AFI Announces The Directors Selected For The AFI DWW+ Class Of 2027

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Category: Entertainment News

Published on Tuesday, 13 January 2026 18:26

Written by AFI

The American Film Institute (AFI) announced the filmmakers selected for the AFI DWW+ Class of 2027. AFI DWW+ is a tuition-free year-long directing program, that supports emerging narrative filmmakers through the production cycle of a short film.

Eligible participants' work is invited to screen for agents, managers, producers and executives in Los Angeles at the DWW+ Showcase in Spring 2027. The artists selected for the AFI DWW+ Class of 2027 are Sindha Agha, Mary Ann Anane, Arabella Anderson, Carolina Espiro, Anika Kan Grevstad, Christina YR Lim, Anna Remus and Maaman Rezaee.

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AFI also announced that award-winning filmmaker Lily Mariye (AFI DWW Class of 2000) has been named the AFI DWW+ Guest Artistic Director for the Class of 2027.

"In this moment of evolution in the film and television industry, each of these candidates demonstrated the skill and tenacity to be selected through a rigorous application process," said Susan Ruskin, Dean of the AFI Conservatory and Executive Vice President of the American Film Institute. "The 50-year legacy of AFI DWW+ leverages a powerful reinforcing network effect to support this new talented cohort of directors. We look forward to working with them over the next 15 months under the guidance of our Guest Artistic Director, Lily Mariye."

"The first time I ever called myself a director was in AFI's DWW+. Walking the halls of AFI, surrounded by the rich history of filmmakers and mentors, gave me the validation to proudly announce it to the world," said Mariye. "I am now a full-time working TV and film director. Today I am honored to be named this year's Guest Artistic Director, to help guide this next group of amazingly gifted filmmakers."

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Mariye is a Directors Guild of America Award nominee for Amazon's JUST ADD MAGIC.  She is a film and television director, best known for AMC's THE WALKING DEAD, THE TERROR: INFAMY; MGM+/Hulu's GODFATHER OF HARLEM; Paramount+'s THE GOOD FIGHT; Netflix's PARTNER TRACK; ABC's HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER; NBC's CHICAGO PD; CBS' ELSBETH; NCIS: LOS ANGELES; Fox's PRODIGAL SON, among many others. MODEL MINORITY, starring Nichole Sakura (SUPERSTORES), is Mariye's feature writing and directorial debut. MODEL MINORITY won 11 Film Festival Awards around the world, including Best Film, Best Director, Best New Actress and Best Cinematography.

Since its 2013 debut online at Hulu and Amazon, it has had over 1,000,000 views. Her short film, THE SHANGRI-LA CAFE, has shown in over 25 film festivals winning awards for Best Short Film and Best Screenplay. Mariye was named one of PBS' Up and Coming Filmmakers of Color and received the Filmmaker of the Year Award from the National Organization for Women (NOW). As a writer, she has been a top 15% finalist for both the Nicholl Fellowship and the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. Mariye is also an actor, best known for her role as nurse Lily Jarvik on the Emmy® Award-winning TV series, ER, for 15 seasons, for which she won the SAG Award for Best Ensemble in a Drama Series four times. She has appeared in many films such as EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES, THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS, THE SHADOW and THE DOCTOR. Mariye has guest starred in over 30 TV shows. She is also an award-winning theatre actress, performing in New York, Los Angeles and regional theatres across the country. Born in Las Vegas, Nevada, she graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in Theatre. Mariye resides in Los Angeles with her husband, 4-time Grammy-nominated Concord Records recording artist/saxophonist Boney James, who also contributed to the soundtracks for THE SHANGRI-LA CAFE and MODEL MINORITY.

Lily Mariye will act as a mentor for the DWW+ participants throughout the production cycle and industry showcase and oversee and direct the artistic curriculum, which is taught by film and television professionals working at top levels within the industry, as well as experienced Faculty from the AFI Conservatory.

