Amma Asante, MBE is a multi-award winning writer and director who won a BAFTA for her first film, A Way of Life. This made Asante the first Black female director to win a BAFTA Film Award for writing and directing a film. Her next film, Belle, drew widespread critical acclaim, and saw Asante named one of CNN’s Leading Women of 2014, as well as being named by Variety as one of their 10 Directors to watch. In 2016, her film A United Kingdom was released and its European Premiere saw Asante celebrated as the first Black female director to open the BFI London Film Festival in its 60-year history. This year Asante was named an MBE by Queen Elizabeth on the 2017 Birthday Honour’s list, for services to film as a writer and director. Asante is currently in post-production on her next film, Where Hands Touch. The film, inspired by historical events, is set in 1944 Germany and follows the plight of a young girl of color attempting to survive under Nazi rule.
Bridget Everett is the 2018 Inaugural Athena Breakthrough Awardee. Everett is a world-renowned cabaret artist. She was named “the most exciting performer in New York City” on the cover of the Village Voice, and called “raw and riotous” by The New York Times. Everett and her band, The Tender Moments, perform regularly to sold-out theaters. Their album, POUND IT, is available on iTunes.
Everett has headlined her own major multi-city US tour, and has taken comedy festivals all over the world by storm including The Oddball Comedy Festival, The Melbourne International Comedy Festival, The Latitude Festival, Montreal’s Just For Laughs, Bonnaroo, Outside Lands, Tenacious D’s Festival Supreme, and The San Francisco Sketchfest. Last summer she spent two weeks headlining the famed Soho Theater in London.
Her film, theater and television credits include “Inside Amy Schumer”, “Two Broke Girls”, “Sex And The City”, “Trainwreck”, “Girls” and the off-Broadway smash “Rock Bottom”. Her live television special “Bridget Everett – Gynecological Wonder” premiered on Comedy Central, and she can also be seen featured on the hit Netflix show “Lady Dynamite”. She is the star of the films Little Evil, Fun Mom Dinner and the Sundance hit Patti Cake$. She is the co-creator, co-writer and star of the new Amazon series “Love You More”, premiering this fall.
