Yonash Breneman
- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Yonash was born in communist Czechoslovakia with two clubbed feet. His mother "booked" a ski trip to Switzerland but they escaped through Austria, where Yonash and his mom were locked in "quarantine"...which was a jail cell holding 20 different families...for three weeks. After a couple months, the journey to America began.
Yonash was raised predominantly in Michigan and once communism fell, traveled to Czech often for family and education. At 6 years old, he finally got the medical surgeries needed to allow him to walk properly due to the grace of God and The Shriner's Hospital for children in Chicago, where his family wasn't charged a dime to help him live a normal life.
How could one not fall in love with the art of story telling, when their lives were taken out of a movie? Well, though the silver screen was always a love and portal to a different life, Yonash started his artistic journey in music. He played the guitar which eventually transformed into singing and writing his own songs. At the age of 18, he recorded a demo CD which was heavily considered by Interscope Records and then again a year later by Blackground Records, a sub-label of Universal. Neither panned out, but the drive remained as he continued to perform in the tri-state area which eventually led to leading a rock band back in Czech. But with most loves, this one ran dry. After seeing the climate of where music was heading and what he had to offer. Yonash turned his sights to California.
Once in the land of the movie giants, Yonash put music on the back burner and started his acting career. After numerous auditions, landing some and never hearing from others, he took his love of writing and started to educate himself on script. It was like love at first sight. He went on to write a web series that found a consistent audience on YouTube. Comedy was great but drama had his soul. He wrote for a few years, landed meetings with the likes of Universal, NBC, Gran Via to name a few but the problem was always the same...Noone wanted to produce a writer that hadn't had something under their belt yet.
The storm rolled in and so did the depression. What was life? What was the point? The point was to stop writing stories to write them and write stories that connected with the human form. It was ART that pulled Yonash from the gallows and he was determined to make that change...even if it meant stepping into the director's seat before he was ready.
Yonash wrote a few short films that were very successful on the festival circuit where he took home a cluster of nominations, a handful of awards, and even got inducted into the Austin Recolution Hall of Fame. Then, the pandemic hit. Yonash always prayed for the time and the money to make his first feature....well, he had the time. Conceived, written, and filmed during the lockdown of March-May 2020, he made his first feature called, "The Death of Us"
Yonash was raised predominantly in Michigan and once communism fell, traveled to Czech often for family and education. At 6 years old, he finally got the medical surgeries needed to allow him to walk properly due to the grace of God and The Shriner's Hospital for children in Chicago, where his family wasn't charged a dime to help him live a normal life.
How could one not fall in love with the art of story telling, when their lives were taken out of a movie? Well, though the silver screen was always a love and portal to a different life, Yonash started his artistic journey in music. He played the guitar which eventually transformed into singing and writing his own songs. At the age of 18, he recorded a demo CD which was heavily considered by Interscope Records and then again a year later by Blackground Records, a sub-label of Universal. Neither panned out, but the drive remained as he continued to perform in the tri-state area which eventually led to leading a rock band back in Czech. But with most loves, this one ran dry. After seeing the climate of where music was heading and what he had to offer. Yonash turned his sights to California.
Once in the land of the movie giants, Yonash put music on the back burner and started his acting career. After numerous auditions, landing some and never hearing from others, he took his love of writing and started to educate himself on script. It was like love at first sight. He went on to write a web series that found a consistent audience on YouTube. Comedy was great but drama had his soul. He wrote for a few years, landed meetings with the likes of Universal, NBC, Gran Via to name a few but the problem was always the same...Noone wanted to produce a writer that hadn't had something under their belt yet.
The storm rolled in and so did the depression. What was life? What was the point? The point was to stop writing stories to write them and write stories that connected with the human form. It was ART that pulled Yonash from the gallows and he was determined to make that change...even if it meant stepping into the director's seat before he was ready.
Yonash wrote a few short films that were very successful on the festival circuit where he took home a cluster of nominations, a handful of awards, and even got inducted into the Austin Recolution Hall of Fame. Then, the pandemic hit. Yonash always prayed for the time and the money to make his first feature....well, he had the time. Conceived, written, and filmed during the lockdown of March-May 2020, he made his first feature called, "The Death of Us"
