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Talkhouse

Melissa Lesh, with Trevor Frost, directed the documentary <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Wildcat-Melissa-Lesh/dp/B0B6NWQ7JJ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wildcat</a> – about a British soldier with PTSD and an American scientist who together raise an ocelot to release back into the wild – which is now available to stream on Amazon Prime. She founded the production company Emerging Earth Films as a way to bridge the gap between the arts and sciences, focusing on natural history and conservation stories. Her first award-winning documentary, James River Sturgeon, was a collaboration with scientists to uncover the uncharted migration of the endangered Atlantic sturgeon. Lesh is the co-director and editor of Person of the Forest and has worked for such clients as Nat Geo Wild, National Geographic magazine and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Lesh was born in Mumbai, grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, and lives in Richmond, Virginia. (Photo by Berkley Nestler.)

Melissa Lesh

Film

To the Rainforest’s Credit

Deborah Goodwin is a writer-director-producer whose work in film and television began as a development executive for Sanford-Pillsbury Productions (Desperately Seeking Susan, River’s Edge, How to Make an American Quilt). Deborah’s Urbanworld Film Festival Best Screenplay win for her darkly provocative family drama Cherrys launched her filmmaking path. She has written for Emmy-winning and Independent Spirit Award-nominated producers, and for shows like the cult favorite horror series Tales from the Cryptkeeper. She is a Film Independent and IFP lab fellow and an ABC and NBC diversity showcase director, best known for her horror fable Vampires in Venice and her action/drama The Pastor, released by Fathom Events and AMC. Her Icelandic noir Snaeland, which she co-wrote and produced, premiered at the Vail Film Festival and screens in the Brooklyn Film Festival 2020. Deborah is a Sundance Collab advisor and screenwriting professor at Brooklyn College, and a newly minted co-creator and writer of the noir-crime-thriller series Hot Freeze, with Canadian producer Nomadic Pictures (Hell on Wheels, Van Helsing, Fargo).

Deborah Goodwin

How Severance Perfectly Parallels the Absurd Speakership Debacle

Sam Jaeger is an actor, writer and director, best known for playing Mark Tuello in Hulu&#8217;s The Handmaid&#8217;s Tale and Joel Graham on NBC&#8217;s Parenthood. Among Sam&#8217;s numerous film and television credits as an actor are American Sniper, Inherent Vice, Lucky Number Slevin, Catch and Release, Eli Stone and Girl&#8217;s Club. He made his feature debut as writer-director in 2011 with the acclaimed indie romantic comedy Take Me Home, in which he starred opposite his wife, Amber Jaeger.

Sam Jaeger

How Story is Destroying Us (and How to Write Back)

Filmmakers

The 2022 Talkies: Talkhouse Film Contributors Share Their Top 10 Movies of the Year

The 2022 Talkies: Talkhouse Film Contributors’ Top Films of the Year

Andrew C. Fisher grew up on the gulf coast of Texas. He studied Philosophy in college, and he has spent most of his adult years trying to figure out how to tell a good story through moving pictures and sound. You can find Thanatos and other work at <a href="http://www.andrewcfisher.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">andrewcfisher.com</a>.
Right after Cacia Zoo popped out of her mom&#8217;s womb, she was dancing! She always knew she wanted to be a performer and artist. She visited New York when she turned 16 and took an acting class throughout the summer. After that summer her life was never the same. She went back to Taiwan and came back to New York the first chance she got. Her creativity is versatile and spread through many different mediums. Whether she&#8217;s in front of the camera or behind it, with herself or collaborating with others, she has immense passion for performance and art. If she&#8217;s not moving or creating, she&#8217;s on her way to.

Andrew C. Fisher and Cacia Zoo

Revisited: Can We Talk About BDSM?

Sarah Elizabeth Mintz is a writer/director working in New York and Los Angeles. She received her BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she completed her thesis film Transit, starring Dakota Johnson. After graduating she assisted filmmakers Alejandro Iñárritu on The Revenant, Joachim Trier on Louder Than Bombs, and Cary Fukunaga on True Detective. Sarah was a Sundance Fellow in the 2017 Writer’s Intensive with her feature Good Girl Jane. She directed a proof-of-concept short film of the same name, which garnered interest and financing for the feature. Good Girl Jane recently premiered in U.S. Narrative Competition at Tribeca Film Festival 2022 and won the Founders Award for Best U.S. Narrative Feature as well as Best Performance in a Narrative Feature for Rain Spencer. The film is written by Mintz and is inspired by events in her own life. Sarah is interested in stories that explore the complexities of human nature and the beauty that lies in gray areas that are often overlooked.

