WHO WE ARE
FOUNDERS
SIDY KA
Co-Founder
Senegalese-American Sidy Ka split his childhood between Senegal and Auburn, graduating from Auburn High and attending both SCAD and Southern Union in Film Studies. Favorite directors include Jordan Peele, Donald Glover, Tyler the Creator (general greatness), Rick Famuyiwa, Hiyo Miyazaki, Bong June Ho, Yoko Taro, Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), and anything from the French New Wave. Sidy was recently accepted for the 2023 Cannes Film Festival's Film and Business Program, and is committed to developing the next wave of young black filmmakers.
HEIDI ANNETTE CARROLL
Co-Founder
Heidi Carroll received a Master's from UGA in Athens, GA and Michener Fellowship in Screenwriting from the University of Texas in Austin. Carroll's first script was produced by JAZZ Pictures on a budget of $3,000,000, and premiered at the 1997 L.A. Independent Film Festival with all rights purchased by Miramax. Carroll was awarded a 1998 production grant from the Texas Filmmaker's Production Fund for animated short MUTANT-GIRL. Her screenplay CONGRATULATIONS, MACK AND RITA was a finalist for IFP-New York's Heathcote Artist's Fellowship for Screenwriters. Carroll's script THEFT, based on a novel by Swedish author Lars Gustaffson, was selected by IFP's 2007 Emerging Narratives Program and is currently represented by Verlag der Autoren of Frankfurt, Germany. Her most recent script, SPREAD THE ALARM was selected for second round of the 2010 Writer's Lab at Sundance, and voted Semi-Finalist at both the Austin Film Festival as well as Gordy Hoffman's Bluecat Screenplay Competition. Carroll's work was part of L.A. Gallery La Cienegas' Projects exhibit LANDSCAPE MEMORIES REVISTED which included noted British artist Georgina Starr. Carroll is currently collaborating with writer Dean Bonner on a script entitled TAR NATION, which placed quarterfinalist in the 2019 Austin Film Festival.
DEAN BONNER
Co-Founder
Dean Bonner was born and raised in rural Georgia, leaving the tarpaper shacks for a long military career with the U.S. Coast Guard. Bonner was a 2013 winner in Alabama’s largest writing competition, the Alabama Literary Competition of the Alabama Writers' Conclave for nonfiction entry Seeking Asylum - an account of a visit with his mother in the Milledgeville State Asylum for Women while still a young child. Bonner’s poetry has been published in numerous collections; he has written for for The Alexander City Outlook, Dadeville Record, Lake Magazine, Lake Martin Living, and The Lafayette Sun.
Bonner’s first full length collection entitled I Talk Slower Than I Think was the basis for an original pilot screenplay entitled TAR NATION, which Bonner co-wrote with writer Heidi Carroll. TAR NATION placed quarterfinalist in the 2019 Austin Film Festival, and Bonner is currently preparing a second collection entitled Miner Indiscretions and Other Family Stories for publication in 2023.