Born in Heidelberg, Germany, Abbesi Akhamie is a Nigerian-American writer/director currently based in New York City. She received her MFA in Film from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and also holds a BA in Communications from George Mason University. She has a keen interest in African storytelling and uses film as a medium to share these stories. She has produced two African short films—Samedi Cinema and Facing North—that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2016 and 2018 respectively. She wrote and directed her debut short film Still Water Runs Deep in Nigeria that also premiered at TIFF and won ‘Best Student Film’ at the prestigious Aspen ShortsFest. She is a 2019 Berlinale Talent as well as a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellow and an NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Film. Currently, she is Creative Culture Fellow at the Jacob Burn Film Center where she will create two short films. She is also developing a pilot and her first feature film, which she intends to direct in Nigeria.