Nerenberg told the Montreal newspaper,
La Presse, that he became a filmmaker after he smuggled a video camera through army lines during the 1990
Oka Crisis – a standoff between armed Mohawk Warriors and the Canadian military. The footage was later turned into his first documentary, titled
Okanada. While still based in Montreal, some of Nerenberg's earliest films received acclaim, as well as some skepticism, "on the fringes" with "highly entertaining, low-budget documentaries", like
Urban Anglo (1991) and
1949, so titled because it cost only $19.49 to make, taking advantage of the sophistication of Hi-8 video equipment at that time.
Trailervision Nerenberg moved to Toronto, "like many young Montreal anglo filmmakers before him," where he would eventually achieve even greater acclaim with higher-budget, more entertaining documentaries. Nerenberg directed over 70 trailers for it. In 2000, he performed a widely publicized prank at the 2000
Toronto International Film Festival. The director orchestrated the red carpet entry of a group of
Trailervision actors as major movie stars. This was done by planting actors among the
paparazzi who screamed the names of the fictional stars as they arrived by limo. The paparazzi responded by flashing their cameras frantically. The fake stars were rushed into the
green room along with the real stars, "where they got drunk like showbiz kings". The prank is described in the online
Museum of Hoaxes as The Toronto Film Festival Hoax.
Feature documentary filmmaker In 2003, Nerenberg's breakthrough film
Stupidity was released, and he organized the first annual
World Stupidity Awards in
Toronto a month later, a satirical awards show which went on to be sponsored by the
Just for Laughs festival and took place in
Montréal from 2004 to 2007, honouring the
Stupidest Statement of the Year. Nerenberg's
Escape to Canada (2005) examines the results of Canada's brief relaxation of its
marijuana laws at the same time that
same-sex marriage became legal, along with Canada's abstention from the
U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq having made the country a perceived haven for
progressive Americans. In 2007's ''
Let's All Hate Toronto'', Mr. Toronto (Nerenberg's eye-patched co-director Rob Spence) embarks on a coast-to-coast Canadian tour to promote "the centre of the universe" by waving a banner that reads "Toronto Appreciation Day." Not long after, Nerenberg moved from Toronto with his significant other and child to take up residence in the
Eastern Townships burgh of West Bolton, "where he does much hiking and laughing when not lecturing or making movies elsewhere." Using stare-downs and laughing fits, 12 competitors would compete to see who was the champion. The laughers would be judged for their contagiousness effect on the audience. After that event, laughing championships would be organized worldwide. Nerenberg frequently tours and speaks as a Laughologist, an expert on laughter. After traveling to India and studying the benefits of
Laughter Yoga with Dr. Madan Kataria, Nerenberg invented Laughtercize, a system of joy-inducing exercise that works off natural human contagious laughter. This technique has been used in a number of Canadian alcohol and drug rehab centres. He also invented the Laughter Party, which creates the same atmosphere as a wild party, without the need of drugs and alcohol.
You Are What You Act (2018) points out how film actors often become their roles and suggests these principles apply to ordinary people in terms of actualizing confidence, heroism, health and love. It won the Jury Prize at the Illuminate Film Festival in
Sedona, Arizona, in June 2018. In 2025, Nerenberg directed Coming Soon: The Hypnotic Orgasm, a documentary exploring how individuals in a specific hypnotic trance can experience near-instant orgasms. The film inspired the “Prague Experiment,” a groundbreaking study conducted by the Czech National Institute of Mental Health, which set out to determine whether hypnotic orgasms are physiologically comparable to real ones. In the film, Nerenberg claims the phenomenon can be explained by the relationship between dreaming and hypnotic trance. In 2025 Nerenberg also co-produced The Laughter Code, a documentary billed as the "first formal demonstration of Hypnotic Laughter" performed at Hypnothoughtslive, an annual hypnosis conference in Las Vegas. The film features people hypnotized to laugh boisterously as well as being able to cry dramatically and then "laugh off their tears". Nerenberg claims the process may help with the human tendency to hold onto dark moods. ==Live performance:
Hypnosis==