Tracie Laymon

Named to IFC's "Icons and Film Innovators", Tracie Laymon is an independent writer and director hailing from Houston and Austin, Texas. Tracie moved to Russia at 14 and attended the American School of Moscow. Back in Houston, she was accepted into the magnet program at Bellaire Foreign Language Academy, focusing on Russian language studies, and later returned to Moscow as a foreign exchange student. At 17, she survived a near-fatal accident and learned to walk again through an extended period of intense rehabilitation. While studying at the University of Texas, Tracie interned for Richard Linklater's company Detour Film ("Boyhood", "Dazed and Confused"), worked as a photographer and video journalist for Time Warner News, and directed multiple short films and award-winning music videos in the Austin area. Tracie's directorial projects have won jury awards at SXSW and many other festivals and competitions. She received a grant to make a segment of the women's anthology film "Girls!Girls!Girls!", starring Elaine Hendrix and Octavia Spencer, and won the Jury Award for Short Film of the Year from the Women's Image Network. Her original scripted material has also won multiple awards, including Best Screenplay at the LA Comedy Festival. Tracie directed the the first half hour series for Hulu "Goodnight Burbank", featuring Dominic Monaghan, which was further acquired by Mark Cuban for HDNet. She also wrote and directed "Mixed Signals", which premiered at Oscar-qualifying LA Shorts in 2018 and won her multiple awards for Best Director in 2018 and 2019 (Women Texas Film Festival, Independent Shorts Awards, and The Method Fest in Beverly Hills.) Tracie recently directed a comedic and dramatic proof of concept project for Tess Allen's "Matched" and shadowed as observing director on Showtime's "Shameless". She taught animation for several organizations including Ghetto Film School and live action filmmaking on the Stanford and Berkeley campuses. She is also a passionate advocate for the casting of disabled actors and representation of disabled characters on screen.