Two Films by Alumni Premiere on Netflix Film Club's YouTube Channel

Black Prom, a short film produced by alumna Avril Speaks '03 and Home, a short film written and directed by alumna Ellie Foumbi '17, are now available to watch on the Netflix Film Club channel on YouTube as part of a showcase co-presented by Netflix and Film Independent. The program funded short films from five promising independent Black filmmakers specifically designed to premiere on the Netflix Film Club channel. 

In Black Prom, a Black girl’s dreams of going to the prom are disrupted when she and her boyfriend are faced with a hostile police encounter. You can watch the film here.

Speaks also recently produced African America, a feature film that recently screened at the Pan African Film + Arts Festival where it was nominated for the Best First Feature Award. In the film, a cynical South African steals money from her workplace and leaves her fiancé to pursue her misguided dream of being a Broadway star in New York City, only to find that there is no place like home.

Foumbi’s film Home can be watched here. In it, moving is always hard, especially when the new neighborhood turns against you. 

Avril Z. Speaks is a producer, director and film educator based in Los Angeles. She produced the film Jinn, which premiered in the Narrative Competition at SXSW (2018) and won Special Jury Recognition for Writing. Since then, Speaks has produced several films including Hosea and the South African drama African America. She was also an Associate Producer on the TNT docu-series American Race in 2018 and worked as a Production Manager for Scripted Programming at BET Networks. She is currently in production on the comedy Dotty & Soul, starring Leslie Uggams, Gary Owen and Margot Bingham. Speaks has been selected for producing labs with Film Independent, Sundance, IFP, Rotterdam, and Cannes, and she is a 2020 Sundance Momentum Fellow and a Blackhouse Producers Lab Fellow.

Ellie Foumbi is an actor, writer and director from Cameroon. Her films have screened at several international film festivals, placing in the Student Academy Awards Semifinals and garnering a nomination for an African Movie Academy Award. She was invited to participate in New York Film Festival’s prestigious Artist Academy. Foumbi’s projects have been supported by the Venice Biennale College-Cinema, SFFILM Kenneth Rainin Foundation, IFP’s No Borders Project Forum, Film Independent Screenwriting Lab, and Tribeca Film Institute's Untold Stories. She made her TV directorial debut on BET’s hip-hop anthology, Tales. Her first feature film, Our Father, the Devil, will be presented at the 78th Venice International Film Festival. She’s a member of the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America.