It's also an honest story about modern dating, reflecting some of my own singular experiences of dating in New York and threading in some of the many eye-opening conversations I've had with friends over the years as we embark on the wonderfully embarrassing and vulnerable journey of finding love. Most of all, it's a story about finding the beauty in being alone to become yourself.
By supporting this film, you are contributing not only to a up-and-coming writer-director, but also to an expansion of Black female-led narratives onscreen.
Yohana Desta is an Eritrean- and Ethiopian-American writer and director based in New York City. She is an MFA candidate at New York University’s graduate film program, with a focus in writing and directing. She has written and directed several short films and is currently working on her thesis project, the short film SINGLEWOMAN. Her thesis advisor at NYU is the legendary filmmaker Kasi Lemmons.
She is also a longtime journalist, joining Vanity Fair as a staff writer from 2016 to 2023. During her tenure at the magazine, she wrote cover stories on Chadwick Boseman, Issa Rae, Kristen Stewart and Regina King; she returned to her alma mater to write the Oct. 2024 cover story on Selena Gomez. As a seasoned moderator, she has led conversations and Q&As on behalf of A24, Focus Features, the Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA, and more.
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Ella Gibney
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Ella Gibney is a cinematographer based in Brooklyn. They have worked as a cinematographer on countless shorts that have been screened at the Cannes Film Festival, the Palm Springs Film Festival, and Aspen Shortsfest, among many others. They recently won the Nestor Almendros Award for best female cinematography and were one of the finalists for the competitive Volker Bahnemann Award for Outstanding Cinematography, awarded by ARRI Inc. Gibney graduated from Bard College with an undergraduate degree in Photography, and from New York University’s graduate film program with an MFA.
PRODUCER: Bridget Gales
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Bridget Gales is a creative producer based in Los Angeles. She has produced numerous short films, including Burnt Roux, an award-winning short that recently screened at the New Orleans Film Festival and the Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival, among others. Her oeuvre is focused on amplifying budding writer-directors whose narratives center and amplify stories about Black women. She previously worked as a producer for Discovery Communications from 2017 to 2021, producing for several TV shows and developing behind-the-scenes and promotional content, in addition to developing short-form digital content for the burgeoning world of web-based storytelling. She also previously worked for the news channel TV One, developing, and writing news segments for a predominantly Black audience, from 2013 to 2017. She graduated in 2023 from Loyola Marymount University with an MFA in creative producing.
PRODUCER: Naa Adei Mante
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naa adei (nah • aday) is a writer, director, and creative producer based in New York City. she loves to tell stories that explore those internal, unspoken, and even unpleasant emotions that Black people, but primarily Black women, struggle with in a post-colonial era. originally born to Ghanaian immigrants in the DMV, naa adei leverages her multi-layered identity to create stories that bridge the gap across the diaspora. naa adei is currently pursuing her MFA in Film & TV at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts as a Hollywood Foreign Press Association Scholar and Black Women Film Network Scholar (2024). Her directorial work has screened regionally throughout the country, and a short film that she produced was recently selected as the Best Student International Short Film at Palm Springs ShortFest 2024.
