The Festival
StudioFest is a new kind of festival for the independent filmmakers of today. Our team is made up of industry professionals and investors excited to embark on this fun challenge with you.
StudioFest VR Experience: Our 2021 film festival will be held as a VR experience this fall, from September 17 – 19, 2021.
Ten filmmakers will be sent brand new Oculus Quest 2 headsets for a virtual weekend event with experienced industry professionals and the StudioFest team. In the past, we've paired winners. This year, we're selecting one winner. At the end of the weekend, that one lucky filmmaker will be given the opportunity to partner with StudioFest to create an original feature film!
Join us on Sunday, September 19th at 12 PM PST / 3 PM EST to talk with the finalists in the networking forum! Head to festival.filmocracy.com/studiofest to sign up!
StudioFest 2021 Industry Guests
EVAN GLODELL
WRITER/DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/ACTOR
Raised in Wisconsin, Evan Glodell moved to the west coast in 2001 to pursue filmmaking. After many years working as a director and cinematographer on shorts and music videos he began work on his feature-film debut Bellflower in 2008. Bellflower was made over the course of three years on a minuscule budget of $17,000 with Evan taking on major roles as writer, director, producer and actor. Bellflower’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011 was met with much attention and critical acclaim. The film was shot on custom cameras and made use of many practical effects including explosives, custom cars and flamethrowers, all built by Glodell. Bellflower was theatrically released in the United States on over 100 screens and found international success in France, Japan and the United Kingdom. Mr. Glodell was nominated for a 2012 Spirit Award for best low-budget film and a 2011 Gotham Award for best new director with the film winning prizes both domestically and internationally. Evan has a number of projects in post production: Canary with AGBO (Russo brothers) and Coatwolf producing, and Chuck Hank and the San Diego Twins produced by Coatwolf. Glodell is represented by Creative Artists Agency..
PATRICIA VIDAL DELGADO
Patricia Vidal Delgado is a Sundance Institute FilmTwo Fellow and is represented by the talent agency Luber Roklin. 'La Leyenda Negra', her feature film debut, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in the NEXT category and is currently streaming on HBO MAX. The 2021 Film Independent Spirit Awards nominated the film for the John Cassavetes Award and the GLAAD Media Awards also nominated the film for Outstanding TV Movie. Patricia is the writer and director of short films 'Bué Sabi', 'Isa', 'Ico', '88', 'The Hood' and 'Caroline'. Her work has screened at both national and international film festivals including the Raindance Film Festival, Philadelphia Film Festival, Curtas Vila do Conde and the IndieLisboa International Film Festival. To date, Delgado's films have garnered a total of 15 wins and 50 nominations.
StudioFest 2021 Finalists
Chris Vanderhorst
Chris Vanderhorst is a self taught writer/filmmaker in Los Angeles. After moving to LA from a small town in North Carolina, he wasted no time working and creating. He viewed every job and professional relationship as a lesson in his self-created masterclass.
He has been teaching Film at the high school level to support his own creative film endeavors. His most recent film, Lifelike, is a romantic sci-fi thriller with a shocking ending that will leave the audience talking well after the film's credits.
Chris always looks forward to the next project and creative relationship and has no plans of slowing down.
Daisy Rosato
Daisy Rosato is a filmmaker in Brooklyn NY. Originally from New Orleans, she is drawn to creative work that rewards collaboration. After receiving a BA in Theatre & Performance/German Studies from Bard College, Rosato founded a theatre company, during which she premiered original work in Ars Nova’s ANT Fest and BAX’s Upstart Festival.
Her feature screenplay "Dancing Soldier" is a current Semifinalist in Scriptapalooza’s International Screenplay Competition and was a Quarterfinalist in The Script Lab’s 2020 Screenplay Contest. Her short screenplay "Rockaway" was a 2020 Scriptation Showcase Semifinalist. Rosato believes creating and consuming are collaborative, her work playing a part in how she forms community. This labor of love is reflective of her working-class background. As a queer woman, Rosato knows her art exists outside of assumed binaries just as she does. Across all her work, Rosato is committed to pushing storytelling forward and making the art of doing so more inclusive.
Ramiel Petros
Ramiel Petros is a NYC based writer/director who was born and raised in California. A first generation Iraqi-American Ramiel fiercely believes in the power filmmaking has to depict universal narratives. Ramiel has been shortlisted for a student BAFTA Award, a Semi- Finalist for the Student Academy Awards, and is the recipient of the Akhtar-Bhutta production award, the Russell Hexter filmmaker grant, the Thomas William Gidro-Frank award, and the Pond5 filmmakers first award.
Azadeh Nikzadeh
Azadeh Nikzadeh is a Middle Eastern writer, director and producer. She works on rarely-heard political, human rights and women empowerment stories with the expertise on building dramatic narratives based on true events and characters and blurring the lines between fiction and documentary.
