Directing Holiday Films

Emily Moss Wilson has written and directed 11 films across various networks such as Hallmark, Discovery+ and Lifetime, including CHRISTMAS IN TUNE starring Reba McEntire that was nominated for a Hollywood Critics Association Award for best TV Movie. Her most recent holiday movie, the rom-com RESCUING CHRISTMAS starring Rachael Leigh Cook and Sam Page, is now streaming on Hallmark+. Emily is currently traveling around to film festivals with the independent drama, INHERITANCE, which will be released in 2025. Originally from Louisiana, Emily moved to LA with a film degree from TCU. After working for 20th Century Fox and ABC in development and production, she worked alongside legendary writer/director Garry Marshall as his on-set script coordinator. Garry became one of Emily’s first directing mentors. She also served as Creative Executive of the ATX Television Festival where she was involved in programming and directing content with some of the biggest names in TV. Her directorial debut, the Twilight Zone-inspired short DRINK, premiered at the Dances With Films Festival to rave reviews and has over five million views online. Emily has shadowed numerous veteran TV directors like Norman Buckley and Allison Liddi-Brown and is an alum of the WeForShe DirectHer Program and Ryan Murphy’s HALF Foundation Directing Program. Emily is currently producing a scripted TV series for a major streamer and has several other film and TV projects in development.

Rhonda Freeman-Baraka is an NAACP-nominated writer/director/producer based in Atlanta, Georgia. She has written twenty-two produced television movies including PASTOR BROWN (Lifetime), BOBBI KRISTINA, FOR THE LOVE OF RUTH, COINS FOR CHRISTMAS and THE SECRET SHE KEPT (TV One), and all five installments of the popular Chandler Family Christmas series for UP TV. She also directed three of the Chandler films as well as DOWNSIZED for TV One and two episodes of UNCENSORED, also for TV One. Most recently, she directed Lifetime’s PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: ATLANTA, an all-black, updated version of the Jane Austen classic.

Award winning actor, director, and producer Terri J Vaughn gained early recognition for her for her hilarious depiction of Lovita Alizay Jenkins on The Steve Harvey Show. She has since starred in iconic roles across film and television, including Friday, Don’t Be A Menace.., Will Smith’s executive produced sitcom All of Us, Showtime’s Soul Food, Ava DuVernay’s Cherish The Day, and Paramount’s First Wives Club. Her appearances as Rose Cranberry on HBO’s Insecure led to the scripted, Webby Award-winning podcast, We Stay Looking, produced by Raedio and TenderfootTV. Vaughn has also been honored with three NAACP Image Awards, for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Vaughn has had an impressive career as a director, with a diverse range of independent and studio projects under her belt. Vaughn directed Unthinkably Good Things, filmed in Rome, Italy, which won Hallmark Network its first ever Gracie Award. She’s directed episodes of the highly acclaimed Paramount series Kingdom Business, as well as Disney’s long running multi-cam kids’ show Bunk’d. Vaughn made a significant contribution to BET’s TALES, directing their first ever comedic episode. She has also directed several Viacom movies, including the romantic comedy Angrily Ever After, the family classic ‘Twas The Chaos Before Christmas and the hilarious female buddy flick Christmas Belles. Vaughn made her directing debut in 2015 with the independent comedy #DigitalLivesMatter, a humorous take reminiscent of the popular, cult-classic movie Friday. Vaughn’s latest completed project is the hysterical and heartwarming So Fly Christmas, starring Tichina Arnold and Tami Roman as podcast hosts and best friends. Since 2006, Vaughn’s co-owned Nina Holiday
Entertainment has produced over 16 projects.

Angela Tucker iis an Emmy and Webby winning filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist based in New Orleans, LA. She has crafted a career full of deeply humanistic, bold, and varied social-issue based projects specializing in highlighting the nuanced interiority of Black women.  Her work has screened at Tribeca Film Festival, BlackStar Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New Orleans Film Festival, amongst others and has been broadcast on NBC, Showtime, PBS, Netflix and Lifetime. Recent work includes “A New Orleans Noel”, a Lifetime holiday film starring Patti LaBelle and “The Trees Remember”, a Webby winning branded series in collaboration with REI Co-Op Studios. She has completed her first solo exhibition at The Diboll Gallery and her most recent documentary, The Inquisitor, about political icon Barbara Jordan will broadcast on PBS in 2025. But she is proudest that her film spotlighting forced sterilizations in California prisons, prompted $7.5 million in reparations from the Governor. She is a Sundance Institute Women’s Fellow, a recipient of Firelight’s William Greaves Fund, an Amplifier Fellow with Film Independent and a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Founder of TuckerGurl Inc, a boutique production company, Angela received an MFA in Film from Columbia University. She also co-hosts a podcast, “For The Love of Tinsel” about Christmas movies with her childhood best friend.