Biography
Akiko Izumitani is a female director/writer born and raised in Japan, now based in Los Angeles. She is also a supervising producer at Aniplex of America, which title includes Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Sword Art Online, The Elusive Samurai, Mashle, and so on.
Akiko first earned recognition through her feature-length documentary, "Silent Shame" (2010). It won numerous awards worldwide, including Best Feature in the Beijing Movie Festival, and has a screening at an Oscar Qualified film festival. She has sold it to several territories including China and Denmark.
Several years later, Akiko directed "Kung Fu Date," which won the Remi Award at the Houston Film Festival, and "Sukiyaki with Love" (Semi-Finalist of NBCUniversal Shortcuts). Her action short film, "The Other Side" won The Best Short Film at Sacramento Asian Film Festival and ECA Award by ICG and had a screening sponsored by ICG at DGA.
Akiko was a finalist of the Women of Color Commercial Directing Program (Top 10 out of 100+) in 2020, a semi-finalist of NBC Female Forward (Top 20 out of 1000) in 2018, Sony Directors Program (Top 25 out of 250) in 2017, and 2019, and ABC Director's Program in 2014. She was also considered to be an episodic director of AMC's The Terror Season 2 by Scott Free. Akiko was selected as one of the top rising Asian American filmmakers in 2013.
While she was working for 20 Century FOX as a project manager, she also studied screenwriting, taught man-to-man by Monte Merrick (Writer of Mr. Baseball and Memphis Belle), and Jonathan Tsuneishi (A script analyst at 20 Century Fox.) She is an active member of the Santa Monica Screenwriting Group and exchanges notes with Nicole Perlman (Writer of Captain Marvel and Guardians of the Galaxy), Ben Kim (Writer of Queen Sugar), and James 'Doc' Mason (Writer of The Cage).
Akiko also worked as a production assistant for major studio films and televisions such as Bullet Train and Terminal List and understood the production flow of union shoots.
Akiko recently completed the action short film "Yae: The Blind Samurai Woman, " which became a finalist in multi-screenwriting contests. This short film won the Best Short Film in the Town Los Angeles Film Festival and was an official selection of Oscar-qualified film festivals such as Austin, HollyShorts, and Dances with Films Film Festival. This film has more than 580k organic views. Akiko and her co-writer James 'Doc' Mason also completed a feature script, "Rise of The Blind Samurai Woman" based on this short film. Her writing process was featured in Creative Screenwriting.