She is the sole Iranian recipient of 2010 Asian Film Academy Fellowship and Her political drama feature script “Dandelion The Messenger of My Grandma Batul” is a 2021 Sundance Writing Lab Finalist. Azadeh wrote and directed highly-acclaimed short films including “Vida”, “X” and “The Girl Sitting Here” with the focus on concepts and characters that are misunderstood and judged by the society such as prostitution and the archetype of divine feminine.
Josh Copeland
Josh Copeland is a writer and filmmaker from Nashville, TN. He formed DIY-production-collective Giantkiller in 2005 while still in college, and has been expending most of his free-time on making no-budget movies whenever professional video-editing gigs have paid him well enough to ever since.
His current projects are the shorts SERIOUS MATTERS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, which he wrote and directed, and BOGO, which he directed from a screenplay by Rebecca Haden. His work as a writer/director has screened at film festivals like San Francisco's Another Hole In The Head, the Academy-award qualifying Nashville Film Festival, Cucalorus Film Festival in Wilmington, VA, Other Worlds Film Festival in Austin, TX, and many more in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. His work as an editor has been featured on Hulu, MTV, ESPN, CMT, Noisey, Tidal, RollingStone.com, Vevo and in skippable ads on Youtube.
Josh resides in Los Angeles and is glad to be finished writing in the third person.
Erin Muroski
Erin Muroski is a comedy writer and actor who prefers hurricanes to earthquakes (she's from Orlando, but currently lives in LA). She writes about real, multifaceted women who try really hard to keep it together, but end up screwing it up in some way... just like her! Erin has performed improv and sketch all over LA, and several times at San Francisco SketchFest.
She won "Best Original Comedy Pilot" for her pilot Level Up at the UCLA Screenwriting Contest and won the PAGE International Screenwriting Award for "Best Comedy Pilot Script" for her script Game, based on her years of experience as a 'Dating Coach'. She's a two-time finalist at the Austin Film Festival and was chosen as a fellow by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer in "Imagine Impact Content Accelerator Program.” Her latest pilot Munch won first place in the Script Pipeline 2021 TV Writing contest. Erin is currently shopping her holiday feature Dumped on Christmas with Kimberly Montini at Cranium Entertainment.
Mateo Márquez
Mateo Márquez is a director and writer from Queens, New York City. His body of work includes narrative fiction, non-fiction, and music video content that have all garnered recognition throughout the U.S and abroad. He holds a Masters in Directing from the School of Visual Arts and a BA in Film from Hunter College. He was a 2015 BAFTA Scholarship recipient and a 2019 School of Visual Arts’ Alumni Scholarship Award winner.
His short films The Invaders and The Quiet have screened at over 30 festivals worldwide including the BFI London Film Festival, Fantasia, HBO NY Latino Film Festival, and Nantes Utopiales Festival International de Science Fiction. They have also been featured on the online horror channel ALTER as well other prominent online platforms such as Film Shortage, Beyond the Short, and Retrospective of Jupiter.
Mateo infuses his love of genre films and traditional dramas to create an intimate visceral storytelling experience.
Courtney Hope Thérond
Courtney Hope Thérond is an award-winning screenwriter and director who has screened films at festivals such as BFI London, New Orleans, Outfest, Nashville, and St Louis. Her latest short Rehearsal, which tackles the grey areas of consent, premiered online on Short of the Week, received a Vimeo Staff Pick, and was featured in RogerEbert.com, Fast Company, and No Budge. As a screenwriter, Courtney has twice been a finalist at Austin Film Festival. Her pilot Between Us Girls was a finalist in the Screencraft Pilot Launch, a semi-finalist (top 50) for the ISA Fast Track Fellowship, and won its category at Cinestory.
Courtney is currently a fellow in the inaugural Constellation Incubator and one of eight filmmakers selected for the Open Door Project. Her fictional podcast Persistence of Memory was recently selected for the Gotham Week Project Market. Courtney is a graduate of NYU, Tisch School of the Arts, and was a Cinereach Film Fellow. She writes and directs narrative and branded content in Los Angeles and New York.
Martin Barshai
Houston, TX born, American/Thai filmmaker. Barshai directed Light on Her Feet, nominated Best Short Doc at Austin Film Festival (2017). His writing placed as a ScreenCraft Finalist (2019), Austin Film Festival 2nd Rounder (2019), and Slamdance Semi-Finalist (2020). Currently, he’s in post-production for his first feature film, Ether's Paradise, while developing a biopic about composer Philip Glass.
Conall Pendergast
Conall Pendergast is a writer, director, and illustrator. Conall has created animated content for numerous corporate clients and edited television series, documentaries, dramatic shorts, and the dramatic feature "The Basement." He designed and illustrated the educational comic book "Pipe Dreams," which won the National Canadian Public Relations Society’s Gold Award for Print Projects.