Tim Roper is an award-winning Writer-Director with a diverse mix of experience in both filmmaking and brand building. After graduating with a Film degree from The University of Texas at Austin with a minor in History, Tim began a 25-year career writing and directing short form branded content and crafting screenplays.
In 2016, Tim founded F. Yeah & Associates LLC—a live action “branded content engine” that specializes in short form comedic content. Tim’s writing & directing work has been honored at Cannes, The Museum of Modern Art, The Emmys, The One Club, The London International Film Festival to name a few and has appeared on the Super Bowl and profiled on 60 Minutes.
In 2019–in a sharp departure from his comedic roots–Tim joined co-director Marc Bennett and producer Lisa Effress to begin writing, co-directing and narrating the feature documentary FOR THE LIVING as a cautionary tale for a society grappling with the two extremes of human nature: Dehumanization and Empathy.
Tim asserts that this film—which veers between information & raw emotion, the intimate & the global, history & current events–is not merely about The Holocaust. Or any genocide. “For the Living” is about each and every one of us. It is about the very moment we’re all living through in 2025. And, ultimately, which “road” each us chooses to travel.
“For the Living” has now been featured in nearly a dozen film festivals worldwide and is also screening at select universities across North America.
Please List the Title of Your Film at BIFF 2025
FOR THE LIVING
What was your first experience with film and how did it influence your first project?
I grew up with a TV as my babysitter and would watch literally anything that was put in front of me. But I quickly developed discerning tastes and gravitated to–frankly–a lot of relatively sophisticated content for someone my age. The first motion picture I saw in a theater was “The Sand Pebbles” with Steve McQueen at age 5. Unable to find a babysitter, my mother just carted me along. It was very gripping but not at all appropriate.. But, I soon developed a passion for storytelling both on paper and on film.
Having watched Saturday Night Live since it’s very first episode in 1975 (dating myself, yes) I was struck by the short films of Albert Brooks and the credit, “Written and Directed by”. This was a startling and liberating idea to me which I carried through high school film, university film school, through years as an advertising creative, then as writer-director and up to this very day. The notion of “authoring” a film rather than being a hired hand was something I found very, very appealing.
In keeping with that, my very first project in the University of Texas film school at age 20 was a satire of the Auteur Theory with the self-deprecating title “Self Indulgence”. I wrote, directed, produced, edited and starred in this five minute lampoon of the newsreel “News on the March” from Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” in which I profiled this future ‘wunderkind’ filmmaker Tim Roper (a ridiculous version of myself) who found unlikely success making incredibly self-absorbed art films and eventually went off the deep end and died from a self-indulgent drug overdose at 33. Student audiences thankfully got the satire. And, needless to say, I survived well past 33.
Who is (are) your favorite filmmakers?
NOTE: None of these filmmakers on my Fav List have any reflection on the feature documentary I wrote and co-directed (FOR THE LIVING) which is screening at BIFF, MA. But, that said, I have particular affection for:
ALBERT BROOKS
ALEXANDER PAYNE
KEN BURNS
COEN BROTHERS
What are you working on that no one knows about?
I am working on three things:
1.) Getting our film FOR THE LIVING into as many university classrooms as possible paired with appropriate curriculum (ala the Ken Burns model) in order to fight back against the current pressure on universities to whitewash US history.
2.) A comedy pilot about a reality TV “star” who gets voted off a popular reality show but refuses to leave.
3.) A narrative biopic about Raphael Lemkin (featured briefly in For the Living), the man who invented the word “genocide” and who spent the post-Holocaust decades of his life passionately and obsessively working to convince governments around the world to put international agreements and mechanisms in place to both prevent and punish genocide and who eventually dropped dead in the halls of the UN due to his tireless decades-long crusade.
Who would play you in a movie? What’s your go to movie snack? What’s the film title that best describes your life?
WHO COULD/SHOULD PLAY ME IN A MOVIE:
Sam Rockwell. (more specifically his acting style in Frost/Nixon).
BEST MOVIE SNACK:
Popcorn, in my opinion, is THE best food on Earth (inside or outside a theater). Salt only, no butter.
FILM TITLE THAT DESCRIBES MY LIFE:
“Do the Right Thing”
