Director/Writer
Island Girl Films
Mary Lyn Chambers
Mary-Lyn Chambers is an award-winning filmmaker born in Fiji and raised in New Zealand. She is a directing Fellow in both the Sony Pictures Television Diverse Directors Program and Film Independent's diversity mentorship program, Project Involve. She is a current participant in the Alliance of Women Directors in-house shadow program. Her short film exploring child refugees in US detention centers, Debris (Escombros), screened in three programs during the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and traveled to festivals in Canada, Iran, the US, and the UK. The film won several awards including “Best International Short” at the Manchester International Film Festival, “Best Dramatic Short” from the 2016 Alliance of Women in Media Genii Awards, and “Best Female Director” at the Hollyshorts Film Festival. Her award-winning pilot, The Plural of Blood, about a mixed-race police couple, had a robust festival run and can now be found on Amazon Prime. Tijuana, her second Spanish-language project, and her first-period piece had its world premiere at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival. She is currently developing her first feature film set in New Zealand and is known for hiring women and minorities in the majority leadership roles on her crews while tackling stories in the social justice/effecting-change space. She worked for a decade for the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Independent Spirit Awards.