Director Bessy Adut tells Victoria G about the films and directors who have inspired her, looks ahead to her upcoming projects, and graciously offers some advice for aspiring directors. Check out the full interview on Wattpad.
Directory Bessy Adut recently sat down with Colin Costello of Reel360.com to discuss her upcoming projects as well as how she approaches filmmaking. Read the full interview here.
L.A. Indies, an independent film magazine, recently interviewed our very own Bessy Adut about her filmmaking career, the making of "Escape Room," and her next film project. Read the full interview here.
Director Bessy Adut has begun development of her first feature film! Her latest screenplay, Searching for God in Antarctica, will be a documentary film offering an all-encompassing look at the connection of humanity. In this journey, two young environmental activists will set out on a journey to find, and ask, questions about God, spirituality and science. Visit the Searching for God website for more information about the film and how you can help.
Our short film "Escape Room" was recently featured on the entertainment news website Film Daily. After giving a synopsis of the film and its themes, author Frankie Stein includes an interview with our director Bessy Adut. Read the full article here.
"Escape Room" took home the Most Fun Award at the 2020 Underground Indie Film Festival! The festival normally has in-person screenings, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they had to cancel their physical screenings this year. Instead they had an online live screening event via Zoom. You can read some of the viewers' comments here.
We have just signed a distribution deal with HODTV.NET, which is an online streaming platform completely dedicated to the genres of horror/thriller. “Escape Room” will be officially launched on HODTV.NET on October 27, 2019 at 9:00 PM Italian time (that’s 3:00 PM EST or 12:00 PM PST). Start your free trial and watch wherever you want on any kind of device. We hope you tune in!
Awarded Best Horror Short in August in the Independent Shorts Awards (ISA) competition, “Escape Room” is now streaming at the exclusive ISA TV channel. To watch our film, please subscribe and start your free trial!
We’re excited to announce that our short film “Escape Room” won Best Mystery Short and Best Director (Female) for August 2019 in the IndieX Film Festival! IndieX is an international film festival based in Los Angeles. Every month submitted projects are judged by a team of invited experts from academia and the film industry from the Los Angeles area. Check out our IndieX comeptition page here.
“Escape Room” is a finalist for the month of July 2019 in the White Unicorn International Film Festival! The first screening will be held on August 11, 2019, beginning at 4 pm, at Rotary Sadan in Kolkata, India.
WUIFF is a monthly film festival which gives indie filmmakers like us the opportunity to contribute to world cinema. A portion of every submission fee is donated to a social cause and at the end of the year during the Annual Gala Fest of WUIFF the amount is handed over to the social organizations/NGOs.
Our short film “Escape Room” was recently selected to be screened at the Cannes Short Film Festival! The 2019 Festival will take place at Cinema Pathé Masséna in Nice, France. It will run September 5-8, with screenings every evening at 6pm and 8pm. While CSFF is not associated with the more well-known Festival de Cannes, it is still an honor to be selected!
We recently entered our short film “Escape Room” in the Independent Shorts Awards (ISA) film festival. Check out our entry page here.
Earlier this year one of our producers, Eric Sherman, sadly passed away. On Sunday, July 14, his family will host a memorial for him at The Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles. Join us for food, music and remembrances from family and colleagues as we celebrate the life and career of this longtime friend of the American Cinematheque. You can find more details about the memorial here.
Recently our Director Bessy Adut was invited to the set of the TNT series Animal Kingdom at Warner Bros Studios. It was a wonderful opportunity to talk to crew members to learn the inner workings of professional filmmaking. Bessy was interviewed about her takeaways from the experience. Watch her interview here.
“Escape Room” was nominated for Best Short Slasher film in the International Horror Hotel Film Festival, which takes place June 6-9 at Norwood Inn in Hudson, Ohio. The winners will be announced at the award ceremony.
Big news! Our short film “Escape Room” is now available for purchase on Amazon Prime! MRG Collective is a compilation of award winning short films from around the world. Women of Horror Volume 1 includes Escape Room as well as six other great short films. The collection is available on DVD for $14.95 and Blu-Ray for $19.95. We invite you to check out Escape Room and these other great short films from women directors. Please remember to leave a review!
Fresh from Escape Room’s award-winning performance at the Feel the Reel Film Festival, we received a great promotional review on the Feel the Reel website. Check it out here!
“Escape Room” will be screened at 9PM on Friday, March 22 at the Golden State Film Festival at TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood. Buy your tickets before it's sold out!
We mentioned in our last post that “Escape Room” won 2nd Best of the Fest in the January 2019 competition of the Feel The Reel Film Festival. Not only that, but our director Bessy Adut and screenwriter Xenia Puiggros also won Best Screenplay and our editor Yin Lui won Best Editing! We’re so proud of our team!
We have some more exciting news to share! Our short film "Escape Room" was an official selection for January 2019 by Feel the Reel and we won 2nd Best of the Fest! You can view the official announcement here.
"Escape Room" will be screened on March 30, 2019.
We just received word that our short film “Escape Room” will be screened at the Golden State Film Festival! The festival takes place March 22-28 at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood, CA. We will find out about specific scheduling in early March.
Our film will also be screened at The Lift-Off Sessions, a monthly online showcase dedicated to screening the best globally submitted indie shorts and features. In addition, we have been selected for Olympus Film Festival Los Angeles, where we’ve been nominated for Best Horror Short Film and Best Director. Olympus has judging and awards monthly with two festival screenings a year. Each month they select a Best Film winner to attend the Bi-Yearly Screening and Award ceremony on July 10, 2019 from 1pm-9pm at the Laemmle NoHo 7 In North Hollywood.
First things first: our short film “Escape Room” will be screened at NukhuFest 2018 and is in consideration for many other horror film festivals right now! Nukhu works like this: filmmakers upload their movies to the Nukhu website, fans vote on their favorites, and attendees watch the top 10 nominees to decide on Best Movie. The winner receives a gift from the festival sponsors in addition to the Best Movie award.
Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with the wonderful folks at We Are Moving Stories about our short film “Escape Room.” It was a great opportunity to talk about the key themes of the film, the behind-the-scenes work, and our goals for the film. Having “Escape Room” on We Are Moving Stories will enable us to reach a larger audience and gain more support as diverse and women filmmakers. I also had a chance to mention some other screenplays I would like to direct. We are grateful to We Are Moving Stories for the publicity!
You can read the full interview here.
On her blog, "The Black List," Kate Hagen included "Mask of Revenge" (the sequel to "Escape Room") on her list of "100+ Horror Films Directed by Women You Should be Watching this October." You can read the full list here.
Last night I discussed our short film on the podcast "Night Walk with Joe Roxx." You can listen to the episode here.
I just wrapped up an interview with EMZT Radio Podcast and Productions! If you recall, EMZT asked female horror creators on Twitter to reach out to them for some free promotion during “Women in Horror” month. In response to my tweet, they generously promoted Escape Room on their blog and invited me to do an interview on their podcast. Listen to it here.
Thanks again to EMZT Radio for promoting our film!
On February 28, I had the honor of being the guest speaker at WECTAC’s monthly “Turkish Coffee Time” session. In collaboration with WECTAC Entertainment Committee, our company Queen B. Film Hive held a fundraiser for “Escape Room.” I gave a presentation about the short film project. Sandy Stenzel, our Director of Photography and Creative Producer, was there along with Alfredo Soto, the actor who will be playing the role of “Kapil” in the film.
The event was supported by the Los Angeles Turkish American Association, the group Turks in Los Angeles, the group Film Casting & Job Board Los Angeles, and the Turkish Consulate General in Los Angeles.