Daresha Kyi

Daresha Kyi is an Emmy Award–winning director who also writes and produces film and television in Spanish and English. She most recently directed a short documentary for Time Studios and the SpringHill Company called Georgia Going Blue about the Georgia-based grassroots organizations working to fight voter suppression. She is currently in post-production on Black Voters Matter, a feature documentary that chronicles Clif and April Albright’s and LaTosha Brown’s rise from aspiring acolytes to game-changing civil rights leaders and the critical role they played in helping Georgia flip from red to blue in 2020 and 2021. In 2018 Kyi was commissioned by the ACLU to direct Trans in America: Texas Strong, which garnered over 3.5 million views online, premiered at SXSW and went on to win the News & Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Documentary as well as two Webby Awards. In 2017 she co-directed and co-produced Chavela, a multiple award-winning Spanish language documentary about iconic, lesbian ranchera singer Chavela Vargas, ranked the “Number One Latin American Documentary of the Decade” by CineArte magazine and produced Dispatches from Cleveland. Kyi’s films have been funded by IDA, ITVS, NEA, NYSCA and numerous others. A former fellow in the Firelight Media Documentary, Chicken & Egg Eggcelerator, Creative Capital and A Blade of Grass programs, Kyi has an extensive background producing content for FX, WE, AMC, Telemundo and FUSE, among other networks. She is the director of Mama Bears (Mountainfilm 2023).