About
Hello! My name is Rebecca Shoptaw and I’m the writer and director behind a number of award-winning short films, along with the critically-acclaimed web series Middlemarch: The Series.
My work has been featured in The New Yorker, Le Monde, and i-D magazine, and screened at festivals internationally such as BFI Flare, NewFest, and the Pilot Light TV Festival.
I have a whole lot of new films coming out soon which you can see early via the Film Club, and my full portfolio of films and series is available to watch on this site.
Press Highlights
The New Yorker - Middlemarch Gets Winningly Adapted as a Web Series
Le Monde - Le roman <<Middlemarch>> de George Eliot adapté en websérie
i-D Magazine - 'middlemarch' is now a coming-of-age web series
The Dickens Society - Adapting Middlemarch in the Information Age
Fourteen East - A Trip to Middlemarch
Screening Highlights
BFI Flare London, UK. 2020
NewFest New York, NY. 2017 & 2020
Manchester Pilot Light TV Festival Manchester, UK. 2019
FilmFest Bremen Bremen, Germany. 2023
Melbourne WebFest Melbourne, Australia. 2017
Latest releases
Ghost Light
June 2025
A minimalist thriller inspired by the films of Alfred Hitchcock.
At Night, in Brooklyn
March 2025
Fragments of a conversation at some party somewhere in Brooklyn.
New Amsterdam
February 2024
A short film shot at Battery Park on a single roll of Super 8mm film.
Margot
January 2024
A dreamy short film shot on Super 8mm film, adapted from a 1910 short story by Stefan Zweig.
Perennial Favorites
Middlemarch: The Series
March - December 2017
A 70-episode web series that reimagines George Eliot's Victorian novel Middlemarch at a modern liberal arts college, in video-blog format.
Girl, Sweetvoiced
June 2019
A short film in fragments, adapted from the poetry of Sappho and starring Georgie Henley (The Chronicles of Narnia) and Antoinette Belle.
Sonnet 23
December 2016
A modern reimagining of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 23, starring Julian Hermano (Twelfth Grade, or Whatever) and Kai Nugent (Middlemarch: The Series).
Join the Film Club
If you’d like to keep up with my work, your best bet is The Film Club, a free email newsletter where I send out each film a week before it goes live, along with some longer-form commentary about how the film came to be. Plus, if you sign up you’ll also get to see a secret short film called Helena that’s out now and only available for film club members.
I’ve had a great time sharing some more in-depth thoughts on these films and the filmmaking process, and if it’s of interest, I’d love to have you there.