Enid Zentelis
Arts Professor
Enid Zentelis is an award-winning director, writer, podcast creator and NYU professor.
Her feature films star Oscar and Emmy-winning actors, have premiered at top festivals including Sundance (Nominated for Grand Jury Prize, Best Feature) and Tribeca (Spotlight Selection) and are in worldwide distribution. Her short directing work for major music labels include albums for multi-Grammy-winning talent, including WILCO and Eric Clapton among others. Her writing has appeared in The Daily Beast, The Lily, Now This, Talkhouse among other publications. “How My Grandmother Won WWII,” Zentelis’ podcast series, charted around the world and sold to UK Studio, Red Arrow, and was developed by US production company, Kinetic Scripted, upon its international release. Zentelis was hired to develop and write a scripted series pilot. In 2025, Zentelis sold her book proposal based on the same podcast to Blackstone Publishing for a Spring 2027 release.
She is a fellow of the Sundance Institute Screenwriting and Producing Labs; an NBC-Universal Directing Fellow and an alum of NYU Graduate Film School. She has been a mentor and master teacher for The Gates Foundation Initiative on Gender Equity and Nigeria’s top filmmakers in Nollywood; for Sundance Co-Lab writers, screenwriting mentor for Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep’s The Writer’s Lab, panelist for New York Women in Film and TV, Fusion Festival and more. She was a recipient of The Edna St. Vincent Millay, Artist/Writers Residency.
Courses:
Directing the Actor
Feminist Filmmakers
Sight and Sound Filmmaking
Preparing the Screenplay
Advanced Production
Education:
MFA NYU Grad Film, BA Hampshire College, Faculty of Arts, Letters, Languages and Human Sciences of Aix-Marseille.