Pro
Jess dela Merced
Biography
Jess dela Merced is a Filipino American writer/director from San Francisco. She is a director in the Disney ABC directing program and one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film. She holds an MFA from the NYU Grad Film Program where she received the Spike Lee Fellowship as well as the Lorraine Hansberry Arts, Performance, and Media Award. Her award winning thesis film “HYPEBEASTS,” written under the mentorship of Spike Lee aired on PBS. Jess was a San Francisco Film Society FilmHouse screenwriting resident and one of IFP's Emerging Storytellers. Her short film, "Wait 'til the Wolves Make Nice," which acts as a prelude to her first feature in development “CHICKENSHIT,” premiered at SXSW and won the Grand Jury Prize in Detroit's Cinetopia International Film Festival. The feature script “CHICKENSHIT” is a winner of NYU's 2016 Purple List, a San Francisco Film Society grant recipient, and a Hamptons Screenwriters Lab participant. She is currently in post-production of "PHONY," a new short film executive produced by Paul Feig and his production company Powderkeg Media.