About the team
Phillip Youmans (Writer/Director) is a filmmaker from New Orleans. At 19, Phillip became the youngest and first African-American director to win the Founder’s Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival for his feature-length debut, Burning Cane, which he wrote, directed, shot, and edited during his final years of high school. Phillip is also the youngest director to ever have a feature film compete at the Tribeca Film Festival. Distributed by Ava Duvernay’s Array Releasing, Burning Cane opened in select theaters on October 25th, 2019 and was released on Netflix via Array on November 6th, 2019. Recently, Phillip was nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Director and a Film Independent Spirit Award for his work on the film.
Stephen “Dr” Love (Producer) “A country boy with big city hustle.” A graduate of USC’s Peter Stark Producing Program and Morehouse College, Stephen career started after producing The Land, directed by Steven Caple Jr. (Creed 2), which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released by IFC Films before landing on Netflix. Between films, Stephen produces award-winning advertising campaigns such as Boost Mobile’s Boost Your Voice and P&G’s The Talk, which won an Emmy in 2018. After which, Stephen co-founded THE INVISIBLE COLLECTIVE, to usher diverse directors into the advertising industry. Stephen’s Film/TV production company, MADE WITH LOVE MEDIA, set up several studio films in 2019 including Shadow Force (Lionsgate), They Cloned Tyrone (Netflix), Assisted Living (Paramount), and Notes From A Young Black Chef (A24). The company now has a first-look deal with Lionsgate, making Stephen one of the youngest producers with a studio deal.