P.J. Marcellino is an award-winning Cape Verdean-Canadian producer and director.

He is the founder of Toronto-based production company Anatomy of Restlessness Films and the Head of Development and Strategy at Baobab Film Collective — a 5-company ensemble developing and co-producing socio-politically driven premium dramas with African and Afro-diasporic lenses, visual grammars, and narrative styles.

P.J. started out as a journalist, and worked as a researcher and senior policy advisor with international political agencies, travelling around the world before he finally pivoted to filmmaking. Career highlights include his debut film, After the War: Memoirs of Exile (2014) and his award-winning music feature documentary When They Awake (2017).

More recently, he founded Baobab Film Collective, whose 2021-2022 pipeline includes 3 African Political Thriller/Noir/SciFi shows: Kwame, Heirloom, and Solomon & The Machine (featured at Durban Talents 2020 as The Leviathan). Outside the collective, he is taking a first stab at narrative screenwriting in the limited series Black Mangrove, in pre-production with France’s Rumble Fish (Oscar-winner A Fantastic Woman). In the documentary space, he is in pre-production for the upcoming 8-episode docuseries Terra Múzika, exploring music, politics, and identity in his native Cape Verde Islands and the diaspora. The series is directed by himself and 7 other young directors in the Cape Verdean New Wave — most of whom women/non-binary. On the longer term, he's developing the feature documentary The Whalers along with Inuit Co-Director Jerri Thrasher (The Last Walk, Food For The Rest of Us) and Afro-Indigenous Story Producer Adeline Bird (IndigiThreads).

During the pandemic, he co-founded FUTURE NOW!, an Afro-centric e-conference, online platform, and open-source industry resource connecting creative professionals in 30 countries, incl. Canada, Brazil, and various African nations.

P.J. holds degrees in International Relations, International Politics, and International Development. He is a graduate of Seneca College’s Documentary Filmmaking Institute and WIFTo/Bell Media's 2020 Media Leadership Program at Schulich School of Business. He's the recipient of Presence Autochtone 2018's 2nd Rigoberta Menchú Social Award.

P.J. is a unionized director with the Directors Guild of Canada, where he represents the Directors Caucus in the Diversity & Inclusion Committee. As a producer, he is affiliated with the Canadian Media Producers Association. He is also a member of the Canadian Academy, DOC Canada, the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto, Women in Film and TV, and the Cape Verdean Film Association.