Grace Gummer, and Alessandro Nivola. Released in February 2026, the acclaimed series quickly became FX’s most-watched limited series ever on Disney+ and Hulu. Other Murphy shows include: Monster, American Horror Story, American Horror Stories, Grotesquerie, and The Watcher. Other directing credits include Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Arrested Development, New Girl, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, Cruel Summer, and School Spirits. Up next, Winkler will direct and executive-produce The Shards, a coming-of-age thriller set in 1981 Los Angeles, starring Kaia Gerber, Igby Rigney, Homer Gere, and Graham Campbell.