Elijah Bynum is an American filmmaker and screenwriter born in 1987 in Northampton, Massachusetts. Raised in the nearby towns of Amherst and Pelham, he grew up with a passion for storytelling that would eventually lead him far from New England. After studying marketing and economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Bynum moved to Los Angeles in 2009, where he began his career at the Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Immersed in scripts and screenplays, he learned the rhythms of cinematic storytelling from the inside out before deciding to write his own.
His directorial debut, Hot Summer Nights (2017), a coming-of-age drama set in 1990s Cape Cod, revealed a young filmmaker with a flair for visual energy and emotional nuance. But it was his second film, Magazine Dreams (2023), that established him as one of the most distinctive new voices in American cinema.
That same year, Variety named Bynum one of its “10 Directors to Watch”. Known for his meticulous attention to character and atmosphere, Bynum’s work often explores fragile masculinity, alienation, and the pursuit of purpose—revealing both the beauty and the danger in the human need to be seen.