Join established Hollywood and international film and television industry professionals to learn about the four major stages of a film’s lifecycle: from writing the script, to producing and packaging it, directing, releasing and marketing. Hosted by Entertainment Executive and FMS alum Paul Davidson, and Director-Producer-Writer and former FMS Professor, Fatimah Tobing Rony, this series is open to UCI students, faculty, and staff.
Join us for the fifth event in this series, where we discuss releasing/marketing a movie with Elissa Federoff (President of Theatrical Distribution for NEON, including ANORA)
UCI students who register and participate in all five events will be eligible for a special alumni gift and will receive a certificate for completing the workshop, “From Script to Screen.”
About Elissa Federoff:
Elissa Federoff is the President of Theatrical Distribution for NEON and has been with the company since its inception in January 2017. Federoff oversees the company’s release strategy across all its titles, positioning NEON as a major theatrical player within both commercial chains and art circuits. Federoff previously held stints at The Orchard, boutique label RADiUS, Oscilloscope Laboratories, and Lionsgate. Federoff has been critical to NEON’s success since its launch. Under her leadership, NEON has continued to make history with 33 Academy Award® nominations and 6 wins, including Best Picture for Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, which grossed over $53 million at the box office and became the third highest-grossing foreign-language film ever released in the US. Further releases under Federoff include Michael Mohan’s Immaculate, starring Sydney Sweeney, which broke the record for NEON’s highest-grossing opening weekend at the box office and remained in the top ten for three weeks, grossing $16M+; Academy Award®-winner Anatomy of a Fall from Justine Triet, which became a critic’s darling and commercial hit after winning the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 2023, going on to become the highest-grossing specialized foreign-language release post-COVID; and Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, which grossed over $3.6M during its limited theatrical run and scored an Oscar® nomination for Best International Film. This Summer Federoff released LONGLEGS from filmmaker, Oz Perkins, which has gone on to make $75MM at the domestic box and is NEON’s highest grossing film of all time. Most recently Federoff released Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winning ANORA, which has been lauded by critics and audiences as the Best Film of Year.
About Paul Davidson:
Paul Davidson (1995) is an Entertainment executive who has over twenty years working in Film and TV development, production, acquisition, distribution and marketing. Most recently, Davidson led IDW Entertainment’s TV & Film division, producing series like Netflix’s Locke & Key, Apple TV+’s Surfside Girls and CBC’s Essex County. Prior to that, Davidson ran The Orchard’s film and TV division, growing the company into a robust independent film distribution studio. Under his leadership, The Orchard netted multiple Oscar nominations (Life, Animated and Cartel Land) and released well-known favorites like What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, American Animals, The Overnight and more. Prior to The Orchard, Paul ran Microsoft’s global digital entertainment service — Xbox Video. Paul is also the author of four books, including Company of Foos (2023), The Small Stuff (2022), Consumer Joe and The Lost Blogs.
About Fatimah Tobing Rony:
Fatimah Tobing Rony was a Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Irvine for 26 years. She left teaching in June of 2024, to focus on producing, directing, and writing her feature animation film La Javanaise (in English: Ananda) in France with the producer Sébastien Onomo of Special Touch Studios and the producer Nia Dinata of Indonesia. Fatimah is the producer, director, and writer of the award-winning short film Annah la Javanaise (2020), an Official Selection of the Annecy Film Festival in June of 2020, and winner of fifteen international film awards including Best Short Film at the 2021 Anifilm Festival (Liberec, Czech Republic) and the 2021 Pixelatl Festival of Animation (Cuernavaca, Mexico). She received her Master of Fine Arts in Film (Directing/Production) from UCLA and her PhD in the History of Art from Yale University. She has directed and written several films, including the short On Cannibalism and the feature film Perempuan Punya Cerita (Chants of Lotus), which she co-directed with Nia Dinata, Upi, and Lasya Susatyo, and which was produced by Nia Dinata. She is the author of two books: The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle and How Do We Look ? Resisting Visual Biopolitics. The latter book tells the story of Annah la Javanaise, upon which her current film project is based.