Mary Evangelista is a filmmaker born in the Philippines and raised in California’s Bay Area. Mary received an M.F.A. in Writing and Directing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Their short film Fran This Summer (2018) is an LGBTQ summer love story that has been screened in over 30 festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival. Mary co-created Water Melts (2019), a Tribeca Film Institute and Google supported VR rom-com which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and played the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Mary is a Project Involve Fellow with Film Independent, where they directed the short film La Gloria (2019). Mary’s debut feature film, Burning Well, received a 2020 Tribeca All Access grant and recently took part in the 2021 WIF x Sundance Financing Intensive.

Burning Well — A young trans masculine chef heads home to upstate New York for a family emergency, only to encounter an unresolved childhood love.