- His parents Steve Zeitlin and Amanda Dargan are both urban folklorists who founded and run the highly respected nonprofit City Lore organization in NYC.
- Benh met his "Beasts" co-writer Lucy Alibar in summer camp when they were teenagers.
- Suffered a shattered hip and dislocated pelvis in car accident in March 2008 on the way to Austin, Texas and the screening of his award-winning short film Glory at Sea (2008) at the South by Southwest festival. Benh was uninsured, and fellow filmmakers soon after staged a benefit to raise money to help his medical expenses. Eventually he made a full recovery.
- Is at least the sixth successful filmmaker to graduate from Wesleyan University, following in the footsteps of Michael Bay, Joss Whedon, Ruben Fleischer, Akiva Goldsman and Paul Weitz, as well as of Game of Thrones (2011) and Mad Men (2007) creators, respectively, of D.B. Weiss and Matthew Weiner; and Broadway wunderkind Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of "Hamilton.".
- Helped start the Court 13 independent filmmaking collective in 2004, and moved to New Orleans where he eventually made his first short film, Glory at Sea (2008), after Hurricane Katrina had devastated this Louisiana city.
- Cousin of Marc Wallace.
- As of 2013, has directed one actress to an Academy Award-nominated performance: Quvenzhané Wallis (Best Actress, Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)).
- Graduate of Hastings-on-Hudson High School and Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.
- He and younger sister and collaborator Eliza Zeitlin raised in Sunnyside section of Queens (NYC) and then in nearby Westchester County suburb of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.
- The name for his Court 13 collective was derived from an all-but-abandoned Wesleyan U. squash court that Benh and artist friends often took over--as an ad hoc filmmaking site, not because of their love of racket sports.
- Benh and producer friend Ray Tintori from Glory at Sea (2008) worked in film production together one summer in Prague, where they met British cinematographer Ben Richardson.
- Won the 2012 Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award for the Visual Arts.
- Influenced by directors as disparate as James Cameron, Emir Kusturica and--especially the craftsman's modest lifestyle of-- John Cassavetes,.
- Named one of 20 young filmmakers "to watch" by the NY Times in a September 2013 article.
- Is a fan of the work of female Italian writer/director Alice Rohrwacher and especially her feature Happy as Lazzaro (2018).
- His first feature, Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), received support from the Sundance Labs, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation as well as an NHK award.
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