“We all want our f— you money,” ‘OITNB’ showrunner Jenji Kohan.
Six powerhouse women directors who are “flipping the script” in Hollywood big time!
Writers, are you developing a marketable screenwriting brand?
Christina Hendricks brings 1960s sensibility into the present day (Video).
Disney announces its 2014-2016 Directing Program participants.
Judy Greer loves to audition and never feels like she’s “made it.”
Call for entries: The New York Wild Film Festival.
Remembering Lauren Bacall’s and Robin Williams‘ legacies.
— KELLY GLOVER
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Meet the New NYWIFT Member: Sophia Baldassari
Let’s welcome screenwriter, script supervisor, and playwright Sophia Baldassari to NYWIFT! She was most recently an Associate Producer on the Radio Silence thriller LOSER, directed by Colleen McGuinness. Her plays and pilots have been developed/produced at Luna Stage, George Street Playhouse, the McCarter Theatre Center, Haddonfield Plays and Players, and Manhattan Repertory Theatre, and have received accolades from the O’Neill Center Young Playwrights, Theatremania Young Playwrights, Beardance International Playwriting Festival, the Neil LaBute New Theatre Festival, the Austin Film Festival, among others. She’s studied Writing at Sarah Lawrence and Egyptology at the University of Oxford, an experience she used to write a buddy comedy about the mummy of a Pharaoh’s 29th Favorite wife. She is a member of the Writers Guild of America East, The New York Script Supervisors Network, and IATSE Local 111. In our interview, we discussed uniting accessible and female driven stories with comedy and surrealism, the structural switches between playwriting and screenwriting, and the unexpected comedy of life in ancient Egypt. Let’s dive in!
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Kasey O’Brien
Welcome to NYWIFT, Kasey O’Brien! Kasey O’Brien (she/they) is a queer-identifying filmmaker based in Queens, working across both fictional narratives and documentaries. While she has dabbled in various positions in film production (including acting, writing, camera operation, and post-production), she is most at home directing and producing. Kasey was integral to the launch of NYU Tisch’s Master‘s in Virtual Production at the Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center, whose inaugural cohort graduated in May 2025. She serves on the board of directors of PANO Network and is a founding member of The Garret Theatre Company. MFA from The New School. In our interview, Kasey discussed her journey to working in independent film production.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Nira Burstein
Welcome to NYWIFT, Nira Burstein! Nira Burstein is an award-winning filmmaker based in New York City. She is one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film and DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40. Her documentary debut Charm Circle won the Audience Award at Sheffield DocFest, is a New York Times Critic’s Pick, and had its streaming premiere on the Criterion Channel. Nira is a Gotham Fellow, and her work has been supported by the Jerome Foundation and Jewish Story Partners. She has made several narrative short films, including Gangrenous (Nantucket Film Festival) and Off & Away (Brooklyn Film Festival). Her latest short film, Dear Shop Girl, premiered at Woodstock Film Festival. She is currently in post on the documentary short Handymen.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Ashley Bacon
Welcome to NYWIFT, Ashley Bacon! Ashley is an actor and producer in New York. She leads the 80s thriller Something of a Monster which was released in December on AppleTV, and her claim to fame is a recurring arc on Orange is the New Black. She was nominated for Best Actor at Cindependent for her work in The Flip Side (2023). Upcoming projects include leading the film A Matchmaker’s Christmas, a star-studded community fundraiser of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and raising her small child. She lives in Brooklyn with - in her words - "two cats, one daughter, and one husband." We welcome actor and producer Ashley Bacon to NYWIFT! In her New Member Spotlight, we discussed the famous RDJ scene that inspired Ashley to become an actor, the community garden motivating her next project, and her favorite film she’s worked on so far.
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