As one of the longest-running and preeminent film and television workshops nationwide, AFI DWW+ has trained hundreds of artists whose directorial work has entertained global audiences and defined our collective cultural landscape. Distinguished Alums of the AFI DWW+ program include Maya Angelou, Anne Bancroft, Neema Barnette, Pippa Bianco, Tessa Blake, Tricia Brock, Ellen Burstyn, Rebecca Cammisa, Dyan Cannon, Dime Davis, Jan Eliasberg, Naomi Foner, Jennifer Getzinger, Lesli Linka Glatter, Lyn Goldfarb, Randa Haines, Siân Heder, Victoria Hochberg, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Matia Karrell, Maggie Kiley, Lynne Littman, Nancy Malone, Gandja Monteiro, Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, Becky Smith, Cicely Tyson and Joanne Woodward. View full list of 350+ AFI DWW Alums here.

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About the AFI DWW+ Class of 2027:

Sindha Agha

Sindha Agha is a BAFTA-winning and Emmy®-nominated director and writer. In 2018, without formal training or industry connections, Agha made her first film, a no-budget personal documentary, BIRTH CONTROL YOUR OWN ADVENTURE. The short became a New York Times Op-Doc, received over 12.5 million views, was accepted into Tribeca and nominated for an Emmy®. Agha has since been awarded two Sundance Institute fellowships, the Cannes Lions Gold Young Director Award, Best Episodic at Tribeca X, and a Special Jury Mention for Screenwriting at AFI FEST. She co-executive produced the Netflix series THE PRINCIPLES OF PLEASURE, directed the documentary anthology BODY LANGUAGE for BBC Three, and the documentary shorts EVERYTHING WRONG AND NOWHERE TO GO for ITVS and PBS and THE DESIRE TO OWN NOTHING for The New Yorker. She has guest lectured at MIT, UC Berkeley and NYU and her documentaries are included in the curricula of film programs and medical schools worldwide. She has served on the AFI FEST shorts jury and previously had three short films programmed at the festival.  Most recently, Agha wrote and directed HOW TO BE A PERSON, an anthology of shorts for Channel 4 which won a 2023 BAFTA. 

Mary Ann Anane

Mary Ann Anane is a Ghanaian-born, New Jersey-raised filmmaker. She was a 2022 San Francisco Film Rainin Grantee, a 2021 Sundance Screenwriters Lab Fellow, a 2020 Athena Feature Lab Fellow and a 2020 Film Independent's Project Involve Fellow. Her projects have been invited to the Gotham Market Project Week and have been listed on the Wscripted Cannes Screenplay List. Anane's directorial debut short film, THE DAUGHTER, premiered at the Austin Film Festival in 2025. 

Arabella Anderson

Arabella Anderson is a Peabody Award-winning and WGA Award-nominated writer/director based in Los Angeles. She has written and produced on television series including RIVERDALE (CW), STAR (Fox) and TRANSPARENT (Amazon). Anderson's work focuses on women, gender and class through the prism of genre.

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Carolina Espiro 

Carolina Espiro is a Chilean-American director whose work celebrates chasing passions and cross-cultural belonging. After earning a BFA in Theater from Chapman University, she built a 20-year career as an award-winning actor in television, film and commercials before pivoting to directing during the pandemic. 

Her narrative directorial debut, THE AVON LADY, a comedy inspired by her mother's first job in the U.S., won 12 awards and received more than 25 nominations at festivals including Oscar®-qualifying LA Shorts, and premiered on Omeleto, where it has drawn nearly 400,000 views. She most recently directed a music video for four-time Grammy Award-winning musician 

Kalani Pe'a. Carolina's directing work extends into theater where she has directed plays at Blue Sphere Alliance with seasoned television actors, as well as a staged production of "Expectations," starring Elizabeth Ho and Leonardo Nam written by Teresa Huang (ALIEN: EARTH, AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER). 

