Melissa Haizlip

Melissa Haizlip is an award-winning filmmaker born in Boston, MA and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands, New York and Connecticut, where she went to Yale University. Her work responds to pressing social issues at the intersection of racial justice, social justice, activism, and representation. Female transformation and empowerment are at the core of all of her ideas, with the goal being to advocate and amplify the voices of women and people of color. Melissa's feature documentary, Mr. Soul! (2018) was shortlisted for the 93rd Academy Awards for Best Original Song. The film won the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Writing in a Documentary (Television or Motion Picture), the 2020 Critics Choice Award for Best First Documentary Feature, and received two additional NAACP Image Awards nominations and four additional Critics Choice nominations, including Best Feature Documentary for each. The film was nominated for the 2021 Cinema Eye Honors for Outstanding Debut Feature. In 2019 Mr. So