Enid Zentelis

Enid Zentelis is an award-winning director, writer, and podcast creator.

Her feature films and short works star Oscar and Emmy-winning actors, and have premiered at top festivals including Sundance (Nominated for Grand Jury Prize, Best Feature), Tribeca (Spotlight Selection) and are in worldwide distribution.  She won the Best Director Prize for First Feature at Sonoma International Film Festival, was nominated for Best Narrative Film in Turin, Stockholm, Sao Paolo, Seattle…Her first short film won Best Short from New York Film Festival. She has additionally directed NBC’s New Talent Showcase series of live one-acts.

Her commercial directing work for major music labels Universal, and Warner Records. include albums for multi-Grammy-winning talent, including iconic band Wilco.

 “How My Grandmother Won WWII,” Zentelis’ acclaimed podcast series, charted around the world and sold to UK Studio, Red Arrow, and US production company, Kinetic Scripted, upon its international release. Zentelis was hired to develop and write a scripted series pilot. 

In addition to screenwriting, she is an essayist and forthcoming author. Publications have appeared in The Daily Beast, The Lily, Now This, Talkhouse and ScreenPlay Press (“Everyone Gets Killed”). In 2025, Zentelis sold her debut book proposal to Blackstone Publishing for a Spring 2028 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, and is a Writers Guild of America East member.

Listen:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-my-grandmother-won-wwii/id1550511220

More:
www.enidzentelis.com

Courses

Directing the Actor

Feminist Filmmakers

Sight and Sound Filmmaking

Preparing the Screenplay
Writing the Feature Screenplay


Education

MFA NYU Grad Film, W.C. Johnson Scholar, BA Hampshire College, and Faculty of Arts, Letters, Languages and Human Sciences of Aix-Marseille.