She currently owns a winery with her husband which inspired her debut feature script "The Vintner," a dark comedy set in a California vineyard. Her second feature, "Searching for Paz," is an adoptive father/daughter road comedy set in Chile. 

A proud member of the Television Academy, Alliance of Women Directors, NALIP, Women in Film and SAG-AFTRA, Carolina continues to build momentum as a director committed to creating vivid, larger-than-life stories featuring life's quiet protagonists. 

Anika Kan Grevstad 

Anika Kan Grevstad is a biracial (Chinese/White) director based in Los Angeles. Her work explores themes of isolation and belonging through a lens of genre, humor and hope.  

Her narrative and documentary shorts have screened at Oscar®-qualifying festivals nationwide, including LA Shorts, Provincetown Film Festival and LA Asian Pacific Film Festival. Her short film WHAT WE FIND IN THE SEA won Best Short Film at the Santa Fe Film Festival, and NO ONE EVER REALLY DIES received the Special Jury Award for New Voices at LAAPFF. Her documentary HELEN PASHGIAN: VISIBLE INVISIBLE was featured as an LA Times Short Doc. Her latest short, MY ONLY FRIEND IS A ROBOT NAMED BEANS, starring Midori Francis, won the Enderby Entertainment Filmmaking Fellowship at Austin Film Festival. 

Kan Grevstad has directed work for LACMA and Dropout TV and was a 2023 recipient of the Hedgebrook screenwriting residency. With a background in documentary cinematography and editing, she brings a holistic, craft-driven approach to directing. Recent credits include cinematographer and editor on LOVE, LIZZO (HBO Max) and cinematographer on THE JOB OF SONGS (DOC NYC).

Kan Grevstad is drawn to emotionally nuanced, intimate stories that center underrepresented perspectives while exploring universal themes.   

Christina YR Lim

Christina YR Lim is a Korean-American writer/director who explores fish-out-of-water, genre-bending stories often with an overachieving AAPI female at the center. Lim began in theater, then turned to filmmaking, earning her MFA in directing and screenwriting from USC. 

As a writer, Lim won SeriesFest's Women's Writing Competition, garnering her a development deal with Kyra Sedgwick's Big Swing Productions. Her feature script, "Gyopo," was selected for the Black List x Women in Film Feature Residency, and for Wscripted's Cannes Screenplay List where it was presented at Marché du Film. Her script, "Icon," was selected for EAVE's Ties That Bind, Cine Qua Non and Stowe Story Lab. 

Lim's films have been screened and awarded at multiple film festivals, including Bentonville, RiverRun, Cinequest, LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, and Catalina Film Festival. She has directed films in Shanghai and Beijing and is an alumnus of Yale's directing lab and Reykjavík International Film Festival's Talent Lab. 

Lim's first feature film as an auteur, B-SIDE: FOR TAYLOR, was distributed by Buffalo 8 and EST Studios in 2024. She then filmed a proof-of-concept for her second feature, GYOPO, as a recipient of The Black List x GM incubator fund and Panavision's New Filmmaker Grant. Objectively Good Media is producing the feature film. She recently received the Djerassi Artist Residency, and the prestigious SeriesFest x Shondaland Directing Mentorship.

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Anna Remus

Anna Remus is a director and writer drawn to stories rooted in transformation and the unseen. She grew up in the wild, frigid landscapes of International Falls, Minnesota, America's coldest city, where she first learned the power of atmosphere in storytelling through the Bible stories she heard on Sundays. After graduating from Harvard University, Anna began her career working on programs like DOWNTON ABBEY and interviewing award-winning talent, including Benedict Cumberbatch. She has since led visual storytelling projects for major brands such as Planet Fitness, Pfizer, Zulily and Apple TV+.

Her narrative work has been recognized by respected development labs and film organizations. Remus was named a runner-up in the 2020 ScriptED Writing Challenge at Sundance Film Festival and was selected for the Stowe Story Labs feature campus cohort in 2023. That same year, she was chosen as a Blackmagic Collective Producers Lab Fellow for her feature script "Shed." Remus's work explores emotional shifts within vivid, atmospheric settings, and she is drawn to the cracks where the ordinary breaks open.  

