Film Independent Talent Guide

Learn more about our fellows through Film Independent's online fellow profiles. Through the fellow profiles, you can find up-and-coming directors, writers, producers, and cinematographers.

Aaliyah Williams

Noted as one of ten exciting new voices in Black cinema by indieWIre, Aaliyah Williams’ first short film, The Young and Evil, was an official selection at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. She secured domestic and international distribution for the short, with the first release in November on Pecadillo Picture’s Boys on Film 3: American Boy.
Abigail Severance

Writer-director Abigail Severance's first film Pump won five Best Short awards. Her work has screened at many festivals, including three times at the Los Angeles Film Festival and twice at Sundance. She has been included in several distinguished museum exhibits, including San Francisco's Bay Area Now at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Roy & Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in Los Angeles. Severance holds an MFA in Directing from UCLA, and currently teaches in the Film Directing Program at CalArts.
Adam Martinez

Adam Martinez has been the Director of Finance and Operations at Fox Searchlight Pictures for the past ten years. In that time he has dealt with all aspects of film marketing and distribution, working on such films as Napoleon Dynamite, Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, Under the Same Moon (La Misma Luna), and Slumdog Millionaire. He sits on the Newscorp Hispanic Council, and is an active member of National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP), as well as a 2008 NALIP Writer’s Lab Fellow.
Afia Nathaniel

Afia Nathaniel is the Founder of Zambeel Films in Pakistan, a production company for independent feature films. She has won several awards for her project Neither the Veil nor the Four Walls, including a development grant from National Geographic, and Ezra Litwak Distinction in Screenwriting and IFP Market Emerging Narrative awards.
Aldo Velasco

Aldo Velasco is a filmmaker and playwright born in Guadalajara, Mexico. He received his MFA in Film Production from the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television.
Alexandra Brodsky

Alexandra's short films Didactic Encounter, Rabbi Rick and the Hamburger Choo Choo, and Miss Alissa have screened at venues including New Directors/New Films, Los Angeles Film Festival, Montreal World Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, Hamptons International Film Festival, Nantucket Film Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival (Didactic Encounter: winner, best short film) and Saint Mark's Church in New York, among others. Her feature film Bittersweet Place premiered at the Tribeca Film festival, garnering a special Jury Commendation.
Alexandra Kondracke

Alex Martinez Kondracke attended Dartmouth College and NYU's Graduate Film School. At NYU she studied both directing and cinematography. Her first short narrative film Ice Fishing won a jury prize award at Sundance 2000, while her cinematography reel landed her a job shooting for Academy Award-nominated producer Jonathan Stack (The Farm). Upon graduating from NYU, Kondracke began shooting and directing documentaries for Discovery, TLC, BBC, VH1, and National Geographic. In 2004/2005 Kondracke was an ABC/Disney directing fellow.
Alisa Khosrovschahi

Alisa Khosrovschahi was born in Phuket, Thailand. After graduating from Brent International School in the Philippines, Khosrovaschahi moved to the United States to live with her family and attend Rutgers University. She was accepted into the Mason Gross School of the Arts where she concentrated in Cinema Theory and Film/Video Production. It was through her course of study at Mason Gross where she discovered her passion for editing. After receiving her BA in Visual Arts, she relocated to Los Angeles.
Alonso F. Mayo

Alonso F. Mayo grew up traveling back and forth between Peru and Kansas, spending 6 months at a time in each place and learning the meaning of contrast. He did his undergraduate studies in journalism and film at the University of Lima. After a few years of shooting institutionals for mining and gas companies in remote areas of Peru, he made a short film that brought him to Los Angeles to take part in the directing program at the American Film Institute.
Amie Williams

Amie Williams is an accomplished documentary filmmaker. She is the Executive Director of the non-profit film/video production company Bal Maiden Films/Global Girl Productions, based in Los Angeles. Her first screenplay, Jua Kali (Harsh Sun), was selected to be part of Film Independent's 2007 Director's Lab, and the Fast Track program at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival. Last fall the project was selected for IFP's No Borders Co-financing Market.