ASIA A
TFI Suppport
Logline
After suffering a spinal cord injury, a college basketball player struggles between hoping for recovery and accepting his new life as a paraplegic.
Andrew Reid
Screenwriter, Director
Andrew Reid was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. He is a DGA Award winning director and recent graduate from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
At the age of 21, while studying at University of Florida, he became paralyzed from the chest down. A malformation of his blood vessels (AVM), resulted in a rupture which compressed his spine while he was sleeping, leaving him completely paralyzed. He was told by doctors that he would never walk again, but with dedication and perseverance he regained movement. Today, he walks with a cane and continues to progress in strength and health. He became an advocate for the disabled community and expanded his film production skills from Miami to Los Angeles.
His USC thesis film - ASIA A, won the Jury Award at the 2018 DGA Student Awards and was a Semi-Finalist for the 45th Student Academy Awards. It has screened at LA Shorts, HollyShorts and over 20 other film festivals.
Recently, he finished the short film ROAD TO ZION, which is being developed into a limited series. Also, he produced the short film GEETA, which won Best Student Short Film, DTLA Film Festival and is a nominee for Best Short Film, NewFilmmakers Los Angeles (NFMLA) 2019.
Jake Katofsky
Producer
Alum of the USC Peter Stark Producing Program, Jake Katofsky gravitates towards producing emotionally moving, character driven stories told from new perspectives. He has produced dozens of projects ranging from commercials to full features. Jake was an assistant on 2014 LA Film Festival Best Picture Winner CUT!, and the following year co-wrote and produced a baseball romantic comedy entitled 108 STITCHES that had a limited theatrical run in and international distribution On Demand.
Since then, Jake associate produced feature LIVE CARGO starring Lakeith Stanfield, Dre Hemingway, and Robert Wisdom, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016. He also has four short films making a splash in the festival circle; most notably ASIA A, which won a Student DGA Award and was named a Semi-Finalist at the Student Academy Awards.
Roberto Saieh
Screenwriter
Born and raised in the seaside town of Barranquilla, Colombia, Roberto blends his passion for the unknown with the stark realities of life to tell stories of ghosts, broken people, and their one shot at redemption.
Roberto has placed second and third in the PAGE Awards with his feature MAGDALENA and his short SHINE, respectively. He also wrote the short ASIA A about a recent paraplegic coming to terms with his spinal cord injury, which was a semi-finalist for the Student Academy Awards and won the Jury Prize in the African-American category of the Director’s Guild of America Student Awards. Currently, he’s working on a feature-length version of ASIA A, which has been selected as a recipient of the Tribeca Film Institute Sloan Filmmaker Fund.
Roberto has an MFA in Screenwriting from the John Wells Division of Writing for Screen & Television of the University of Southern California.