Frank Mosley

Frank Mosley is a Texas-born artist living in Los Angeles. He's a fellow of the 2015 Berlinale Talents, 2017 NYFF Artist Academy, and 2016 Workshop for Auteurs led by Abbas Kiarostami in Cuba. Under the direction of Charles Burnett, he also participated as an actor in the 2016 Austin Film Society Artist Intensive. He can be seen in feature films such as Upstream Color (2013 Sundance Jury Prize Winner, Berlinale, New Directors/New Films), Chained for Life (2018 BAMcinemaFest, NYTimes Critics Pick, Kino Lorber release), Dear Mr. Brody (2020 Telluride, Tribeca), Thunder Road (2018 SXSW Grand Prize Winner, ACID Cannes), Person to Person (Magnolia Pictures release), Americana (2016 SIFF, Fantasia), Collective:Unconscious (2016 SXSW), and The Ghost Who Walks (Netflix), for which he received the U.S. IN PROGRESS prize at the 2018 Champs-Elysees Film Festival in Paris. For his leading role in Some Beasts, he won an Independent Visions Special Jury Prize for Outstanding Performance at the 2016 Sarasota Film Festival and was listed as "one of the best male performances of 2017... a subtle showcase of expressions and body language" (Film Pulse). His recent work in Freeland (2020 SXSW, SFFILM) has been called "excellent...compellingly slippery" (The Hollywood Reporter), "a strong supporting performance" (Variety), "effortless and natural... his depth adds richness to the film's world" (The Seventh Row), and that he's a "dependably fantastic American indie mainstay" (Filmmaker Magazine). He's also appeared in such short films as The Procedure (2016 Sundance Jury Prize for U.S. Short Fiction), The Bulb (2016 Slamdance), Don't Ever Change (2018 Fantasia), Innards (2017 BAMcinemaFest), and Cork's Cattlebaron (Vimeo Staff Pick). As a director, his films and video installations have been exhibited at venues such as the Slamdance Film Festival, Champs-Elysees Film Festival, Dallas Museum of Art, Northwest Film Forum, Anthology Film Archives, Maryland Film Festival, Cucalorus Film Festival, Marfa Film Festival, Sarasota Film Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival, Sidewalk Film Festival, Aesthetica Short Film Festival, and on MUBI, Fandor, NoBudge, and PBS. James Slaymaker of Vague Visages wrote: "The short films of Frank Mosley are miracles of economy. Finely observed, conceptually audacious and formally assured, Mosley's filmmaking reflects a remarkable maturity and ambition rarely exhibited in the contemporary landscape of low-budget American cinema. Mosley is a major cinematic voice." Her Wilderness, Frank's 2014 interactive film more than a decade in the making, has been called "a truly unique work with a distinctive voice" (Indiewire), "a mesmerizing film by a superb actor and filmmaker" (RogerEbert.com), "a beguiling experience... by an indie hard-hitter" (The Playlist), "and "the best experimental narrative of the year...at once alien and achingly resonant" (Indie Outlook). In summer 2018, The Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn, NYC presented A Fortnight With Frank Mosley, his first retrospective. In their program notes on his work, Spectacle wrote: "His fascination with matters of identity, memory, and temporality bleed through every frame of his films - few directors working today can touch Mosley's narrative and media savvy." In 2020, Kinoscope acquired the entirety of Mosley's directorial efforts and released an online retrospective entitled, Frank Mosley: Actor, Director, Adventurer.