Director Biography
Julia is an award-winning American director, writer, producer and actress of film and theatre. She is the founder of Shelter Film, a New York-based independent film company dedicated to creating engaging films, using complex female protagonists and female filmmakers. Shelter’s inaugural project, 116, a film Julia wrote, produced, directed, and stars in, with a female-majority crew, has won the following awards:
In 2017 –
Winner – Best Short Film – NYC Indie Film Awards
Winner – Best Director – NYC Indie Film Awards
Winner – Best Actress – NYC Indie Film Awards
Winner – Best Female Director – European Cinematography Awards
Winner – Best Actress – Symi International Film Festival
Winner – Best Actress – American Filmatic Arts Awards
Winner – Best Film Idea – Mediterranean Film Festival
Winner – Spotlight Award for Excellence – Elevation Film Awards
Winner – Award for Distinction – Canada Shorts International Film Festival
Winner – Best Lighting – Creation International Film Festival
Winner – Best Color Treatment – Creation International Film Festival
Nomination – Best Director – Largo Film Festival
To date, ‘116’ is an Official Selection/screened at 32 film festivals world-wide.
Julia is also Artistic Director of Shelter Theatre Group NYC, a company dedicated to equality on stage, through gender-blind, stage-blind, and color-blind casting. She has produced and directed 13 productions in NYC, including the critically acclaimed Macbeth on LES in 2014.
As an actress, film and TV appearances include starring in NBCUniversal’s Dementia 13 (2017), Shelter Film’s 116, Ryan Lonergan’s Kill the Monsters, Pamanhikan (Vale Film Festival winner); L’Accordatore (Las Vegas Film Festival winner); Pink Moon (Big Apple Film Festival winner); A Day with Conrad Greene; One Life To Live (ABC); Tattinger’s, and The Equalizer, to name a select few.
Julia has appeared Off Broadway as Hecate in the OBIE, Drama League, and Drama Desk Award-winning hit show Sleep No More; Villainous Company; and Lucille Lortel Award-winning Queen’s Company’s The Wonder; as well as with Theatre Askew, Red Bull Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop and Folger Shakespeare.
Director Statement
Love is complicated at any age. It can be messy, intriguing, obsessive, as well as fulfilling. It can also be unexpected. With 116 my intent is to show the complex and complicated life of a mature woman, without restrictions or judgement. I take the audience inside her intimate relationship. The struggle between the woman and the man to gain or surrender power comprises their relationship.
By employing the use of role play – Shakespeare’s sonnet about ideal love, written over 400 years ago – I ask the questions, can love exist without equality? Have relationships changed in 400 years? Is love really love, or is it possessing power over someone? And in having that power, how far will someone go to keep it?
I have always been fascinated with hotel rooms and their appearance of privacy, when, in fact, they are very public places. Yet each hotel guest willingly assumes this appearance of privacy, a type of role play, which does not exist. By placing the film in a hotel room the audience become voyeurs, witnessing the intimate and obsessive details of a perhaps bizarre relationship, and ask them – who are they to judge? When we do, in fact, judge people, and their relationships, obsessively.
Romance & Relationships Festival - Submit your screenplay and film and get it showcased at the FEEDBACK Film Festival 