Two Columbia Films Premiere as Part of Hulu's Bite Size Halloween Series

Two short films by Columbia University filmmakers premiered on Hulu as part of the streaming network's Bite Size Halloween series. They are: The Longest Breath, co-written and directed by Victoria Rivera '20, and co-written and produced by Camila Zavala '19, and Occupational Hazard, written and directed by Ursula Ellis '17.

2021 marks the second season of Hulu’s Bite Size Halloween, a series of stand-alone horror shorts ranging from the terrifying to the ridiculous.

In The Longest Breath, a freediver in training pushes too hard in pursuit of a personal record. 

Occupational Hazard follows Diana, who, while working deep in a West Virginia coal mine, is exposed to a mysterious gas that seeps into her everyday life.

Both of the short films are available to stream on Hulu.

Victoria Rivera is a Colombian writer and director based in New York City. She is a Film Independent Screenwriting and Directing Lab Fellow. Rivera works in fiction, documentary, and commercial films that tell compelling character driven stories of people changing the world, in big and small ways alike. Her 2019 film, Night Swim, a Vimeo staff pick, won both the Prix Du Public (Audience Award) at the Champs Elysées Film Festival and the Best Live-Action Student Film Palm Springs ShortFest Award.

Camila Zavala is a Peruvian writer and producer based in Los Angeles. As a producer, she has won several awards and has been selected to screen at festivals such as the Tribeca Film Festival, Palm Springs International Shortfest and Telluride Film Festival. Her Columbia University thesis film, The Catch, which she wrote and produced, received the Katherina Otto-Bernstein Production Grant and the Bertha Tamayo Grant during the production stage, and was awarded the Richard Brick Fund for special distinction in Producing.

Ursula Ellis is an LA-based writer/director from Appalachia and alum of the Northwestern BA & Columbia University MFA film programs. Her short film Ava in the End premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in 2019 and was released on Shudder & Omeleto. Her award-winning MFA thesis, Crick in the Holler, received an Alfred P. Sloan Production Grant.