EXCLUSIVE: Throughout their inaugural Gotham TV Awards ceremony in New York Metropolis, The Gotham Movie & Media Institute, the group behind the annual film-centric Gotham Awards, named 10 Sequence Creators to Watch, as a method of recognizing rising sequence writers and creators with revolutionary imaginative and prescient and daring, risk-taking new sequence in growth.
These highlighted included Stephanie Adams-Santos, Abbesi Akhamie, Mithra B. Alavi, Aisha Amin, Elaine Hsieh Chou, Aizzah Fatima, Bat-Sheva Guez, Dallas Rico, Thea Rodgers and Craig T. Williams.
As honorees of The Gotham, the creators could have the chance to attend The Gotham Week Mission Market, happening September 30 by means of October 4 in New York Metropolis, the place they are going to have entry to the movie and media trade in addition to alternatives for illustration. Alternatives have been made attainable because of The Gotham’s Increasing Communities companions, together with Black Movie Area, Brown Ladies Doc Mafia, Movie Store, Islamic Scholarship Fund, mamafilm, NALIP, Sundance Institute, and Girls in Movie.
Honoring excellent TV sequence and performances and celebrating trade icons, tonight’s Gotham TV Awards handed out honors in eight classes: Breakthrough Comedy Sequence, Breakthrough Drama Sequence, Breakthrough Restricted Sequence, Breakthrough Nonfiction Sequence, Excellent Efficiency in a Comedy Sequence, Excellent Efficiency in a Drama Sequence, Excellent Efficiency in a Restricted Sequence and an Viewers Award.
For extra details about The Gotham’s Creators To Watch, learn on.
Stephanie Adams-Santos
Stephanie Adams-Santos is a Guatemalan-American artist author whose work spans poetry, prose, screenwriting, and illustration. Usually grappling with themes of strangeness and belonging, their work displays a fascination with the bizarre, numinous and primal forces that form inside life. They’re the writer of a number of full-length poetry collections and chapbooks, together with DREAM OF XIBALBA (chosen by Jericho Brown as winner of the 2021 Orison Poetry Prize; finalist for a 2024 Oregon Ebook Award and Lambda Literary Award) and SWARM QUEEN’S CROWN (finalist for a 2016 Lambda Literary Award). Stephanie served as Employees Author and Story Editor on the tv anthology horror sequence TWO SENTENCE HORROR STORIES (Netflix), and was winner of a 2022 Gold Telly Award in TV Writing. They’ve acquired grants and fellowships from Sundance, Movie Unbiased, Vermont Studio Heart, Regional Arts and Tradition Council, and Oregon Arts Fee. Along with their literary work, Stephanie is creating an authentic tarot deck that blends poetry, animism, and ancestral magic.
Abbesi Akhamie
Born in Heidelberg, Germany, Abbesi Akhamie is a Nigerian-American filmmaker and educator working between Lagos and Washington DC. She acquired her MFA in Movie from New York College and holds a BA in Communications from George Mason College. Her work focuses on Africa and diaspora experiences in addition to the politics of tradition and identification. Her debut quick movie, Nonetheless Water Runs Deep (2017), premiered on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition and gained Greatest Scholar Quick Movie at Aspen ShortsFest. Her quick movie, The Couple Subsequent Door (2020), premiered at Aspen ShortsFest, gained the Viewers Selection Award on the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Movie Competition, and is streaming on the Criterion Assortment. Presently, she is creating her debut function movie, “In My Father’s Home,” in addition to a proof-of-concept quick movie entitled “The Unbelievable Sensational Fiancée of Sèyí Àjàyí.” Abbesi was additionally chosen to take part within the Black Rock Artist Residency based mostly in Dakar, Senegal, based by Obama presidential portraitist, Kehinde Wiley. As an artist, Abbesi has been lately supported by the Black Boy Black Woman Writes, Chanel Author’s Community, Princess Grace Basis and SFFILM Rainin Grant. When she isn’t diligently creating her tasks, Abbesi teaches movie producing to aspiring filmmakers.
Mithra B. Alavi
Named after the Zoroastrian “God of Gentle,” MITHRA B. ALAVI is an Iranian-American Muslim comedy author, and graduate of the MFA Movie program at Florida State College. Initially, from Tennessee, Mithra spent each Summer season rising up in Iran and credit her combined cultural background because the supply of inspiration for her writing and directing. In January 2022 she participated within the Disney Normal Leisure Writing Program and was employed as a employees author for Season 2 of Freeform’s SINGLE DRUNK FEMALE the place she co-wrote episode 206 “Protecting it Skilled.” She was additionally chosen for the Islamic Scholarship Fund’s inaugural Writers’ Lab, created with the assist of Extracurricular and The Black Record.
