Seattle REP Panel
9:30 PM | Uptown
Following the 7:00pm screening of Little Women (2019), join us for a 30-minute panel, led by Nico Vargas, Nichole Pouchet, and Anastasia Babenko highlighting extraordinary filmmakers in Seattle.
Nico Vargas is a dog-lover, educator, and documentarian originally from El Centro, California but has been calling Seattle home since ’08. She is currently the Youth Education Manager at the Northwest Film Forum. Nico previously worked as an environmental educator (ask her about salmon!) and an admin coordinator for the Video Production Lab at The Vera Project. Nico volunteers as a videographer with Ground Zero Radio, a multi-media youth-led platform for local news, arts, and happenings. Her favorite film genres are horror, teenage witchcraft, satirical camp, and films that make you feel human.
Nichole Pouchet (she/her) A former Broadway assistant director, Nicole Pouchet is a novelist and writer/director for the award-winning fantasy series, Strowlers. Her horror/social thriller short, Retch, premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) in 2019, won Best Film at the Seattle Black Film Festival in 2020, and has shown on DirecTV, Amazon, PBS, and Alaska Airlines.
Her subsequent films -- a sci-fi short called Such an Honor and a fantasy animation/live action blend called Lioness have been official selections at dozens of festivals worldwide. Prior to filmmaking, Nicole owned a bi-coastal marketing agency with tech, entertainment, and nonprofit clients. She sold the ten-person agency in 2016 to fully focus on her craft.
Nicole continues to write/direct projects that incorporate social commentary into genre film, and is now in pre-production on her first feature film, an adaptation of romance fantasy best-seller, Her Mad Hatter. Her Mad Hatter was selected for the WA Filmworks enhanced Small Budget Initiative Program due to its focus on mental illness.
She has served as a Board Member for Destiny City Film Festival, for Northwest Screenwriters Guild, and for Zombie Orpheus Entertainment; and as a lecturer for the University of Virginia, Clarion West, SIFF, and Women in Film.
Anastasia Babenko is a Ukrainian writer/director based in Seattle, WA. Her debut short film The Diaper Cake received a Vimeo Staff Pick and played over twenty Oscar-qualifying film festivals around the globe, including Clermont-Ferrand IFF, Palm Springs ShortFest, Short Shorts & Asia, etc. Her latest project was invited to participate in Talents Sarajevo Script Lab 2023.
