Jess X Snow

Jess X. Snow (they/them/他) is a non-binary filmmaker, multi-disciplinary artist, poet and educator of the JiangXi Chinese diaspora. Recently named one Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film, their short films center the desires, disobediences and dreams of flawed Chinese migrant queers. Safe Among Stars (2019) screened at BlackStar, Ann Arbor, Inside Out, and received the National Film Board of Canada Best Short Award (emerging). Little Sky (2021) screened at 50+ festivals worldwide including: BFI Flare, Outfest, Frameline, Cinequest (Best Student Short), and Durban International Film Festival (Special Mention) amongst others. Their forthcoming shorts include: Roots That Reach Toward The Sky (2023) which was supported by the Sloan Foundation for Science in Film and I Wanna Become The Sky (2023), premiering at New Orleans Film Festival this fall. Earlier this year, they received their MFA in writing/directing from NYU where they were a BAFTA Scholar. Currently they are working on a children's book, WE ALWAYS HAD WINGS (Make Me A World/Random House) forthcoming in 2025, a debut coming of age novel: WHEN WE WERE DRAGONS, and a full-length book of poetry. Their genre-bending features in development include WHEN THE RIVER SPLIT OPEN, (with co-writer, Yumeng Han), selected as a part of the 2023 Cine Qua Non Script Revision Lab, and ALIEN ENEMY/ALIEN FRIEND (with co-writer Alán Pelaez Lopez), a coming-of-age drama exploring Black Asian intimacies and time travel in the 19th and 20th centuries. A member of the Justseeds Artist Co-operative, prior to filmmaking, they spent a decade creating artwork for migrant, climate and racial justice movements. Their large-scale murals which feature intergenerational kinships with Black, Asian, Pacific Islander and Indigenous femmes can be found across Turtle Island. Along with their artistic practice, they teach screenwriting and community mural-making to people of all ages and backgrounds.