Nanci is a Brooklyn-born writer / director who began as a performer in lower Manhattan, then earned an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts on a full tuition scholarship. She's a Sundance Knight Fellow, and her previous short films (as writer / director) have screened in over 150 festivals across the world. Her latest short "I Saw What I Saw" won Best Suspense / Thriller Short at Chandler Int'l Film Festival in Jan 2024.
"I Saw What I Saw" world premiered at LA Shorts, July 2023, and is now on the Oscar-qualifying film festival circuit. The story takes place on a late-night flight where a cozy cabin becomes a nightmarish container for the lead flight attendant who saw what she saw. Nanci's work often plays within what's "real" with what isn't.
Nanci's influences are silent-era films, Luis Bunuel, Our Gang comedies, Federico Fellini, Robert Altman and Brian Di Palma.
Her TV pilot script Venus Rising is a winner with the Big Apple Film Festival Screenplay Competition (May, 2023), a Finalist with Santa Barbara International Screenplay Awards (Dec 2022), and a current Quarter-Finalist (top 10%) with The PAGE International Screenplay Competition. Her feature script THANK DOG! is a Semi-Finalist with the Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards (July, 2023), and Quarter-Finalist with The PAGE Awards (July, 2023). The script has earned multiple "8"s on BlackList, and ranks in the top 1%.
Her stories usually feature an outsider who seeks a home; a threatened person who isn't believed. The underdog who must be heard. And people stuck in strange lands. Absurd or dark comedy, suspense and drama (with a little horror) are her superpower genre. She loves mixing genre and style and believes it's where true original stories come from.