NBFF Shorts (Block 2)

Bimpé Fageyinbo

Director, 'boju weyín'

Bimpé Fageyinbo is a Nigerian artist—a poet, filmmaker, and photographer. Her current work utilizes poetry, film, prose, and documentary photography to answer our deepest and most profound inner questions, exploring issues related to love, race, identity, faith, and gender.Fageyinbo is the author of two books of poetry, so maybe that’s the bee’s weakness (2010) and what was me (2017). Her recent contributing work includes, A Womb of Violet Volume II: Blackness, Resistance, and Being (2021), and A Womb of Violet: An Anthology (2019), archived in collections at The Metropolitan Museum of Art Library, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Library of Congress. Fageyinbo’s first narrative short film, boju weyín (2022), is a poetic memoir using experimental storytelling techniques to explore love, heartbreak, and grief. boju weyín has received multiple Official Selections and won Honorable Mention for Best Narrative Film at the Los Angeles Film Awards.

David F. Fortune

Director, 'Us'

David F. Fortune, a graduate of Morehouse College (B.A) and Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film and Television (M.F.A), finds power in normalizing the themes of compassion and intimacy set in inner-city communities.

Over the years, David has participated in a plethora of directing fellowships such as the Village Roadshow Emerging Talent Program, ViacomCBS – ViewFinders Emerging Directors Program, Loyola Marymount University Incubator Lab, Indeed/Hillman Grad’s Rising Voices Directing Program and was named the winner of the Netflix Content Creator’s Program for his film “Us” .

In addition to these accolades, David finished as a finalist under The Wrap’s Shortlist for his film, Z – MAN, and was named the winner of the Urbanworld Film Festival’s Young Creators Showcase, for his dramatic short, Laced. As a writer/director, David desires to shed a glimmer of hope to communities hidden in darkness through the art of visual storytelling and cinema.

Rashad Frett

Director, 'Ricky'

Rashad Frett is an Award-Winning Caribbean American Filmmaker based in NYC. He pursued the arts seriously after experiencing 9/11 as a Combat Medic in the U.S. Army. At that time, creating a positive social impact through the power of media became his passion. Frett is a recent MFA graduate of the Prestigious NYU Tisch Graduate Film Program.

His dedication to the craft has earned him many awards including a BAFTA – HBO scholarship, a Martin Scorsese Young Filmmakers scholarship, a DGA Student Film Award Winner, a BET Blackhouse Foundation Fellow at Sundance, a Prestigious King Wasserman Award Winner at NYU’s First Run film festival, a National Grand Prize Winner of Gentleman Jack’s Real to Reel film competition with Omari Hardwick, a Spike Lee Production Fellowship, the first Cary Fukunaga Production Fund Recipient, as well as being selected for the Ryan Murphy’s HALF Initiative Director Shadowing program. His recent film “Ricky” had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Frett is also apart of the 2023 Sundance Feature Film Program as a Screenwriters Lab and Directors Lab Fellow.

Additionally, his work has screened in Prestigious festivals including SXSW, Berlinale, and American Black Film Festival. His work has also aired on Showtime, The Stephen Colbert Show, NPR Tiny Desk, Tidal, and his team was featured in Rolling Stone magazine.

Frett is currently in development of his first feature film, Ricky. He is represented by WME.

Megan “Megz” Trufant Tillman

Director, 'Little Trumpet'

Megan “Megz” Trufant Tillman is a writer-creative-musician with Southern roots – a Katrina baby hailing from New Orleans, Louisiana – a storyteller with more than just words. Her works include episodic pilot and runner-up in the 2019 New Orleans Film Festival Screenplay Competition, ALL FRONTS and short film little trumpet. Megz currently serves as a creative director for various artistic projects, co-founder and one half of jazz/neosoul/hip hop outfit Magna Carda, and founder and editor of WATER, a Black literary and arts magazine. She most recently served as script consultant and writer on the music video for Oscar-winning song “Fight For You” by H.E.R. and Amazon’s H.E.R. Prime Day episode. Her creative work centers Black life and culture as well as the Black South.