Elissa Down
Elissa’s debut feature film, "The Black Balloon", starring Rhys Wakefield, Luke Ford, Gemma Ward, Erik Thomson and Toni Collette, opened the Generation 14plus section of the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Crystal Bear for Best Feature Film. The film won six Australian Film Institute Awards (now AACTA’s) including Best Film, Best Director, Best Original screenplay. "The Black Balloon" received over thirty prizes including accolades from the Australian Director’s and Writer’s Guilds, Australian Film Critics Circle; Asia Pacific, Rotten Tomatoes and Inside Film Awards. Since then, Elissa has directed episodes of the multiple award winning Australian comedy series, "Offspring", adapted and directed the best selling Colleen Hoover novel "Confess" into a TV series for Awestruck (Awesomeness TV) that was a hit on go90. Elissa recently finished her second feature, "The Honor List", for Studio L (Lionsgate). The film stars Meghan Rienks, Sasha Pieterse, Karruche Tran and Arden Cho and was the opening night film at Bentonville Film Festival and released world wide on May 11th. Elissa is also writing and developing a number of projects that she’s set to direct; the Romeo and Juliet romantic comedy "Mr&Mrs Montague", youth TV series "Naked" and a bio-pic of the infamous Third Reich director, "Leni Riefenstahl".