Sarah Elizabeth Mintz

Revisited: I Am a Coming-of-Age Drama

Julia Cho is a playwright and screenwriter. Her latest film, Pixar’s <a href="https://movies.disney.com/turning-red" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Turning Red</a>, is out now in theaters. Her plays include The Language Archive, The Piano Teacher, Durango, The Winchester House, BFE, The Architecture of Loss and 99 Histories and Cho has also cultivated a career as a writer and producer of a broad range of television shows from cult sci-fi (Fringe) to character-driven drama (Big Love, Halt and Catch Fire). She has won prizes including the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Barrie Stavis Award, the Claire Tow Award for Emerging Artists, and the L. Arnold Weissberger Award. Her play Durango was also named one of the Top 10 Plays of 2006 by Entertainment Weekly and one of the Best of 2007 by the The Los Angeles Times. She is an alumna of the Juilliard School and NYU’s Graduate Dramatic Writing Program.
 (Photo by Deborah Coleman / Pixar.)

Julia Cho

Revisited: On Sadness

Michael Tennant was born and raised in San Diego, California, and attended the University of Arizona (the Harvard of Arizona) where he graduated with a BFA in both Acting and Directing. After graduation, spent the next four years hustling as an actor in New York City, where he did his requisite episodes of Law and Order, wore a peacoat, and then decided he missed having a kitchen and returned to the West Coast. Shortly after arriving in Los Angeles, he booked leads in multiple pilots as well as guest starring roles for ABC, NBC, Nickelodeon, and The CW before also working as an actor/producer/writer on productions for STX, IFC Films, Amazon, Neon, and Netflix. <a href="https://www.ifcfilms.com/films/pretty-problems" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pretty Problems</a>, which he wrote, starred in and produced, has won a number of awards, including the Audience Award at SXSW, and is out now in select theaters and on VOD through IFC Films. He currently resides with his dog Leroy in Los Angeles. They have a very nice kitchen.

Michael Tennant

Revisited: I Made a Movie to Save My Marriage and Then I Got Divorced

Melissa Navia is currently starring in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, out now on Paramount+, which follows Captain Pike, Science Officer Spock and Number One in the years before Captain Kirk boarded the U.S.S. Enterprise, as they explore new worlds around the galaxy. Melissa plays Lt. Erica Ortegas. the Enterprise’s helmsman. Melissa’s recent television credits include a recurring role on AMC’s Dietland and guest roles on Showtime’s Billions and Homeland. In March 2020, she made her Off-Broadway debut in the praised Bundle of Sticks at INTAR Theatre. (Photo by Francis Hills.)

Melissa Navia

Revisited: An Actor, a Helmsman, and My Brian: Boldly Going Where No Widow Has Gone Before

Award-winning actress and producer Naomi Ackie plays R&amp;B pop legend Whitney Houston in the new biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody, which is out in theaters now. Most recently, she was seen starring in season 3 of Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang’s Master of None on which she also serves as an executive producer. She will soon be seen in Oscar winner Bong Joon Ho’s next film, based on the novel Mickey 7, alongside Robert Pattinson, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo, and in Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut, Pussy Island, in which Naomi stars opposite Channing Tatum. Naomi’s breakthrough role was Anna in Lady Macbeth. She also starred in the second season of Netflix’s End Of The F***ing World, which won her a BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actress, and played Jannah in J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode IX, The Rise of Skywalker, alongside Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver and John Boyega. (Photo by Marcus Olsson / Lucasfilm Ltd.)

Naomi Ackie

Best of 2022: Naomi Ackie on Severance

Eugene Mirman is probably best known as the voice of Eugene Belcher on the animated comedy Bob’s Burgers, but he’s also a veteran of the alt-comedy world with many albums and countless live performances under his belt. He’s the subject of It Started As A Joke, a documentary about the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival, and his song with Lucy Wainwright Roche, “How Do You Lie To Your Child About Santa,” is now available to stream and as <a href="https://prettygoodfriends.com/merch/vinyl-christmas-card-how-do-you-lie-to-your-child-about-santa" target="_blank" rel="noopener">limited-edition vinyl</a> via his label, PGF Records.