MICHÈLE OHAYON, WGA (Director/Producer) -- Michèle Ohayon is an award-winning director, writer and producer. Her second feature-length documentary COLORS STRAIGHT UP received nominations for the 1997 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, the DGA’s Outstanding Directorial Achievement and the IFP Spirit Award. The documentary received the Golden Spire Award for the Arts at the San Francisco International Film Festival, as well as 13 national film awards. COLORS STRAIGHT UP is being broadcast nationally on PBS and all over the world. In 1984, she received the Israeli Best Film Award for PRESSURE, one of her early dramatic films on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 1987, she moved to Los Angeles, where she directed a succession of critically acclaimed dramatic and documentary features. The award-winning feature length documentary IT WAS A WONDERFUL LIFE explores the plight of upper middle-class women who live out of their cars and become the "hidden homeless". Narrated by Jodie Foster, the film aired nationally on PBS and OXYGEN. IT WAS A WONDERFUL LIFE won the Gold Award at the Houston Film Festival and an IDA nomination.

For COWBOY DEL AMOR, Ohayon has received both the Audience and Grand Jury Awards for Documentary Feature at SXSW, Best Documentary at the 2005 Santa Fe Film Festival, and IDA and WGA nominations.

Michèle has also produced and directed commercials, episodic television and music videos. For her body of work, Michèle received the 1996 and the 1998 Artist’s Grant from the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department and was recognized for her fiction writing in the Chesterfield Writing Competition 2000. Born in Casablanca and raised in Israel, Michèle graduated from Tel Aviv University (Film & Television).

Michèle is a founding board member of Cinewomen. Her goal as filmmaker is to tell good, truthful stories about real people and to make films that open hearts and minds.