Overview
Neil Breen (born November 23, 1958) is an American filmmaker and actor. Since 2005, he has written, directed, independently produced, and starred in six theatrical feature films. Breen's films have garnered a cult following for their low-budget production values, acting, writing, and editing.
Life and career
Neil Breen grew up on the East Coast of the United States, and developed an interest in film and filmmaking at an early age. He studied architecture and initially became a licensed architect in California. He gained a small following after releasing his first film, Double Down, which played at the Cinefamily cinematheque in Los Angeles in 2010. In the years that followed, Breen continued working as an architect as a means to finance his next film: I Am Here.... Now, which also played at the Cinefamily in 2011. This second feature proved to be a breakout hit, reintroducing familiar motifs and garnering Breen "a lot of attention." Since then, he has established a reputation as a cult amateur filmmaker.
Film
Breen writes, produces, directs, and stars in each of his own films. The characters he portrays hold advanced and often superhuman abilities and use them in grandiose struggles against corrupt forces and institutions. Fateful Findings features Breen as a hacker imbued with supernatural powers by a magical stone he found as a child, who uses his skills to expose government and corporate corruption, while in Double Down he plays a rogue government super-agent.
In other films, his protagonist is a god-like, messianic, or otherwise chosen figure; Pass Thru, for example, has Breen playing a messianic entity who arrives from the future to wipe out 300 million "bad people" to usher in a new era of peace. Breen has said that his films have a "sense of social responsibility" and reflect the "mystical or paranormal side of life."
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).