Visiting Filmmakers Series Online: Roberta Marie Munroe, producer, director, author

Tuesday, April 21, 2020 4:30 PM EDT
Online Location

Roberta Marie Munroe has produced and/or directed over 30 award-winning short films and several features for companies such as Fox Searchlight, AT&T and the United Nations (UNFPA), that have played at festivals worldwide, (Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW and Tokyo Short Film Festival), won many “Best Of” awards, and/or enjoyed a theatrical release and television broadcast.

Her latest project, Detox, stars Marcus Henderson, Chiké Okonkwo, Angel Parker, and Brian Michael Smith and its pilot episode is in post-production. Recently, Munroe was tapped to produce Confessions, a short form episodic series created by Evette Vargas. She is also the co-host of Ms. Vargas’ Writers Room 5050 Director’s Chair 10 week workshop with a focus on BIPOC, women, and the LGBTQ community, who are offered to the opportunity to write and direct their own episode.

Roberta is writing and directing an episode titled, Tracey M. Munroe also produced a series of films with for the 2017 AT&T Hello Lab Mentorship Program: an emerging filmmaker partnership where she was a creative mentor alongside Octavia Spencer, Shelby Stone (Freedom Road Productions), Common, Rick Famuyiwa (Dope) and James Lopez (Will Packer) and she also moderated their BFF Summit 2017 panel: Sending The Elevator Back Down, and The Blackhouse @Sundance 2018 panel, Hustle, Strategy & Perseverance: Make It Permanent.

One of the projects, The Lost, won an Artios Award for Best Short Film casting (Lessall Casting). Ms. Munroe is the author of How Not To Make A Short Film: Secrets From A Sundance Programmer, (Hyperion 2009), which has been translated in several languages including Chinese, Korean and Spanish. Her latest book, How Not To Sign A Film Contract: Know What You’re Saying Yes To, provides indie filmmakers with an overview of film industry contractual law.

Roberta is a Co-Founder of The Blackhouse, an educational and celebration space for Black filmmakers and their supporters at Sundance, and the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

As a film festival consultant & programmer, Roberta spent 5 years programming film for the Sundance Film Festival helping to launch the careers of Aurora Guerrero (OWN’s Queen Sugar), Cary Fukunaga (True Detective, Beast Of No Nation), the Duplass Brothers (Togetherness, Room 104), Tiffany Shlain (The Tribe, Connected), Taika Waititi (Jo Jo Rabbit, Hunt For The Wilderbeast, Thor), and many others. In addition, she has programmed films at IFP New York (No Borders co-production section), Tampa LGBT Film Festival, Sundance, and the Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF). She was Sales & Industry Theatre Manager at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and Managing Director of the Niagara International Film Festival (NIFF – Niagara on the Lake).