Rhys Ernst is a filmmaker and an artist based in Los Angeles. His debut feature film ADAM, produced by James Schamus and starring Emmy and Golden Globe-nominee Margaret Qualley, premiered as an official selection of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, won awards at Outfest, Oslo Fusion, and the Mezipatra Film Festival, and was nominated for a 2020 GLAAD award. He was a Producer and Director on Amazon’s Transparent and created the title sequence for the series. He was nominated for a 2015 Emmy Award for directing and producing Amazon’s webseries This Is Me. As a commercial director, he is repped by Radical Media and his clients have included Google and Facebook. Ernst has shown work at the Whitney Biennial, the Sundance Film Festival, Oberhausen, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, The Walker and The Hammer Museums; he has won two Special Recognition GLAAD Awards as well as awards at Outfest, Chicago International Film Festival, the L.A. and the Seattle Transgender Film Festivals, and he is on the Board of Directors of Film Independent. He received a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from CalArts.

Rhys Ernst is a filmmaker and artist. He was a Producer and Director on Amazon’s Transparent and created the title sequence for the series. He was nominated for a 2015 Emmy Award for directing and producing the webseries Transparent: This Is Me, which won a Special Recognition GLAAD Award. In 2016 he teamed up with Focus Features to create the online series, We’ve Been Around. In addition to the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Ernst has shown work at Sundance, Oberhausen, and The Hammer Museum; he has won awards at Outfest, Chicago International Film Festival and the LA Transgender Film Festival; and he was a Point Scholar, a Project Involve Fellow, and was awarded with the 2015 Point Foundation Horizon Award and the ACLU Liberty Award for his work on transgender representation in the media. He received a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from CalArts.

Rhys Ernst is a writer/director who positions his filmmaking in a "New Trans Cinema" that complicates gender representation in narrative cinema and places queer and transgender characters within larger narratives. Ernst received his MFA in Film/ Video at CalArts in 2011 and a BA from Hampshire College in 2004. His MFA thesis filmThe Thing" premiered at Sundance 2012 and his new film "She Gone Rogue" premiered at the 2012 Made in LA Los Angeles Biennial at the Hammer Museum. Past screening venues include Oberhausen, Chicago International FF, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and in Los Angeles at UCLA Hammer Museum, REDCAT, and LACE. He was named 2010 HBO Point Scholar, a 2012 Project: Involve Fellow, he received a 2003 Princess Grace Award Honorarium and a Gold Plaque at the 2003 Chicago International Film Festival, and was President of the Jury at Izmir Short film festival in Turkey. He is currently directing a 35mm short adaptation of the life of transgender pioneer Vicki Marlene. He lives in Los Angeles.