Biography
Gem Little is a Los Angeles-based writer, director, and producer from the Midwest, so naturally, humor and dread coexist in her work. Her stories are intimate and domestic, with an apocalyptic imagination. In her work, home and family are both the monster and the shelter.
Her sophomore short as writer-director, ON THE TABLE, a comedy-thriller, makes its Los Angeles premiere this summer at the Oscar-qualifying LA Shorts International Film Festival. Her social-impact horror short PENS & PENCILS, which she wrote and created after earning a $25,000 grant to develop her own work, earned an HBO Short Award and an NAACP Image Award nomination and streams on HBO Max. Her work has screened at Tribeca, ABFF, Urbanworld, the Toronto Black Film Festival, and many others.
Gem is currently developing her directorial feature debut, THE TURTLE TOOK THE WATER, and two shorts, COWARDS and THE MULE.
In television, Gem has worked alongside Patrick Somerville as Showrunner's and Writers' Assistant on HBO's GLASS HOTEL and UNFOLLOW, and his forthcoming Amazon series WOLFENSTEIN.
Before filmmaking, Gem moved to LA to work as a city planner on the homelessness crisis, and built a program that taught currently and formerly incarcerated people to start their own businesses, then helped them do it, with coaching and microfinancing. The same eye runs through her films: people surviving inside the systems built to contain them.
An alumna of Film Independent's Global Media Makers and the Athena Film Festival Writers Lab, Gem holds an MFA in Producing from AFI, an MA in Urban Planning, and a BA in Journalism and Public Relations, because she really believes in student loan debt.
