Olive And Mocha

Director/writer Suzi Yoonessi‘s award-winning first feature film Dear Lemon Lima premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival where it received an award for Outstanding Performance.  The film went on to receive the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the Woodstock Film Festival and Anchorage Film Festival, the Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature Film at the San Francisco Asian Film Festival and several other international awards, including the Miloš Macourek Award at the 50th Zlin Film Festival in the Czech Republic.  The film is currently traveling through the festival circuit at internationally and domestically renowned festivals included BFI’s London International Film Festival, the Rome International Film Festival and the São Paulo International Film Festival. The film was developed with the support of an ITVS Feature Development Grant, a FIND Kodak Grant and a Tribeca Film Institute post-production grant. Dear Lemon Lima’s theatrical release is Fall 2010 by distributor Phase 4.

Yoonessi’s award-winning short film Dear Lemon Lima received a Jerome Foundation NYC Media Arts Grant and an All Roads Foundation grant.  The film has played internationally in over 70 festivals including the Tribeca Film Festival, Hamptons International Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Festival.   The feature version of Dear Lemon Lima was recognized by the Film Independent Screenwriters, Directors and Producers Labs and Tribeca All Access Connects. Shorts International is distributing the film and Vanguard Cinema distributes Yoonessi’s previous short film “No Shoulder” that premiered at The Palm Beach International Shorts Film Festival.

Yoonessi received a Jerome Foundation Grant for “Vern” (2004), which she wrote, directed, and produced. “Vern” was a finalist for the Roy W. Dean Foundation Grant, is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and is distributed by the National Film Network.

Yoonessi associate produced the Cannes and Sundance award-winning Me And You And Everyone We Know, written and directed by Miranda July, for IFC Films & Film Four (UK).

Yoonessi received her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute, and her MFA from Columbia University where she was a recipient of the FMI Directing Fellowship and she is currently in production on The Spring of Sorrow for ITVS series Futurestates.

Suzi Yoonessi’s director reel: