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Talkhouse

Matt Yoka directed and produced the documentary <a href="https://www.whirlybirdmovie.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Whirlybird</a>, about a husband-and-wife helicopter news duo who covered L.A.&#8217;s most historic events, which premiered at Sundance 2020 and is out now in theaters through Greenwich Entertainment. He began his career working on a wide range of TV with Vice Media (Vice Does America, Epicly Later&#8217;d, Huang&#8217;s World and the HBO special World in Disarray). During this time he also developed a distinct visual style directing music videos for record labels like Drag City and Sub Pop, collaborating most often with the artist Ty Segall. Whirlybird, his debut feature, draws inspiration from his childhood in Los Angeles and his research at USC&#8217;s Annenberg School of Journalism, where he received a Master’s Degree. He currently lives in L.A. and drives a 2006 Toyota Sienna.

Matt Yoka

Film

Revisited: The Day Kobe Bryant Died

Stacy Rukeyser is an award-winning creator, showrunner and executive producer whose new show is the Netflix hit Sex/Life, about a suburban mother who takes a fantasy-charged trip down memory lane. Previously, Stacy was the showrunner and executive producer of the critically acclaimed, award-winning drama UnREAL, about the inner workings of a reality TV show. Her other writing credits include the Golden Globe Award-winning and Emmy® Award-nominated series Without a Trace, as well as Crash, One Tree Hill, October Road, Standoff, Greek and The Lying Game. A cum laude graduate of Princeton University, she resides in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.

Stacy Rukeyser

Revisited: The Revolutionary Act of (Female) Desire

Australian writer, director and actor Joy Hopwood’s latest film, the romantic comedy Rhapsody of Love, is out now through Quiver Distribution. She wrote the screenplay for The Casting Game and made her feature debut as writer-director with The Script of Life. She is currently in post-production on her third directorial feature, the rom-com musical Get a Life, Alright.

Joy Hopwood

Changing the Narrative of How Asians are Represented on Screen

Daniela De Carlo’s latest feature, <a href="https://www.theblackoutmovie.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Blackout</a>, was released by Gravitas Ventures and is now available for streaming on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B08T728J94/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Amazon Prime</a>. Originally from Argentina, she worked her way up from P.A. to writer-director-producer, collaborating along the way with a myriad of industry heavyweights such as Alexander Payne, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, David E. Kelley, and Tony Scott. In 2010, she helmed the romcom Qualquer Gato Vira-Lata for Buena Vista International, which opened wide in Brazil to unprecedented box office success, and was one of six Hispanic directors on the 2014 feature drama Blue Lips. She was awarded the NBC/Universal Directing Fellowship and appointed to the USA Network show Royal Pains, and as a recipient of the inaugural NBC Female Forward program, recently helmed an episode of the primetime show Chicago Med. She is currently developing a biopic series about Xuxa, the most famous Brazilian pop star of all time. Daniela will exec produce, write and direct, in partnership with Xuxa and Gullane Filmes. She lives in Los Angeles. (Photo by Sari Thayer.)

Daniela De Carlo

Postcards From Hollywood: Blowing Up the Papaya with Tarantino

Virgil Williams is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter whose new feature, A Journal for Jordan, directed by Denzel Washington and starring Michael B. Jordan, comes out December 24 through Sony Pictures. His last big-screen adaptation, Netflix’s Mudbound, netted him Oscar, Critics Choice, Writers Guild, NAACP Image and USC Scripter Award nominations alongside co-writer and director Dee Rees for their work adapting Hillary Jordan’s novel. He also executive-produced the film, which starred Carey Mulligan, Mary J. Blige, Rob Morgan, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, and Garrett Hedlund. A trailblazing Afro-Latinx voice in Hollywood for nearly two decades, Virgil is a veteran television writer and producer, whose extensive credits include the groundbreaking, Emmy-winning dramas ER and 24, as well as Fox’s The Chicago Code.

Virgil Williams

A Light in the Darkness

New York-based Jessica Kingdon is a Chinese-American director-producer whose debut feature, <a href="https://ascensiondocumentary.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ascension</a>, a striking observational portrait of the “New China” which is nominated for six Critics Choice Documentary Awards and the Gotham Award for Best Documentary, is now streaming on Paramount+. She was named one of “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker magazine and selected for the 2020 DOC NYC “40 Under 40” list. Her shorts include the award-winning Commodity City (2017), It&#8217;s Coming! (2020), and Routine Island (2019), and her producer credits include Tania Cypriano’s Born to Be (2019), Ian Bell’s 808: How We Respond (2019), Nathan Truesdell’s The Water Slide (2018), and Johnny Ma’s Old Stone (2016). She is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective. (Photo by Tomo Saito.)

