Nicole Vanden Broeck is a French-Mexican filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She received the Mexican FONCA-CONACYT scholarship to pursue an M.F.A. in Film Directing at the American Film Institute Conservatory. Her thesis film, Elle, premiered at the Oscar®-qualifying 2020 Rhode Island International Film Festival and won the Grand Prize Marlyn Mason Award for new voices and new perspectives by women in film. Her directorial work has screened at over 50 film festivals worldwide, including AFI Fest, Out on Film, and Women in Film & Television, among others. Prior to her move to Los Angeles, Nicole co-founded the independent production company 6pm Films in Mexico City, where she directed award-winning narrative, documentary and commercial projects. Her documentary short film Con el tiempo won the EcoFilm Festival Grand Prize and the Cinelatino Audience Award at the Hola Mexico Film Festival, as part of the Tomorrow’s Filmmakers Today program presented by HBO and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Nicole is a BAFTA Newcomers fellow and is featured in the LatinX Directors List. Interested in exploring intimate relationship dynamics through female characters dealing with identity conflicts within the drama genre, she is currently developing her feature film debut, The Sound of Fireworks.

The Sound of Fireworks — A recently divorced middle-class Mexican mother explores the dynamics of her new life as a single woman in Los Angeles, while her preteen Mexican-American daughter spends her first 4th of July holiday away with her father and his new American girlfriend.