Mithra has written and directed quick movies together with “Birds Fly House,” which has performed at a number of festivals together with the Academy qualifying LA Shorts Worldwide Movie Competition. It was additionally named Greatest Narrative Quick on the Indie Spirit Movie Competition and Greatest Drama Quick at Hollywood Reel Unbiased Movie Competition. The script was chosen because the Runner-Up for Screencraft’s Quick Movie Competitors, Finalist for the Girls in Movie Manufacturing Program, and Finalist for Hollyshorts. Her earlier quick movie, “Three’s a Crowd,” was a Scholar Emmy Award winner. Her writing has acquired accolades from a variety of competitions together with Prime 10 in Screencraft’s Motion Journey Screenplay Competitors and Prime 10 in Screencraft’s Fellowship Competitors.
Aisha Amin
Aisha Amin is a NYC-based author and director of Pakistani and Kenyan descent. Her follow spans throughout narrative, experimental and documentary kinds. Her award profitable quick movies have screened at festivals all over the world. Aisha is focused on telling tales from the views of younger ladies who’re the heroes of their very own journeys. In 2024, she was chosen to take part within the BlackList and Girls in Movie’s Episodic Lab. In 2023, she was chosen as a Director in Coloration Inventive’s inaugural For Your Individuals Program. She is a 2023 Cine Qua Non Screenwriting Fellow. She is a 2022 recipient of the NYFA’s Girls’s Fund and Tomorrow Land Grant. She was a recipient of the 2019-2020 Sally Burns Shenkman Girl Filmmaker Fellowship on the Jacob Burns Movie Heart the place she directed two quick documentaries. She can be a recipient of The Shed’s Open Name Fellowship. She’s had three movies premiere as Vimeo Employees Picks and her quick movie Simone has gained awards on the competition circuit. Aisha accomplished her MFA in Screenwriting at Columbia in 2024. She is at present engaged on a function movie in growth that might be shot in rural Kansas.
Elaine Hsieh Chou
Elaine Hsieh Chou is a Taiwanese American writer and screenwriter from California. Described as “the funniest and most poignant novel of the 12 months” by Vogue, her debut novel DISORIENTATION was a New York Instances Editors’ Selection Ebook, an NPR Greatest Ebook of 2022 and an NYPL Younger Lions Finalist. The novel was optioned by Apple TV+ for growth as a function, with Elaine adapting.
Elaine’s Pushcart Award-winning quick fiction seems in Guernica, Black Warrior Assessment, Tin Home On-line, Ploughshares and The Atlantic. Her multi-genre quick story assortment, WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM, is forthcoming in 2025.
Elaine’s authentic pilot GET HOME SAFE was chosen for the 2023 Sundance Episodic Lab. Following a three-way bidding conflict, she is at present in growth with Legendary Leisure on her half-hour animated comedy sequence, BANANA TREE GHOST. She is in pre-production on her first quick movie, a proof-of-concept for her darkish comedy function, MY BEST FRIEND’S DAD.
Aizzah Fatima
Aizzah Fatima is an award-winning filmmaker, actor, and comic. Her function Americanish which she co-wrote, produced, and starred in has acquired 25 competition awards, and was distributed by Sony Worldwide in 2023. She excursions her critically acclaimed one lady play Soiled Paki Lingerie internationally and within the US together with acting at The Edinburgh Fringe and New York Comedy Competition. Her TV pilot Muslim Ladies DTF: Talk about Their Religion phrase premiered at SeriesFest, is the winner of the Roddenberry Basis Impression Award in addition to Sure, And…Laughter Lab, and was a part of Gotham Week 2022. It’s at present streaming on Fuse+. She is a 2022 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction from The New York Basis for the Arts. She is a 2021 Orchard Mission Episodic Lab fellow together with her pilot A.S.S. Crawler, and acquired her MFA in Writing for Movie & Tv from Emerson School.
Bat-Sheva Guez
Bat-Sheva Guez is an award-winning author and director who weaves dance and magic into visually compelling, character-driven tales. Guez has written and directed over 20 quick movies and screened in festivals worldwide together with the Hamptons Worldwide Movie Fest, the Rhode Island Int’l Movie Fest, the Newport Seaside Movie Fest and extra.
She was a finalist for the Screencraft Screenwriting Fellowship, the recipient of the JT3 Artist Award for Screenwriting & Directing and a Quarterfinalist for the Screencraft Pilot Competitors. She was a participant within the New York Stage & Movie Screenwriting Lab and has been awarded screenwriting residencies by the Lighthouse Movie Competition and a full scholarship to the Nostros Screenwriting Retreat in Tuscany.
