Alumni Spotlight: Sharee Silerio

Sharee (Brown) Silerio (A&S ’09) watched the 96th Academy Awards last March not to see who would win the big contests, not for host Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes, not even for Ryan Gosling’s “Kenergy” — but rather to root for a 40-minute documentary called The Last Repair Shop.

When it won Best Documentary Short Film, Silerio leaped to her feet in celebration. Her husband, Mario, captured her reaction for Instagram, and family back in St. Louis cheered with her over FaceTime.

Silerio was the production coordinator on The Last Repair Shop, so the win felt personal.

“Of course, I felt joy and pride, but not just that,” Silerio said. “This film was about people who had difficult moments that music helped them get through. That’s what writing and film do for me.”

Silerio is a filmmaker and field producer for Breakwater Studios, which focuses on short-form documentaries, including The Last Repair Shop. She lives in Los Angeles, where she moved in 2022.

Before that, she was a production assistant on shows for Netflix and Oxygen, as well as Hart of the City: St. Louis for Comedy Central and The Busch Family Brewed for MTV. She also worked in public relations and as a freelance writer.

Her career in film might be traced to her time at Saint Louis University, where she took film classes and wrote her first screenplay. She also was a reporter and anchor for SLU TV.

“I found stories on campus about campus, went out and shot them, and edited them,” Silerio said. “It was great practice with skills I’d need later on.”

She felt the power of stories even earlier, though, around the time her family moved to a predominantly white neighborhood right before Silerio started kindergarten.

“That’s when I discovered that I was Black,” she said. “I had classmates calling me ‘burnt’ and ‘ugly.’ Kids I thought were friends just kind of treated me like an alien.”

She turned to all sorts of outlets to escape her feelings: watching television and movies, writing poetry and painting. She even wrote and filmed a horror movie starring her sister.

“And I absolutely loved reading — being able to step into another world,” she said.

Now, she wants to use her creativity to explore the worlds of Black women and girls, highlighting stories that value their whole humanity and experience. To pursue these kinds of projects, she recently launched Starlight Pictures, a film, television, digital and streaming production company.

“My dream is to continue crafting narratives that cultivate empathy, encourage vulnerability and spark healing,” she said.

And possibly, win her an Oscar of her very own someday.