Erisa Apantaku and Jenny Casas

Erisa Apantaku and Jenny Casas are the Chicago-based writer-director duo behind Half Birthday Films. We met as early-career audio journalists and excelled in the field. Between the two of us we have a Pulitzer Prize, Peabody, DuPont, and George Polk Awards. We became collaborators because of our overlapping values, rebuking the inherent extractive nature of journalism. In our filmmaking, we prefer the expansive possibilities of fictional characters and situations to explore emotion—desire, exhaustion, and grief. We love collaboration, believing the sum is more fantastic than the parts. Nya Does Nothing is our debut film.