About.
Most Recently:
Aemilia's most recent film, HELP ME UNDERSTAND, is premiering at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in the international shorts competition (produced by Paul Feig for Powderkeg).
On the serial side, this year she directed an episode of Season Two of horror-comedy SHINING VALE for Kapital/Warner Bros, staring Courteney Cox, Greg Kinnear and Mira Sorvino, which will come to STARZ in 2023.
Aemilia is currently a 2022/2023 fellow of the STARZ #TakeTheLead Director’s Program. She is a 2022 fellow of Paul Feig’s Powderkeg Fuse program for Female Directors. She was a 2020 fellow of the Sony Pictures Diverse Directors’ Program. She is the 2021 Blacklist/Cassian Elwes screenwriting prize winner, and was a semi-finalist for the Academy® Nicholl Fellowship.
The Backstory:
Aemilia Scott is an award-winning writer/director/performer who works in narrative fiction films, episodic, and commercials. She lives in the space between comedy and drama, uncovering the humor living inside of tragedy, and the darkness beneath a laugh.
Having spent years working in front of the camera in TV and film, as a writer and director Aemilia has an elemental sympathy with her actors, leading to performances that are delicate, heartbreaking, honest, and completely free.
She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in History and Photography. While there she studied under the renowned street photographer Thomas Roma and the renowned experimental photographer Dana Hoey.
After college, Aemilia cut her teeth in the legendary Chicago comedy scene. She wrote and performed with The Second City, TBS Just For Laughs Festival, New York Fringe Festival, Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival, and others.
Aemilia’s short film, BEST IF USED BY – a story of a grieving woman who steals her deceased boyfriend’s body and continues to live with him – won a BAFTA Los Angeles Award at Aspen Shorts Fest, Honorary Mentions at REGARD Quebec and USA Film Fest Dallas, and premiered at the largest short film festival in the world, Clermont Ferrand in France, among many other festivals.
Following BEST IF USED BY, Aemilia directed three more short films, FOR A GOOD TIME, about a desperately sad woman who calls a number written on the wall of a public bathroom (Premiere, Aspen Shortsfest, Newport Beach, etc.); SHOT, an experimental documentary dealing with police violence (Premiere, Kurzfilm Hamburg, Chicago International Film Fest, etc.); and HOW YOU ARE TO ME, a chamber drama about a couple living with Alzheimer’s (Winner, Best Drama, Short Sweet Film Fest).
Aemilia has three feature film scripts in development. The first, BIRTHDAY SUIT, was invited to IFP Film Week New York, Tribeca All Access Film Week, and Los Cabos Film Market. It was selected for the Hamptons International Film Festival Writer’s Lab, where she won the top award, the Melissa Mathison Film Prize. BIRTHDAY SUIT currently has Bankside Films on board for sales, and James Brown, the producer of STILL ALICE, on board for financing.
Her second feature script, THREE HOURS, recently won the Chicago International Film Festival’s Pitch Competition., and was invited to attend Tribeca All Access Film Week. The script has been featured on The Black List and is a semi-finalist for the Academy Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship. Her third script, WILDERMANN, about a young boy going through puberty in 1989 East Germany, was written for German Cinema and has celebrated Shiwago Films producer Marcos Kantis attached.
