Sydney Ribot is an Argentine-American filmmaker from the Deep South. A graduate of Dartmouth College (B.A.), she has directed films in China, the US, and Turkey, screened at international festivals, and published fiction in the UK, South Africa, and USA. Her last film prior to AFI, A REASONABLE MAN, won the Jury Prize for Best Short Film at the 2018 Rome International Film Festival. Most recently, the 2nd Year AFI Visual Essay she directed, A KID AND HIS PANDA, screened in competition as an official selection for the Student Etudes section at Camerimage Film Festival in November 2020.

 

In 2013, Sydney relocated to Istanbul for five years to develop a body of work outside the Judeo-Christian context in which she seeks to reconcile expressionist impulses, her identification with the city's liminal state, and a love of structured drama. She has been a James B. Reynolds Fellow (2013) and U.S. State Department Critical Languages Scholar (2011). Her Middle East work ranged from ensuring the humor of a Turkish comedic series traveled as translator to transcribing documentary footage about Americans who joined the Peshmerga to fight ISIS. Prior to making movies, she coauthored a book on sustainable corporate governance practices with Professor Robert G. Eccles at the Harvard Business School. 

 

She is a 2020 Directing Fellow at the American Film Institute Conservatory. 

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         To see her portfolio site, click here.                                 For IMDb, click here.