Yvonne Russo

Award-winning filmmaker is the director of VIVA VERDI!, a feature documentary that she is also writing and producing. She is currently serving as director/producer of RING OF FIRE: The Life of Annie Mae Aquash, a true-crime docu-series currently in production, produced by Amy Kaufman and Caroline Waterlow with Jake Gyllenhaal’s, Nine Stories. Most recently, she directed, produced and wrote the PBS animated short, MINNIE’S WAR BONNET. A producer on KELLY’S BAR, an indie feature with Casey Affleck’s Sea Change Media, Russo worked as Production Advisor on WOMAN WALKS AHEAD, starring Jessica Chastain, and as Production Liaison/Advisor on HBO Mini-Series, Lewis And Clark. She served as producer on Gale Anne Hurd’s feature documentary, TRUE WHISPERERS: THE STORY OF THE NAVAJO CODE TALKERS, and on the feature film, NATURALLY NATIVE; she was Co-Producer on THE RESCUERS: Heroes of the Holocaust. Russo worked for 15 years on a diverse slate of domestic and international television and film projects for such companies as HBO, National Geographic Channel,Discovery/TLC, and the CBS/Smithsonian Channel. She has a television development deal with Handmade Films to adapt the 1989 cult classic film, POWWOW HIGHWAY, based on a novel by David Seals, and has been contracted by Warner Media and Bad Robot as an executive producer on a new untitled television series in development. A member of the Academy of Television and Sciences, she is also a member of the Producers Guild of America where she formerly served on the Board of Governors. A Board Member of NYWIFT, Russo divides her time between New York and Los Angeles, and is a member of the Sicangu Lakota Tribal Nation.