Jessica Kingdon

Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie, Or How I Found My Family in China

Mattson Tomlin was born in Romania during its revolution and was quickly adopted into the U.S. After receiving his master&#8217;s in directing from the American Film Institute, he began a career in screenwriting and has appeared on the annual Black List six times. Some of his other projects include Project Power (Netflix, directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman), Fear Agent (Sony Television, directed by David Sandberg) and Little Fish (directed by Chad Hartigan), and The Batman (Warner Bros/DC Comics, co-written with director Matt Reeves). His first film as director, Mother/Android, starring Chlo&euml; Grace Moretz, Algee Smith and Ra&uacute;l Castillo, is out December 17 on Hulu. (Photo by Henry Joost.)

Mattson Tomlin

Best of 2021: Mattson Tomlin on The Green Knight

Actress, writer and director Sarah Wayne Callies became known to audiences for her portrayal of Sara Tancredi in Prison Break and followed that up with the even bigger hit, The Walking Dead. She then starred opposite Josh Holloway in the series Colony and most recently was seen in the NBC series Council of Dads. Sarah has taken the leap into directing with an episode of the limited series Unspeakable as well as an episode of the final season of Colony. As a writer, Sarah has several screenplays in development with various motion picture entities. As a film actress, Sarah has appeared in Giancarlo Esposito’s This is Your Death opposite Josh Duhamel and Famke Janssen, Pay the Ghost with Nicolas Cage, and Black November opposite Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger. Continuing her passion for storytelling, Sarah is a producer and the voice of the new science-fiction post-apocalyptic podcast <a href="https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-aftershock-83996090/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Aftershock</a>. (Photo by Nicolas Gerardin.)

Sarah Wayne Callies

I Love Difficult Women

Bryan Wizemann is an independent writer, producer, director and editor of film based in Brooklyn, NY. <a href="http://www.factorytwentyfive.com/you-mean-everything-to-me/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">You Mean Everything to Me</a>, his fourth feature film, stars Morgan Saylor, Ben Rosenfield and Lindsay Burge and is out December 17 through Factory 25. He previously wrote and directed About Sunny, starring Lauren Ambrose, Dylan Baker, and Penelope Ann Miller, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead, and was distributed by Oscilloscope. His feature Losing Ground was adapted from his critically acclaimed New York stage play and features the original cast. It premiered at Cinequest with distribution by FilmBuff. His first film, the experimental 16mm feature Sense, starring Maria Dizzia, was programmed at the Johnson Museum of Art and the Angelika Film Centre. (Image by Jeff Vespa, used with permission.)

Bryan Wizemann

The Long Shadow of Las Vegas

Molly C. Quinn is an actress and producer living in Los Angeles. Molly stars in the new horror/drama <a href="http://www.magnetreleasing.com/agnes/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Agnes</a>, which premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, and is out now through Magnet Releasing. Aside from starring in the film, Molly also executive produced the film through her production company QWGMIRE, which she formed in 2019 with Elan Gale and Matthew Welty. Molly may be best known for starring as Alexis Castle from 2009 to 2016 on the award-winning series Castle, opposite Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic, and she recently appeared in Doctor Sleep, opposite Ewan McGregor and Rebecca Ferguson. Molly currently lives in the LA area, with her fiancé and their two dogs; Piper and Pikachu. (Photo by the Riker Brothers.)

Molly C. Quinn

Best of 2021: Molly C. Quinn on The White Lotus

Maya Cozier’s debut feature, <a href="http://www.samuelgoldwynfilms.com/she-paradise/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">She Paradise</a>, is out now through Samuel Goldwyn Films. Cozier was raised by artist parents — Irenée Shaw and Christopher Cozier — in the Caribbean twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago. She gained years of experience working as a dancer/choreographer for music videos and television shows (on her own and as part of a champion hip-hop crew that represented the island at the World Hip-Hop Dance Championships). At age 18, Maya had her first international gig when Nicki Minaj flew to Trinidad with Hype Williams to direct the “Pound the Alarm” music video. It was on set as a background model that she became fascinated with the process of filmmaking. After being awarded a national academic scholarship, she enrolled at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, to pursue a degree in film. Her first short film was about a childhood friend, Shan, a limbo dancer, touring the United States with a Circus. Her thesis film, Short Drop, a story in which a recently widowed retiree’s car is mistaken for an illegal taxi bringing together unlikely individuals in Port of Spain, won the NYWIFT student award and has shown at over 20 film festivals worldwide winning best Caribbean short film at Curacao film festival and best short film at Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival.

Maya Cozier

How Entering a Beauty Pageant Helped Me Make My Debut Feature

Joel Cohen, John Frink and Rob LaZebnik are the writers and producers of the animated comedy <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81159137" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Extinct</a>, featuring the voices of Adam DeVine, Rachel Bloom, Zazie Beetz, Ken Jeong, Reggie Watts and Catherine O&#8217;Hara, which is currently streaming on Netflix. Together they have their own production company, Tolerable Entertainment. The trio has worked together as writer-producers on The Simpson for the past 20 years, winning a number of Emmys in the process. They live in Los Angeles.