Biography
Alyssa Rallo Bennett is an award-winning multi-hyphenate director, producer, and composer - known professionally as Rallo - from NYC, recognized for creating inclusive and socially conscious films.
Her directorial debut feature film, 'The Pack', accepted into Tribeca Film Festival and featured in over a dozen others, tackled personal responsibility with an open-ended narrative that pays homage to 'Twelve Angry Men'.
The film, starring Lucie Arnaz, Elisabeth Moss, and Zach Galligan, streams on major platforms such as Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, and Tubi, along with her second feature, 'Aberrant', a dramatic thriller starring Jack Quaid and Tibor Feldman, distributed by Green Apple.
Rallo Bennett directed her 3rd feature, 'ReRUN', starring Christopher Lloyd, which premiered as the closing night film at the 2018 Woodstock Film Festival, earning her a Maverick Award nomination and multiple festival wins.
'The Arrival', her fourth feature, released recently by Gravitas Ventures featuring Pooya Mosheni and Peter Bradbury, received critical acclaim, premiering as one of four films at the Martha's Vineyard Women's Film Festival, and subsequently as the closing night film at Big Apple Film Festival in NYC.
As a producer and actor, she developed and co-produced 'Rain Without Thunder', a dramatic film starring Jeff Daniels, Linda Hunt, Steve Zahn, and Ming-Na Wen, about reproductive rights.
Other acclaimed festival films include 'Compulsion', 'Crowbar', 'The Finance of Art', 'Floating Rectangles', and 'The Dishwasher', premiering in festivals such as Soho Film Festival, Sedona FF, and Beverly Hills FF. Recently, she directed a new pilot, 'Scarecrow', starring Marin Hinkle.
She has continued to produce, develop, and support emerging artists, diversity, equality, and inclusion at Stonestreet Studios, an independent film studio she co-founded with her partner, writer/director Gary O. Bennett. Known for its socially conscious films, the studio often creates work that deals with human rights alongside the renowned Stonestreet Screen Acting & Production Residency, a unique immersive program she created for NYU Tisch Drama actors, directors, writers, and producers. The program has given many actors and hyphenates their start: Rachel Sennott, Miles Teller, Rachel Brosnahan, Danny Ramirez, Idina Menzel, Nik Walker, Xosha Roquemore, Jocelyn DeBoer, Beanie Feldstein, Alberto Rosende, Coral Pena, Jack Martin, Ximena LaMadrid, Jack Quaid, et al.
Known in the music world as Rallo, her music background has been an integral part of her filmmaking-whether listening to the variation in a score or an actor's voice, or telling visual stories via song. 'American Pancake' wrote about her debut album 'Anymore': "The fluid, diverse indie rock storytelling of 'Pinch That Vein' feels like a movie you want to watch." The 'Anymore' album and her singles also received great notices. 'Closets', 'The Pitch', and 'Don't Wake Me' have taken off globally, streaming on all platforms. Her most recent song, 'Eggshells & Rollercoasters', received critical acclaim, including RMAS: "The track's lush instrumentation and hypnotic melodies mirror the emotional turbulence of love, delivering what is perhaps Rallo's most poignant work to date."
She continues to play live in venues such as Rockwood Music Hall NYC, Pearl Moon, Woodstock, 76 House NY, Rock Da Casbah & Diner 9W, Saugerties, Kulak's Woodshed in LA, and The Bitter End NYC.
Bennett's first training ground started as an actor, working with directors such as Franco Zeffirelli, Andre Gregory, and Martin Scorsese. She has directed, acted in, and developed plays at Ensemble Studio Theater, Harold Clurman Theater, and Sundance Institute's Playwriting Lab. She has an MA from NYU Gallatin in Drama & Psychology and a BFA from NYU Tisch Drama, where she collaborated with Nikos Psacharapolous, Tom Fontana, David Margulies, and independently with the Group Theater's Robert Lewis.
