I’m a documentary director and producer based in Berkeley, California, and sometimes Tbilisi, Georgia. Raised by hardcore gardeners on a rhododendron nursery, my films dig into themes of community, memory, and the concept of home.

Supported by the Austin Film Society, the Center for Eastern European Studies, and a year-long fellowship at the University of Texas, I’ve been working on documentaries in the Caucasus Mountains. My latest short film, Placekeepers, follows a Georgian highland community snowed in from the rest of the world for seven months each winter. The film premiered at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and is now on the international festival circuit, including Oscar-qualifying stops at Telluride’s Mountainfilm and In the Palace in Bulgaria. I’m currently in production on a feature-length observational documentary about the region, co-directed with Georgian filmmaker Anna R. Japaridze.

My previous short, Heaven on Earth—a portrait of the matriarch of an ex-commune in L.A.—screened at several Oscar-qualifying festivals and was released by Directors Notes. I also produced Amanda_Test 1, a queer, VR-inflected, AI-themed film that premiered at HBO’s Outfest. In addition to independent work, I produce health-focused documentaries for the Center for the Art of Medicine, where I help tell stories at the intersection of care, culture, and science.

On the branded side, I’ve shot and edited content for Mountainfilm Festival—North America’s premier mountain film festival—for the past three years. I hold an MFA in Film Production from the University of Texas at Austin. Before filmmaking, I trained and worked professionally as a classical theater actor at institutions including Steppenwolf, The Goodman, and Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

For fun, I love dancing, going on food adventures, slowly (and stubbornly) learning Georgian, and hiking anywhere that smells like the redwoods.