About the team
Jordana Spiro (Director, Writer) is a director, writer and actress. Her debut feature Night Comes On, which she directed and co-wrote premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018. She developed the film at the Sundance Institute’s Directors, Screenwriters, and Composers Labs, and through a Cinereach development grant. Her short Skin premiered at Sundance and won the Women In Film Productions award. Skin also won the Honorable Mention Award at SXSW, showed at Telluride, Palm Springs, and AFI among others. Jordana earned her MFA in Film from Columbia University (2015) and received the Adrienne Shelly Foundation Fellowship. As an actress she has starred in numerous films and television series and is currently acting in her 2nd season of Ozark for Netflix. She studied drama at the Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York and was selected to join the Berlinale Talent Campus in Berlin.
Angelica Nwandu (Co-Writer) is originally from Nigeria. She has traveled across the country performing Spoken Word poetry that was inspired by her 12-year experience in Foster Care. A recent graduate of Loyola Marymount University, she developed a passion for writing that has translated into music, journalism, and screenwriting. Angelica is the owner of one of the fastest growing entertainment websites, The Shade Room, for which she was just named one of Forbes 30 under 30 in Media. She is a 2014 June and May Sundance Screenwriting Fellow, as well as a 2014 Time Warner Fellow.
Jonathan Montepare (Producer) is a New York based producer with a focus on personal storytelling through director-driven collaborations. His career began in Los Angeles working for IFC on Xan Cassavetes’ documentary Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, which premiered at Cannes in 2005. After years of work as a producer’s assistant, he moved to New York to focus on his true passion: creating distinctive, story-centered work with unique voices in film. Since then Jonathan has honed his skills as both a creative and physical producer of numerous films including Xan Cassavetes’ Kiss of the Damned, Paul Bettany’s Shelter, Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior, Joshua Marston’s Complete Unknown, and Ira Sachs’ Little Men. In 2016, he co-produced Geremy Jasper’s Patti Cake$, which premiered in competition at Sundance and internationally at Cannes in Director’s Fortnight. The film was acquired by Fox Searchlight as one of the highest selling films at Sundance that year. This past year, Jonathan joined forces again with Desiree Akhavan to produce The Miseducation of Cameron Post. He also partnered with Joshua Marston as executive producer on the religious drama Come Sunday. In the spring he produced Jordana Spiro’s Sundance labs film Night Comes On. Both films (along with Night Comes On) will premiere at Sundance in 2018. Most recently he wrapped production on After Party by writer/director Ian Edelman, which is slated for release this summer on Netflix.
Alvaro R. Valente (Producer) is an Italian-Belgian producer based in the US. He has worked as a producer in theater, television and film between the U.S. and Europe for the past twelve years. His producing work has been showcased and awarded in more than 350 festivals worldwide. In addition to producing over a dozen critically acclaimed and award-winning short films, his feature credits include the German film Grey Sheep (2012), Italian-U.S. production The Fortune Theory (2013), the Icelandic-U.S. horror film Child Eater (2015), and the award-winning Turkish-U.S. film Across The Sea (2015). Alvaro earned an MFA in film producing from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Management of Entertainment from Universita Cattolica in Milan. He was selected to participate in the 2012 Atelier Ludwigsburg-Paris for Young European Producers, as well as receiving the Everest Entertainment Award for Young Producers and the Entertainment Partners Best Producer Award.
Danielle Renfrew Behrens (Producer) is the founder of Superlative Films headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. Superlative’s first release, Columbus, is the directorial debut of visual essayist Kogonada. Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich called it “one of the best films of Sundance” and The New Yorker wrote “few films glow as brightly with the gemlike fire of precocious genius”. Superlative’s second film Lucky premiered at SXSW and won the audience award at the Chicago Critics Fest. Lucky stars beloved character actor Harry Dean Stanton who gives what Variety calls “the performance of a lifetime”. Forthcoming Superlative titles include: The House Of Tomorrow with Ellen Burstyn and Nick Offerman and Humor Me with Elliott Gould and Jemaine Clement. Prior to launching Superlative, Danielle produced a handful of award winning independent films including Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck, The Queen Of Versailles, Grandma and Waitress.
Hatuey Viveros (Cinematographer) graduated from Centro de Capacitaci√≥n Cinematográfica in 2006, after which he spent his postgraduate year at ESCAC in Barcelona. He has completed workshops with Christopher Doyle, Rodrigo Prieto and Guillermo Navarro. Most notably, his work has premiered at the Cannes Film Festival (La Canci√≥n de los Niños Muertos), The Sundance Film Festival (Skin) and the MOMA Documentary Fortnight Series of 2015 (Café: Chants of Smoke). He has won numerous prizes including Best International Feature by Visions du Reel, The Kodak Film School Competition prize for Best Latin American Photography, Best Cinematography by the International Documentary Association and Mejor Opera Prima at the Guanajuato International Film Festival. His films denote the search for identity and the concept of community.