Catherine and Jessica met over cheap beer and awkward networking at Sundance Film Festival where they bonded over their love of well-served vengeance (hot or cold) and Patti Smith. Irreverent, edgy, and constantly striving to push form, they specialize in character-driven narratives, fresh takes, and big, bold ideas.
Catherine Fordham is a New York-based writer, director, and producer originally from Nova Scotia. Drawn to the subliminal and otherworldly, her boundary-pushing work reflects a lifelong fascination with the driving forces of both our external and internal worlds, frequently using genre as a tool to explore deeper themes.
An actor since age eight, Catherine’s early days working in theatre, television, and film transformed into a passion for writing and directing. A collector of wild characters, her stories come from a childhood surrounded by hippies and spiritual explorers, her time working at a cowboy bar in the Rockies while living in a trailer park at a Buddhist Meditation center, years waitressing at a hole-in-the-wall celebrity hot spot in Greenwich Village, and a brief stint as a chicken farmer.
A high school dropout, Catherine is an alumna of Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School in Munich, Germany, Film at Lincoln Center’s 2019 Artist Academy, and Athena Screenwriting Labs 2020. After a year on the festival circuit, her award-winning short film KAYA premiered on The Future of Film is Female and NoBudge in 2020, and enjoyed a run at Nitehawk Cinema opening for Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale.
Catherine’s short, Consommé, was licensed by AMC’s horror streaming site, SHUDDER, and screened at MoMA as part of The Future of Film is Female series. Best Thing You’ll Ever Do, a short-form mini-series she directed, won Best Short Drama at the HBO-sponsored ITVFest, among other awards. Her current projects include Wild Cry Ha, a thriller set in New Mexico, HEX, an occult TV series + podcast, and Supernova, a psychedelic odyssey set in Nova Scotia.
Jessica Leonard is a New York-based writer and producer working in film and television. She was an Academy Nicholl Fellowship Semifinalist in 2021, a Top-50 Nicholl Semifinalist in 2022, and won Best Short Screenplay at Cinequest Film Festival.
Jessica attended Goldsmiths College in London and CU-Boulder, where she graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Literature. Raised in the inner sanctums of the L.A. music industry, Colorado farm country, the backwoods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, London, and Madrid, she prides herself on her industrious work ethic and dark sense of humor.
Primarily focused on screenwriting, Jessica develops film and television projects, commercial concepts, podcasts, and music videos. Working across genres, her storytelling values character above concept and thrives on a less is more philosophy.
In addition to screenwriting, Jessica’s also worked in immersive theatre, dance, music videos, and the gaming space. As Head of Narrative Design at Unshut, she spent several years developing a vast, enigmatic world with intricate storylines and real-world interactive experiences. A fiction writer at heart, she collaborated with the Montana Ballet Company to develop her short story “The First Day” into a cutting-edge, multi-media ballet and is currently writing a novel about a man who returns to his family two decades after faking his death on 9/11.
When not working, Jessica enjoys life as an aspiring pool hustler, NYT crossword fanatic, and devoted caretaker to Pablo Escobark, canine. She does not use social media but is always ready to show off her stick-and-poke tattoo that reads, “kill your darlings,” her creative motto.