She directed and co-wrote the pilot episode of READING RAINBOW LIVE, bringing again the beloved television present to a brand new technology of viewers. She has additionally directed a phase for SESAME STREET.
Her award-winning movie, IN THIS LIFE, was broadcast on ALL ARTS and PBS and has acquired press and accolades from NY Instances, LA Assessment of Books, Forbes, and others. Her movie BEHIND THE WALL additionally gained eight awards throughout a profitable competition tour together with the Panavision Grant for BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY on the Oscar-qualifying Rhode Island Int’l Movie Fest. Dance Journal known as it: “The Style-Defying Dance movie you didn’t know you wanted in your life.”
She is a co-producer on the function documentary, BEING BEBE, which premiered on the Tribeca Movie Competition and has acquired world distribution from OutTV, Fuse, and Peacock amongst others.
Guez was additionally listed as one among 9 Screendance Artists You Ought to Know About by Dance Journal.
Dallas Rico
Dallas Rico, initially from — you guessed it — Dallas, TX, graduated from U.T. Austin with a level in Movie & Tv, and spent a number of years as a highschool Spanish instructor in Los Angeles and New York Metropolis whereas honing his voice as a author. His work nimbly strikes between comedy and drama, and thru it he seeks to rejoice Black, queer, and blerd tradition. Most lately, Dallas bought his pilot LESSONS to NBC and, by means of the Disney Writing Program, was staffed as a author on Hulu’s REASONABLE DOUBT, the place he co-wrote and produced the second season finale. As a interest, he enjoys performing stand-up, so everybody can giggle at his courting mishaps.
Thea Rodgers
Thea Rodgers is a biracial American-Salvadoran author and actress. Coronary heart and humor lead her genre-bending narratives exploring the intricate relationships of the households we’re given and the households we create–impressed by her personal mother and father. Her father was raised by a radical Episcopal priest within the political chaos of 1970’s San Francisco, and her mom was raised Catholic between the identical metropolis and small-town El Salvador, however each broke away from their households’ strict expectations to turn into actors themselves. Thea’s work is guided by the creative curiosity, sky-high expectations, and robust ethical compass her mother and father handed all the way down to her–exploring how you can forge our distinctive paths in life whereas honoring our deepest values, no matter institutional teachings. Thea wrote on the Emmy-winning interactive Twitch sequence, Synthetic: Factions, and was lately chosen into the Girls In Movie x The Black Record Episodic Lab. Thea is an alum of Mentorship Issues, a prestigious program the place she was mentored by showrunner KC Perry. When not writing, Thea works for the non-profit HowlRound, a world useful resource heart for theatre makers, and performs Shakespeare in English and Spanish.
Craig T. Williams
A local New Yorker, born in Harlem Hospital and raised within the Bronx, Craig is a author and producer at Crimson Wall Productions, a movie manufacturing firm he based over twenty years in the past along with his spouse and accomplice of twenty-two years, Rosalyn Coleman Williams. Collectively, they’ve created over 50 movie tasks, together with options, documentaries, and narrative quick movies.
His journey landed him his first employees writing job on the hit TV present “TERROR LAKE DRIVE” on ALLBLK, an AMC Streamer. Craig was a part of the distinguished Warner Brothers Discovery TV Author’s Program. His function movie “Black Boys Don’t Sew” was simply a part of the New York Stage and Movie Filmmaker’s Workshop and has Academy Award Winner Viola Davis and Julius Tennon connected as Govt Producers.
Craig has many scripts in numerous levels of growth together with the award profitable one-hour TV pilot “How Ya Like Me Now,” concerning the ’80s rap rivalry between Kool Moe Dee and LL Cool J., “Christmas In The Dreamhouse, a Film Musical,” and a one hour procedural “Ghetto Twins” about two ladies born to the identical father on the identical day, who meet as adults and kind an company that reconnects misplaced members of the family. Craig wrote and produced the function movie “Recreation Nite” that premiered at 2024 Pan African Movie Competition and is headed for distribution.
Craig is a mentor for Girls of Coloration Unite’s Mentorship Program, The Craft Institute, and for teen filmmakers at Reel Works Mentorship Program in Brooklyn. He’s the Govt Director of the newly launched Males of Coloration Unite (MOCU), a social motion and 501(c) (3) non-profit group that focuses on remedying the inequities that face Males of Coloration in at this time’s leisure and media industries.
