Maya Kanehara, a Japanese native, holds a BA in Film from San Francisco State University and MFA from AFI. She received an artist fellowship that was supported by the Japanese Government Overseas Study Program and the Hewlett-Packard Scholarship Dreamgirls Award. Her AFI thesis film Half Kenneth won the Governor of Tokyo Award, the Best Short in Japan category at Short Short Film Festival, and the Best US Narrative Short at Rome International Film Festival 2009. She was recently chosen as one of two Japanese producers by a Japanese government agency to pitch feature projects at Toronto Film Festival. Kanehara began her career as a software engineer at Autodesk/Discreet, specializing in visual effects and 3D modeling software. She has produced seven short films and a low-budget feature film that is currently in post-production.