I'm a filmmaker and editor who crafts stories across narrative and documentary.
From 2016 to 2020, I worked with Fire Escape Films on narrative shorts and with the STAGE Lab on the docu-series Curiosity: the Making of a Scientist, which screened at SeriesFest 2022. Where documentary meets fiction, my film Kinoptia explores creative editing to shape the way we listen. Currently, as part of the MFA in Screenwriting & Directing at Edinburgh Napier University, I am in pre-production for a short psychological drama, "Chameleon," and am developing a feature film set in the same near-future world.
While studying Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago, I directed the narrative shorts Sky Blue and Say It (2018/Asians on Film Festival in L.A., Alternative FF in Toronto, special mention at the London Worldwide Comedy Short FF.) Working on The Ascent as Director of Photography, I was a semi-finalist in the 2019 New York Cinematography Awards. With Fire Escape, I co-directed the drama Son of Charlie and the short comedy Inconvenience (2018/Atlanta Comedy FF, SFVB Intl FF), nominated for Best Film at the Houston Comedy Film Festival.
Last summer, documentary filmmaking brought me to Sarajevo, where I interned with the Post-Conflict Research Center. While there, I filmed in cities across Bosnia and Herzegovina, interviewing young people about their understanding of the 1990s conflict and its aftermath. In tandem I began making Kinoptia, (2020) a short docu-fiction piece filmed in Chicago, Granada, and Sarajevo, which creates fictional scenes out of disparate documentary footage.
Partnering again with the STAGE Lab, through opportunity provided by a Jeff Metcalf grant, I directed and edited the documentary short Downstream. The film follows a corn-belt farmer's quest to keep excess nutrients out of water and in the soil, as heavy rains bring runoff from his fields to lakes downstream, and from neighboring fields to his own.
Across documentary and fiction editing, I am always excited to play with footage – with the rigor it requires – to craft a story's best cut. Through film, I strive to tell stories that change how we live by changing how we see. A changed world requires new action, and new action requires new ways of perceiving others, ourselves and the world we live in – and that's what film can do.
Let's make film that breaks film.