ABOUT
Contessa Gayles is an award-winning film director, writer, DP, editor and an Emmy-nominated producer. She tells stories about community, coming-of-age, Black liberation and the radical imagination.
Contessa’s critically acclaimed feature documentary-visual album, Songs from the Hole, world premiered at SXSW 2024, where it won the Audience Award, Visions category. The film has gone on to earn many accolades, including the 2024 Jury Prize for Best Documentary Feature at the BlackStar Film Festival, an IDA Award nomination for Best Music Documentary, and the 2025 Cinema Eye Honors Heterodox Award.
Contessa premiered The Debutantes (Xumo) at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival in documentary competition and her documentary short, Founder Girls (BET), premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival.
Contessa’s work has been supported by Impact Partners, Field of Vision, Sundance Institute, International Documentary Association, Artemis Rising Foundation, California Arts Council, DeNovo Initiative, Queen Latifah’s Queen Collective, and more. She was an SFFILM filmmaker in residence and has been awarded fellowships with Concordia, the Film Independent/Netflix Amplifier fellowship, the Bay Area Video Coalition MediaMaker fellowship, the Firelight Documentary Lab, the Chicken & Egg (Egg)celerator Lab and the Open Society Foundations Soros Justice fellowship. She was named to DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 list.
Previously, she was on staff at CNN, where she directed, produced, shot and edited award-winning original series and documentaries, including the feature documentary, The Feminist on Cellblock Y.
CONTACT
Artist Management
Alexis Galfas, Cinetic Media: alexisg@cineticmedia.com