Melonie Gartner

Melonie was born in Saigon and raised in Chicago. As a movie buff living in Chicago, Roger Ebert played a big part in her life. His influence on her taste in movies carries on to this day. Besides loving movies, Melonie also loves to be around creative energy. When there was a casting call for M*A*S*H at the local theatre group, and upon the insistence of a friend, she went to audition - in spite of stage fright. To her surprise, she got a call from the director after the audition and was offered the part of an old Korean lady in the play. It was Melonie's acting debut, and, as they say, the rest is history. She loves to be a part of this theatre group among all artistic people. That creative side always had Melonie daydream about making movies. While living in Seattle in 2007, she wrote her first short originally titled Breathing Underwater. The idea for the script came about when she wanted to make a low-budget film. The script went through many obstacles and evolved over the years. In early 2014, right around the time when she found her perfect Dirke, Mark Borchardt, several more layers were added to the script. After much thought, Melonie decided to change the title of her first short film to Two Rivers, the name of the beautiful place where she was living in. She couldn't have been more pleased with the outpour of love and support from the people in Two Rivers who were intrigued to have a movie named after their city.