The Truck
Directed by Elizabeth Rao
Length: 15:00
Producer: Eliza Soros
Editor: Elizabeth Rao
Cinematographer: Gianna Badiali
Sound Mixer: Rotem Dror
An impulsive Chinese American 17 year old and her Iranian American boyfriend search for the Morning After Pill in rural Tennessee.
Graduate Film
ejr461@nyu.edu
Elizabeth Rao is a screenwriter and director based in Brooklyn. Born in California, to immigrant parents from Shanghai and Jiangxi, China, Rao grew up along the Mississippi River, in Missouri, Tennessee, and Illinois. Rao’s work celebrates idiosyncratic outsiders, and reimagines Asian Americana through a vibrant and feminist lens.
Rao is currently writing her debut feature film with the support and mentorship of Spike Lee. Her feature film is also a 2023 Hear Us Grantee. Rao is completing her MFA in writing-directing in the NYU Tisch Grad Film Program as a Yunni & Maxine Pao Memorial Scholar, W.T.C. Johnson Scholar, and Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Scholar.
Rao has given Artist talks at Yale University, Gotham Fiction Feature Lab (formerly IFP Narrative Lab), The Edit Center, UnionDocs, and has taught workshops at True/False Film Festival. Rao is a proud member of the Brown Girls Doc Mafia.
Rao’s body of work as indie Producer and Editor includes acclaimed Feature Films with premieres at Sundance, Berlinale, and MoMA; awards at SXSW, Tribeca; and multiple Gotham (including Best Feature Film), and Indie Spirit Awards nominations – Her filmography includes MADELINE’S MADELINE (Sundance, Berlinale, starring Helena Howard, Miranda July, Molly Parker, dir. Josephine Decker, DP Ashley Connor, Gotham Awards double-Nominee for Best Feature and Breakthrough Actor, Film Independent Spirit Award double-nominee, CSA Award Winner for Outstanding Achievement in Casting), MATERNA (starring Rory Culkin, Kate Lyn Sheil, Sturgill Simpson, Lindsay Burdge, Jade Eshete, dir. David Gutnik, DP Greta Zozula, Tribeca Film Festival double award-winner), and MAINELAND (dir. Miao Wang, DP Sean Price Williams, SXSW Special Jury Award Winner, NY Times Critics’ Pick).
Both MADELINE’S MADELINE and MAINELAND earned their directors voting seats in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Rao helped launch the careers of acclaimed independent filmmakers including Josephine Decker, Miao Wang, Lynn True, David Gutnik and Krista Parris. Indiewire hails MADELINE’S MADELINE as “One of the boldest and most invigorating American films of the 21st century.” Elevating surprising new stories, with bold style, is integral to Rao’s artistic practice.