Jess X. Snow is a filmmaker, multi-disciplinary artist, and author. Born in Canada, of JiangXi Chinese heritage, through a wide range of mediums and genres and a dream-like lens, their work explores intergenerational healing, migration, surrealism, multispecies justice, and abolitionist futures.
After completing their MFA in screenwriting and directing from the Graduate Film Program at NYU, they were named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Their genre-defying short films unveil how flawed diasporic people live, heal and refuse with bold visuals and poetic lyricism. They screened at over 40+ festivals in five continents; including BlackStar, New Orleans, Ann Arbor, Outfest, Frameline and Durban International Film Festival (Special Mention). Their latest short, ROOTS THAT REACH TOWARD THE SKY (2024) premiered at the 68th BFI London Film Festival. They are in late development for WHEN THE RIVER SPLIT OPEN, their debut fiction feature; a surreal road movie supported by Cine Qua Non Script Revision Lab, Science New Wave, and the Film Independent Producing Lab. They were a cinematographer and producer on several narrative and documentary films that have screened at festivals including Toronto (TIFF), Palm Springs and Aspen ShortsFests. They are currently in development for their first narrative feature, WHEN THE RIVER SPLIT OPEN, a romantic road movie that participated in the 2023 Cine Qua Non Script Revision Lab.
Their projects have been awarded grants and fellowships from the Sloan Foundation for Science in Film, the Tribeca Film Institute, Caldera, BAFTA, Canada Council for the Arts and the National Film Board of Canada. Previously, they were the artist in residence at the NYU Asian Pacific American Institute and the Asian American Studies department at UC Santa Barbara where they taught workshops in screenwriting and community arts practice.
2021
