DIRECTORS

Britt Banks is an award-winning director and screenwriter whose work blends genre storytelling with deeply human explorations of identity, grief, and resilience.

Born in Gary, Indiana, Britt's creative voice was forged by a city left behind. Her family fled the Jim Crow South during the Great Migration, drawn north by the promise of opportunity in the steel mills. When that industry collapsed, so did the city's economic foundation. Followed by generations forced to navigate entrenched poverty, environmental injustice, abandoned neighborhoods, chronic disinvestment, and violence in a city that became emblematic of America's broken promises to Black communities. Britt's films amplify the voices of women and girls of color while exploring urgent themes including kinship care, police brutality, generational trauma, and displacement.

Britt is a Ryan Murphy Productions Half Initiative Director Shadow (2024), a recipient of The Future of Film is Female Pre-Production Grant (2024), the Kickstarter x Tubi FilmStream Collective Fund Grant (2025), and the Black Life Film Festival Grant (2020). She is also an Almanack Screenwriter Sessions(2025). A graduate of the University of California, Irvine, Britt has extensive experience in studio and network physical production, including work as a Digital Imaging Technician on the Sundance-premiering feature Honk for Jesus. Save your Soul. Her films have screened at the Directors Guild of America and Academy Award-qualifying film festivals worldwide. Her latest short film, We Are Not Okay, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York before screening at AGBO Studios, AMC Networks, and the Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival. Her award-winning short film Blue Laces was acquired by Magic Johnson's Aspire TV, while Thicke, a meditation on the aftermath of police brutality, received multiple awards and grants.