PHILADELPHIA PRIVATE PREMIERE

Joy Marzec has always liked fairy tales, myths, ghost, and surrealistic stories.  She has written, directed, and produced features and short films. Her second feature film, I AM THAT, won best New Mexico feature film at the Santa Fe International Film Festival and is available in the UK and in the US on Amazon Prime, Tubi, and DirectTV. 

In her teens and early 20's, Joy intensely studied and worked professionally in the theater adapting and directing books for the stage, like Siddhartha and A Brave New World.  She received a degree in Economics at the University of Washington in Seattle.

After graduating from college, her brother, Mitch Marzec, encouraged her to move to Philadelphia so she could sing vox and play keyboard for his band, An American Chinese. AAC released two albums, an LP titled, Utopian Tree, and an EP titled, Panic Pilgrim. 

Once she moved to Philly she begin experimenting with writing screenplays. In 2007, she shot her first short film. To her surprise, she found that she loved every stage of the filmmaking process: financing, writing, producing, directing, and editing. She has raised the financing for all of her films by co-owing a production company that specializes in Ashtanga yoga. She has produced countless video courses, world tours, and five books.

Joy consistently works on multiple projects (in various stages of production) at a time. She is deeply invested in her collaborators and prefers to work with the same designers and actors for a number of years in order to build a strong collaborative short hand language.  Her brother, Mitch, has composed all of the music for her films.

Her third feature, 24 Frames Lalla, blends the genres of horror, coming of age, auto fiction, and surrealism. The story is about Lalla Grotowski, a non-binary, down and out filmmaker who is trapped inside their house during the pandemic with a bottle of pills, a relentless recurring nightmare, and a monster from their subconscious that haunts them day and night. There's only one way out of this crisis...to write, direct, and edit a film all on their own.