DIRECTORS

Melissa Finell is an award-winning director based in Los Angeles. SENSITIVITY TRAINING, her first feature film, premiered at the LA Film Festival, where it was named a “Can’t Miss” film by the Hollywood Reporter. SENSITIVITY TRAINING won an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Production Grant and a Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award. The film went on to screen at numerous festivals worldwide including Woodstock, Frameline, and TIFF Inside Out. It was released by Random Media in partnership with The Orchard and is currently available on Prime and all major platforms. Mel’s shorts have screened for festival audiences around the world. “Disaster Preparedness” was a Semifinalist for the Student Academy Awards and has been broadcast on PBS. The film premiered at Palm Springs, where it was named an Audience Favorite and screened in the “Best of the Fest” program. The film also won “Best Short Film” at the Seattle Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and was selected for “Best of Fest” at Outfest. Mel has written feature screenplays for Lionsgate, MGM, and other studios . Originally from New York, she received her B.A. in Gender Studies at Smith College and studied sketch comedy writing at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. Mel is a graduate of UCLA’s MFA program in Film and Television Directing, a former Film Independent Project Involve Directing Fellow, a Ryan Murphy Television Half Initiative mentee, and she recently completed the Warner Brothers Discovery episodic directing workshop.