In the Writers’ Room

Cherien Dabis is a critically acclaimed Palestinian American narrative film and television writer-director. Her feature films Amreeka (2009) and May In The Summer (2013), in which she made her acting debut, both had their world premieres in competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Amreeka went on to win the coveted FIPRESCI International Critics Prize at Cannes as well as a dozen more international awards. It was nominated for a Best Picture Gotham Award, 3 Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Picture, and was named one of the Top Ten Independent Films of the Year by the National Board of Review. Dabis is currently in development on her third feature What The Eyes Don’t See, a 2020 Athena List winner and recipient of the 2018 Sundance Sloan Commissioning grant. The script is an adaptation of The New York Times notable book by the same name. Anonymous Content and The Population are producing. Dabis has worked extensively in television as a writing producer and director. Her credits include Showtime’s original groundbreaking series The L Word, USA Network’s The Sinner, ABC’s Quantico, Fox’s Empire, Starz’s Sweetbitter, YouTube Premium’s Impulse, and Netflix’s multiple Emmy award-winning Ozark. She’s a co-executive producer and director on two seasons of Hulu’s critically acclaimed, Golden Globe-winning Ramy. She also has several pilots of her own in development. Dabis is the recipient of dozens of grants and fellowships from Creative Capital, Guggenheim, USA Rockefeller, Tribeca Film Institute, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, National Geographic, and the New York State Council on the Arts. She is an alumnus of the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab, Film Independent Director’s Lab and Tribeca All Access. She’s been an advisor for the Sundance Institute’s Native Filmmaker’s Lab and Screenwriter’s Labs in both Turkey and Jordan and has returned several times to teach in the graduate film program at her alma mater Columbia University.

Nijla Mu’min‘s debut feature film, Jinn, starring Zoe Renee and Simone Missick (Netflix’s Luke Cage), premiered in narrative competition at the 2018 South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, where she won the Special Jury Recognition Award for Screenwriting. In 2018, she directed an episode of Ava DuVernay‘s critically-acclaimed television series Queen Sugar. In June 2018, she won the Best Screenplay award for Jinn at the American Black Film Festival (ABFF) and later won Best Feature at Blackstar Film Festival, among other honors. Jinn, a New York Times Critic’s pick, was released in November 2018 by Orion Classics, and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. She recently wrote for the upcoming Apple series, Swagger. In 2019, she received the Shadow & Act Rising Creator Award, the MPAC Media Award for Courage and Conscience, and was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She directed an episode of HBO’s Insecure season four in October 2019. She is currently in pre-production on her second feature film, Mosswood Park. She is a 2013 dual-degree graduate of CalArts MFA Film Directing and Writing Programs.

Sian Heder is a writer, director and showrunner, whose most recent work includes executive producing and showrunning Little America for Apple TV+ and directing Coda, an upcoming feature film for Vendome Pictures and Pathé. She wrote and produced for three seasons on the acclaimed Netflix series, Orange is the New Black, receiving multiple WGA nominations for her work. Her other television credits include Men of a Certain Age, which earned her a Peabody Award. She has directed episodes of Netflix’s Glow, Orange is the New Black, Hulu’s The Path, and Little America. Her first short film, Mother, was awarded the Cinefondation Jury Award at Cannes Film Festival. Her debut feature film, Tallulah, starring Elliot Page and Alison Janney, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and was released as a Netflix original.

Vera Miao is a writer/director. She is the creator, Executive Producer, writer, and director of the psychological horror anthology series, Two Sentence Horror Stories, on the CW Network and Netflix. Her apocalyptic road trip feature, Best Friends Forever (writer, producer), premiered at Slamdance (2013) and is available on Amazon/iTunes and DVD. Her feature script At First – described as a queer Before Sunrise for the Orange Is the New Black generation – was part of the 2014 Film Independent Screenwriting Lab and 2015 Sundance Institute/Women in Film Financing Intensive. She was a fellow of the inaugural year of the Tribeca Film Institute’s Through Her Lens: The Tribeca Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program (2015). She is currently a co-producer of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead, and has several feature projects in development.

Deb Shoval’s films have premiered at the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals. Her lifelong interests in organic farming and food justice deeply inform the thriller she is currently developing. Shoval‘s feature film AWOL, “a splendid and brooding meditation on the boundless possibilities of first love constricted by the trials of poverty” starring Lola Kirke and Breeda Wool, is currently available on Hulu, iTunes, Amazon, and GooglePlay in the US, and in 66 countries worldwide. Shoval has an MFA in Film from Columbia University and a BA is Sustainable Agriculture from Hampshire College. She is an alum of the Berlinale Talent Campus, Film Independent Directing and Producing Labs, IFP Emerging Narrative Lab, Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory, and MacDowell; and her projects have received support from The Jerome Foundation, Frameline Completion Fund, Women in Film Finishing Fund, Tribeca Film Institute, IFP Narrative Lab, Film Independent Fast Track, Adrienne Shelly Foundation, and US Works in Progress Paris. As a founding member of The Liberty Cabbage Theatre Revival, Shoval toured the US with several performances about agriculture and the environment in a bus powered by recycled vegetable oil, with grant support from The Sparkplug Foundation, The Fund for Wild Nature, and The Fund for New Technologies. Shoval has taught at universities including City College of New York, Brooklyn College, Hampshire College, and NYU.