Alumna Jessica Shields '18 Awarded The Humanitas Prize's Carol Mendelsohn College Drama Fellowship

Jessica Shields '18 was recently awarded the Humanitas Prize's Carol Mendelsohn College Drama Fellowship for her pilot Rue Pigalle. “The Humanitas prize was created to honor film and TV writers whose work inspires compassion, hope, and understanding in the human family” as stated on Deadline. “The Carol Mendelsohn College Drama Fellowship exists to recognize and reward the talents of young writers with financial support to empower them to tell meaningful stories,” according to the Humanitas Prize's website.

In 1930s Paris, on the seedy streets of Montmartre, a group of black musicians, mobsters and misfits desperately cling to a crumbling paradise as they contend with personal dysfunction, a global depression and the ever-encroaching war. Rue Pigalle is a character-driven series following a group of African-American expatriates and their friends who are bound by tough luck, tenacity and jazz.

Jessica Shields is an Atlanta native, Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary writer and filmmaker. She is a former Film Independent Project Involve Screenwriting Fellow and Moving Picture Institute Pilot Workshop Fellow (2018). She was nominated for the Humanitas Comedy Fellowship in 2016 and is an Alfred P. Sloan Treatment winner. Rue Pigalle was also a finalist for both the Nantucket Film Festival Showtime Tony Cox Screenwriting Competition and IFP No Borders (2017). In addition to directing five short films of her own, Sheilds has worked on film and television sets in Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles.