Emilija Gasic

Emilija Gasic is an award-winning Serbian filmmaker born in Yugoslavia, now residing in New York City. She graduated with an MFA in Cinematography from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and holds a BFA in Film Directing from the Academy of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. Emilija grew up in a small Serbian town in the 90s against a background of news reports on war, a dying country and the sense of uncertainty which deeply affected her sensibility in arts and formed her observant style in creating tension and atmosphere in her films. Her short films have had successful festival runs, with her most recent directorial work The Wait screening at one of the oldest short film festivals in United States - 68th Columbus International Film & Animation Festival in Ohio. The Wait also won Best Serbian film at JSFF in 2019 and a Silver Film Award at Europe Asia Festival of Cinema in 2020. Emilija participated in many film workshops and talent labs all over the world, most notably EICAR in Paris, PFS in Prague as well as Transatlantic Talent Lab at RIFF in Reykjavik as one of the 35 filmmakers selected from around the world. She was a runner and coordinator of a film festival "Cinema Zone" for two years, within the international music event Lovefest in Serbia. As a cinematographer, Emilija is passionate for working on film and does a lot of film photography, experimenting with different formats. She has shot films in USA, France, Norway and Czech Republic and is a Nikon Storytellers Award recipient. Emilija is the co-founder of Istok Films with Alex Wiske. She is working on her first animated film The Pit as well as developing her first feature film 78 days.