Melanie Schiele is an award-winning independent filmmaker and pioneering alumna of NYU Tisch Asia in Singapore, where she had her screenplays featured in masterclasses led by acclaimed directors Todd Solondz, Shekhar Kapur, and Joshua Marston. She has worked on 30 short films in various roles with film premieres and awards spanning the globe, including Tribeca, Palm Springs ShortFest, Slamdance, Traverse City, BAMcinemaFest, Atlanta, Bilbao, and the Singapore Short Film Festival. Her film "Delilah, Before" won an audience award for Best Short Film at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival and her latest film "Rockaway" continues to have similar success on the festival circuit. "Rockaway" was shot by her brother and collaborator, Jordan Schiele, whose cinematic achievements include world premieres at Cannes, Tribeca, and Palm Springs.
"Rockaway" premiered at the 2012 Atlanta Film Festival in the program "New Mavericks, Women Directors". It won awards in directing, screenwriting, and for newcomer actress Audrey Tommassini, at NYU's First Run Film Festival. It screened for the DGA in LA as part of an NYU West Coast Showcase and held its NY premiere at the prestigious independent film festival venue BAMcinemaFEST. It has also shown at the Anthology Film Archives in conjunction with NewFilmmakers NY and was an official selection of the HollyShorts Film Festival, the LA Indie Film Festival, the Bilbao International Short Film Festival, the Gasparilla International Film Festival and the Arizona International Film Festival, where it won awards for Best Dramatic Short and Best Performance to actress Audrey Tommassini.
Melanie's original feature script "Butterfly Children" was recently announced as a Grand Prize winner for the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival's screenwriting award and production grant in partnership with Forest Whitaker's JuntoBox Films. It was also a winner in the Atlanta Film Festival's Screenwriting Competition and NYU's Fusion Film Festival, a Top-Ten finalist for the Cinequest Film Festival, a Top-20 finalist for Script Pipeline, a semifinalist for Scriptapalooza, a semifinalist for American Zoetrope, and a quarterfinalist for the Nicholl Fellowship and PAGE International Screenwriting Awards.
