Giselle Bonilla

Giselle Bonilla received her MFA in Directing from the American Film Institute Conservatory, and is a recipient of the AUDI Fellowship for Women which sponsors one promising female director with a full-tuition scholarship for the program. Her thesis film, THE BULLFIGHTER, won the Student DGA Grand Prize Award, AFI's Richard P. Rogers Spirit of Excellence Award, and received Special Mention for Best Comedy at the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival.

Her feature directorial debut, THE MUSICAL, premiered in US Dramatic Competition at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. It is adapted from the proof of concept short of the same name which won the Audience Award at the American Cinematheque's 2024 Proof Film Festival. The feature is executive produced by Unapologetic Projects and her mentors: director, Jonathan Levine, and producer, Gillian Bohrer. THE MUSICAL stars Tony-award winner: Will Brill, Gillian Jacobs, and is produced by and starring Rob Lowe.

Giselle is a Latino Film Institute x Netflix Inclusion Fellow, Telluride FilmLAB Fellow, Deutsche Bank Frieze Filmmaking Fellow, and an alum of the Sundance Institute as an Ignite x Adobe Fellow. She received her BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where her undergrad thesis film VIRGENCITA received the Horizon Award at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.