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All Pictures (3)Biography
Yony Leyser was born in DeKalb, USA, in 1985. The son of an Israeli-Iranian mother and an American father grew up in Chicago, where he also began to study acting at the Academy for the Arts. In 2004, he enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. His provocative art projects soon brought him into conflict with the school administration, and he left to attend the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He eventually graduated from The New School University in New York City, majoring in film and journalism.
Leyser started his first film project in Lawrence, which had been the home of author William S. Burroughs until his death in 1997. For several years, Leyser travelled across the USA to interview prominent contemporaries and collaborators of Burroughs, including Patti Smith, John Waters, David Cronenberg and Iggy Pop. The resulting documentary "William S. Burroughs: A Man Within" (US 2010) premiered at the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival and subsequently screened at festivals around the world.
In 2010, Leyser relocated to Berlin, from where his paternal grandparents had fled in 1937. Here he made his first feature film "Desire Will Set You Free" (2015), a semi-autobiographical romance set in the gay underground scene of the city. The film screened at several international festivals and was released in Germany in May 2016.
Leyser next began to work on the documentary "Queercore - How to Punk a Revolution" (2017), which chronicles the birth and impact of the Queercore movement.