Director: Siege Ledesma

Biography: Siege Ledesma graduated with a degree in Psychology and worked in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry for nine years. It was in this unlikely milieu that she found a passion for cinema. In 2012, she took a leap of faith—she quit her day job to focus on writing and directing her first feature length screenplay, SHIFT, which premiered at the 2013 Cinema One Film Festival, won Best Picture at the 2014 Osaka Asian Film Festival, and participated in over ten international film festivals with glowing reviews. Shift was also acquired and distributed in Japan by PicturesDept. In recent years, she has been involved in the writing and development of a few film and television advocacy projects—which included projects funded by the USAID and Missio Germany (International Catholic Missionary Organization). She is a Cinema One Originals Milestone Awardee and an Aning Dangal (National Award) recipient. Her memberships include the Network of Asian Fantastic Filmmakers (PIFAN), Talents Tokyo (Berlinale Talents) and Tribeca Film Institute Network Talent Lab (LPFF Edition). Her second feature film screenplay, CAT ISLAND, was one of the recipients of the 2016 Next Masters Script Development Grant of Tokyo Filmex and Talents Tokyo, and a recipient of the Aurora Producing Award at the TFI Network Talent Lab, Luang Prabang Film Festival, 2017. Siege currently works for Dreamscape Entertainment (a subsidIary of ABS-CBN Corporation) as a scriptwriter for an upcoming primetime soap opera that will feature one of the Philippines’ biggest television stars.