Maaman Rezaee

Maaman Rezaee is a Los Angeles-based Iranian filmmaker and writer. Her work explores memory, political inheritance, and belonging, often threaded with dark humor. Born and raised in Iran, Rezaee's early life as a political prisoner and member of a persecuted minority continues to shape the urgency and perspective of her storytelling. 

Her debut feature script "Ashes" won the 2024 Slamdance Screenwriting Competition and is in development through their mentorship program. It also advanced in major competitions including the Austin Film Festival Screenwriting Competition and NBC's Launchpad Feature Competition. 

Rezaee's latest short film EVANESCENCE won the Programmer's Award at the 2024 Virginia Film Festival and is currently on the festival circuit, screening at LA Shorts, Santa Fe International and deadCenter. Her previous shorts have been featured at BlackStar, Anthology Film Archives, the Institute of Contemporary Arts LA, and multiple international and experimental venues. 

She was recently named a fellow of the Writers Guild Foundation's Access Program and shadowed Oscar®-nominated director Steph Green on DUSTER, an HBO series created by J.J. Abrams and LaToya Morgan. Rezaee holds an MFA in Film & Digital Arts from Temple University and formerly taught as an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico. She is currently developing her first feature, ASHES.

Learn more at Conservatory.AFI.com/Innovative-Programs/. 

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About the American Film Institute (AFI)

The American Film Institute (AFI) is a nonprofit organization with a mandate to champion the moving image as an art form. Established in 1967, AFI launched the first comprehensive history of American film and sparked the movement for film preservation in the United States. In 1969, AFI opened the doors of the AFI Conservatory, a graduate-level program to train narrative filmmakers. The Conservatory, which counts Deniese Davis, Affonso Gonçalves, Susannah Grant, Matthew Libatique, David Lynch, Melina Matsoukas and Rachel Morrison as Alumni, is ranked one of the top film schools in America. AFI's enduring traditions include the AFI Life Achievement Award, which honors the masters for work that has stood the test of time; AFI AWARDS, which celebrates the creative ensembles of the most outstanding screen stories of the year; and scholarly efforts such as the AFI Catalog of Feature Films and the AFI Archive that preserve film history for future generations. AFI exhibition programs include AFI FEST and year-round exhibition at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Maryland. AFI Movie Club is a destination for movie lovers from around the world to celebrate and engage with the art form every day. Other pioneering programs include workshops aimed at elevating emerging storytellers and technology, including AFI DWW+ and the AFI Cinematography Intensive Workshop. Read about all of these programs and more at AFI.com and follow us on social media at Facebook.com/AmericanFilmInstitute, YouTube.com/AFI, X.com/AmericanFilm, 

TikTok.com/@americanfilminstitute and Instagram.com/AmericanFilmInstitute.

About the AFI Conservatory

The AFI Conservatory opened its doors in 1969 to an inaugural class that included Terrence Malick, Caleb Deschanel and Paul Schrader. Today, the Conservatory offers a two-year MFA degree in six filmmaking disciplines: Cinematography, Directing, Editing, Producing, Production Design and Screenwriting. In a collaborative production environment, AFI Fellows learn to master the art of storytelling, collectively creating up to 175 films a year. Fellows actively participate in the entire life cycle of a film, from development through production and exhibition.

Alumni of this elite program, ranging from modern masters to bold new voices defining the state of the art form, include Andrea Arnold, Darren Aronofsky, Ari Aster, Deniese Davis, Sam Esmail, Brad Falchuk, Affonso Gonçalves, Susannah Grant, Liz Hannah, Patty Jenkins, Janusz Kamiński, Matthew Libatique, David Lynch, Melina Matsoukas, Polly Morgan, Rachel Morrison and Wally Pfister, among others.