Jake Mahaffy‘s self-produced, micro-budget shorts and features were made single-handedly, featuring untrained actors in rural settings. His work has played multiple times at Sundance, Venice and SXSW. He founded two new filmmaking programs at two universities as an Associate Professor of Film and Art in the United States and currently coordinates the Screen Production program at Auckland University in New Zealand. His latest feature, Free in Deed (based on the actual events of a man who tried to perform a miracle), won the Orizzonti Best Film prize at the 2015 Venice Film Festival and was nominated for four Independent Spirit Awards in 2017. It is now playing theaters on limited release from Gravitas Ventures.
