October Colony 2022

The final weeks of August carry a wistfulness for the end of summer with an excitement for the coming fall. For us, this time brings the additional thrill of announcing a new cohort of writers for our October Colony for feature screenwriters. These four creatives will spend the month of October on Nantucket at our home on Almanack Farm. They will share ideas and meals and walks on the beach. They’ll also get nourishing quiet time to do what writers do: write. We are excited to introduce…

Olive Nwosu is an award-winning writer and director from Lagos, Nigeria. She is a BAFTA-Pigott 2020 Scholar, an ‘African Promises’ director selected by the Institut Français, a 2022 TIFF Share Her Journey Fellow, and a 2022 Sundance Screenwriting Fellow. She graduated with an MFA in Screenwriting and Directing from Columbia University School of the Arts where she was awarded the Alex Sichel Fellowship in Screenwriting. Olive has written and directed two award-winning short films. TROUBLEMAKER (2019), which featured a cast of entirely non-actors and received a 2020 NBR Student Award, is now streaming on the Criterion Channel. EGÚNGÚN (MASQUERADE) (2021), which was commissioned by the British Council and BFI for their MoreFilms4Freedom programme, premiered at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. It was nominated for ‘Best British Short Film’ by the British Independent Film Awards, and played in competition at Sundance 2022, amongst others. Olive is in development on feature films with Film4, Searchlight Pictures and the BBC. Her work is informed by the intersectional nature of her life across multiple continents and identities. Her mission is to tell urgent, cinematic African stories.

Niccolo Aeed is a Black/Palestinian writer and director based in New York. He is half the comedy duo Marina & Nicco, whose sketches have appeared on The New Yorker, Funny or Die, Comedy Central and more. Recent plays include: Room 4 (The PIT), Unpacking: A Ghost Story Told in the Dark (HERE Arts) and If You Do This Right You'll Probably Break Their Chest (Ars Nova) One Morning Soon (Fire This Time Festival 2020) To All My Supporters (Ars Nova). Nicco was a resident writer at Serials at The Flea Theater. He teaches sketch comedy at the UCB Theater and runs the podcast Copaganda! where he learns about policing by watching cop movies.

Marina Michelson is a filmmaker, writer, and actor born in Tel Aviv to Soviet émigrés from the Republics of Georgia and Moldova. Her work explores identity and power dynamics through the day-to-day lived experiences of women, as well as her upbringing as a third culture kid. She holds a BFA in Theater from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and her background includes extensive study with the Atlantic Theater Company, Steppenwolf Theater, Lee Strasberg Studio, and Judith Weston Studio. As a filmmaker, she is adept at collaborating with actors and holding space in a way that allows for rich, grounded performances. Her short films have been recognized on the festival circuit, including “Stagiaire,” which premiered at the 2021 Maryland Festival and was nominated for an Artios Award for Best Ensemble, and “Biophilia,” which garnered the Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Screenplay at the 2018 Brooklyn Film Festival. She was selected as an artist-in-residence at the Wurlitzer Foundation and a semi-finalist for the Humanitas New Voices Fellowship. She has several projects in development and is currently a fellow in the Jewish Writers' Initiative's Digital Storytelling Lab. When not making movies, she's making music videos and tending to her garden.

Michael Yuchen Lei is an award-winning Chinese-born filmmaker whose fiction and non-fiction work has played at festivals worldwide including Tribeca, San Sebastian, CPH:DOX and Palm Springs. His feature documentary debut, “A TASTE OF SKY”, about acclaimed NOMA co-founder Claus Meyer, premiered at Tribeca and was produced by Kevin Iwashina ("Jiro Dreams of Sushi") and Archer Gray ("20th Century Women"). A graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, he began his career in the music industry, as personal photographer to Joe Walsh of the Eagles and photographing artists such as Ringo Starr, James Taylor, the xx, Outkast, amongst others. He has been recognized as a fellow by the Points North Institute, SFFilm, the Pacific Pioneer Fellowship, the Swatch Artist Residency in Shanghai, and Film Independent in both Documentary and Screenwriting. He is currently developing his feature narrative debut “THE RIFT”, a science-fiction horror thriller, which recently won the 2022 Tony Cox Screenwriting Competition at the Nantucket Film Festival.