Stay Awake

Alana de Freitas is an Australian-born actress/writer/producer/director based in Los Angeles. With a background in people leading and project management in the corporate sector, and being Six Sigma trained, Alana gained the transferrable skills required to successfully move into producing. In 2017 she founded her production company, ADF Productions.

She produced the short film, ‘Infidelity’ in early 2017 which was also her narrative writing debut. The film centers on a group of three friends who gather for their weekly ritual of watching The Bachelor. Their conversation turns to the topic of cheating, and what began as a friendly catch-up, becomes a heated argument about who really holds the blame. The film was selected as a finalist for Los Angeles CineFest.

Prior to this, Alana had produced numerous narrative short films in addition to a 12-episode internet lifestyle program, ‘LifeFunk TV’, that focused on reviewing bars and restaurants, and interviewing up-and-coming fashion designers.

‘Before the Dawn’ was de Freitas’ first feature-length screenplay, and she also produced and starred in the film. The film details a forbidden relationship between a teacher and a student and explores the factors that could drive these two together. ‘Before the Dawn’ is available on Amazon Prime, Tubi, YouTube Movies, Roku and Google Play. ‘Before the Dawn’ has collected 18 festival laurels, including two Best Picture wins and a Best Producer award. The film was also awarded the ReFrame Stamp by the Sundance Institute and Women in Film for its gender parity both in front of and behind the camera.

In 2018, Alana wrote and produced a short film called ‘Nancy’, which also marked her directorial debut. The film follows the journey of a father who is struggling to come to terms with his son coming out as gay. He is forced to examine his own ingrained language and behaviors in order to salvage the relationship with his son. ‘Nancy’ has accumulated 11 festival laurels (and counting), including the Grand Jury Prize for Best Dramatic Short Film at the Sherman Oaks Film Festival, and Festival Favorite at the Cinema Diverse Film Festival in Palm Springs.

Alana has spent the past 18 months surveying an interviewing hundreds of sexual assault survivors for the documentary she has in development. ‘#WhyIDidntReport’ addresses the ‘why now’ dialogue in order to gain an understanding of the full gamut of repercussions that have been silencing survivors – until now.

Also in development is Alana’s screenplay, ‘Stay Awake’, a supernatural horror/thriller feature that follows 16-year-old Cree Reynolds, who begins having dreams of her own brutal murder, only to discover other local girls begin popping up murdered in the exact same way. Cree finds herself in a race against time to discover who the killer is before she herself becomes the primary suspect of the investigation. ‘Stay Awake’ was a semi-finalist at Los Angeles CineFest and a quarterfinalist in the Screencraft Horror Screenplay Competition.

Most recently, Alana was selected by the Women’s Weekend Film Challenge to produce a short film over the course of a weekend. ‘For Life’ was made by an entirely female-identifying cast and crew and explores the endurance of female friendships. The film has just completed post-production is about to begin its journey on the festival circuit.

As an actress, Alana has a horror feature film, ‘Bashira’, due for release in 2020. The film, directed by Academy Award winner, Nickson Fong, is a hallucinogenic nightmare centred around an ancient Japanese entity that wreaks havoc and death on the family it had cursed.
She will also star alongside Michael Madsen and Angie Everhart in the comedy feature, ‘Cash Collectors’, when production resumes, post COVID-19.