Yael Melamede

Melamede was born in New York City, while her mother, Israel Prize-winning architect Ada Karmi-Melamede, was a lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Columbia University. Her maternal uncle, the architect Ram Karmi, and her grandfather, the architect Dov Karmi.

Following her sister and brother's enlistment in the army, her parents returned to Israel. Melamede decided to stay in the United States and enrolled in architecture studies at Yale University. In 1997, after working with her mother for a year and a half, she decided to abandon architecture and pursue filmmaking. She returned to New York City and studied film in an intensive six-week course at New York University. She began working as an intern, then as an assistant.

In 2003, Melamede and Eva Kolodner founded the production company Salty Features; a few years later, her partner, Kolodner, left the company. The most expensive film she has produced is "Brief Interviews with Disgusting People," written and directed by John Krasinski (who plays Jim, the star of the series "The Office" with a budget of nearly five million dollars. It is an adaptation of the short story collection by David Foster Wallace. The film My Architect, which Melamede produced and directed by Nathaniel Kahn, was nominated for an Oscar in 2004.