SHARON BROOKS – THE ROAD TAKEN

As I look at the picture of Sharon, immersed in the magnificent Montana landscape, I can guess what’s going through her head - “good choice!”. It reminds me of the line from the famous poem by Robert Frost, two roads diverged in a yellow wood. Sharon had a choice to make. Take the road she had worked so hard to carve out for herself over the previous five years or, take the road that allowed her to pursue her passion - film-making.

Many people are presented with such choices throughout their lives. Some choose to take the safe road. Some are so caught up in what they are expected to do that they don’t even realise that the choice is before them. And then some make the tough choice, they muster the courage to leave their comfort zone and choose to journey into the unknown. That’s what Sharon did. She mustered the courage, something she has in abundance, and made the tough choice.

Sharon’s father, Jim is a native of Mitchelstown. He moved to Clonakilty in the 1970s to practice as a solicitor and has lived there ever since. Sharon followed her father into the legal profession, qualifying as a barrister in 2008. She established a successful career in a very short period of time including becoming one of the youngest people ever to be elected onto the Bar Council of Ireland (the profession’s regulatory body). In 2011, Sharon decided to travel to New York to sit the notoriously difficult New York Bar Exams, which she duly passed first time round, something Hilary Clinton needed three attempts to achieve!

In August 2011, she moved to New York in search of Criminal Defence work. She was offered a job after over a month of searching. It was at this point that her love of film making took hold of her. She was walking past the New York Film Academy and stopped, stared in the window and decided there and then to make the tough choice.

Sharon packed in her legal career and enrolled for a one year intensive documentary film-making course. During her course she was accepted into the highly prestigious Marcie Bloom Fellowship. She has written, directed and produced two documentary films thus far - ‘Outlier’- a personal narrative and ‘Wasted’- the moving story of a man incarcerated in solitary confinement in Ely State Prison, Nevada.

On the strength of these films, Sharon beat off competition of hundreds of fellow documentary film makers to land herself an internship with Academy Award winning director Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). Along with this Sharon has also started up her own production company, ‘Awen Films’ and is currently working on her next independent project.

There is no doubt that Sharon’s future in film making is as magnificent as the Montana landscape she is seen here immersed in. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, Sharon took the one less travelled and that will make all the difference!

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