FILMMAKER

Director/ Producer/ Cinematographer/ Writer/ Additional Editing

Delaney Ruston is a Stanford trained physician and documentary filmmaker. Through her company, MyDoc Productions, Delaney has made other award-winning documentaries on mental health along with HIDDEN PICTURES, such as UNLISTED: A Story Of Schizophrenia, that follows her journey to reconnect with her father after hiding from him for 10 years.

Her award-winning films include Screenagers, which explores solutions for healthy screen time, Screenagers NEXT CHAPTER, which addresses teen mental health, and Screenagers Under the Influence, covering vaping, drugs, and alcohol in the digital age. Her latest film, Screenagers: Elementary School Age Edition, tackles the challenges faced by elementary-aged children, parents, and educators. To date, over 14 million youth and adults have gathered for community screenings of these films in 104 countries.

Throughout her education at Cornell University, Stanford Medical School, and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) for residency, Ruston studied many aspects of filmmaking, focusing on film as a vehicle for social change. She made her first award-winning short film while doing her medicine residency at UCSF. Ruston continued on at UCSF as a Fellow in Ethics and Communication. Later, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to make films in India.

Ruston has been invited to speak and screen these and other films to hundreds of audiences in diverse settings around the world, such as at schools, conferences, medical centers, universities, the United Nations, Google, TEDx, and the World Health Organization. For her work using film to launch advocacy movements, Delaney has won several awards, including from Mental Health America, Fountain House in New York, and Harvard’s Mclean Hospital. 

Ruston was on the faculty at the University of Washington Medical Center and at Stony Brook. Currently, Ruston lives in Seattle, where she splits her time between providing care to the underserved,  filmmaking, and advocacy, including writing her weekly blog, Tech Talk Tuesdays. In addition, Ruston is the author of Parenting in the Screen Age and the host of the Screenagers Podcast.