
Elizabeth Rao
Production
Biography
Rao is a Gotham Nominated and Indie spirit nominated feature filmmaker, with roots in Missouri, Tennessee, and Illinois. Rao’s short film debut as writer and director, THE TRUCK, World Premiered at Telluride Film Festival, won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Short at Oscar-qualifying Florida Film Festival, Best Screenplay at Flickers' Rhode Island Film Festival, screened at MoMA, Hamptons International Film Festival, Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Chicago Critics Film Festival, and more than 50 festivals and 20 awards worldwide. She’s a Hear Us Grantee for her debut feature film, and a thesis student on scholarship at NYU Grad Film. Rao comes from a background in direct cinema mentored by Albert Maysles, and independent fiction features. Her acclaimed feature films as producer and editor include Producing and Co-Editing MADELINE’S MADELINE, editing MAINELAND, editing MATERNA, editing BEEN HERE STAY HERE, and more. Rao has given Artist talks at IFP Narrative Lab, The Edit Center, UnionDocs, and Yale University and has taught workshops at True/False Film Festival. Rao is a proud member of the Brown Girls Doc Mafia.
Known For

Madeline has become an integral part of a prestigious physical theater troupe. When the workshop's ambitious director pushes the teenager to weave her rich interior world and troubled history with her mother into their collective art, the lines between performance and reality begin to blur. The resulting battle between imagination and appropriation rips out of the rehearsal space and through all three women's lives.
Madeline's Madeline

A psychological portrait of four women, whose lives are bound together by an incident on the New York City subway.
Materna

For generations, fishermen have made their home on Tangier Island, in the heart of the Chesapeake Bay on the east coast of the US. Two-thirds of the island has disappeared over the last 150 years, and local people are concerned about rising sea levels—and the lack of progress on reinforcing the sea wall—but the church remains the bedrock of this small, close-knit community.
Been Here Stay Here

A man and his grandmother hide out from an ominous broadcast. The Grim Reaper hosts a TV show. The formerly incarcerated recount and reinterpret their first days of freedom. A suburban mom's life is upturned by the beast growing inside of her. And a high school gym teacher runs drills from inside a volcano. What happens when five of independent film's most adventurous filmmakers join together to literally adapt each other’s dreams for the screen?
Collective: Unconscious

Sarah and Isolde share an interest in the traditional music and dance of the Balkans, but it turns out that shared interests don’t always unite them. Their trip, initially a fun bonding experience, takes a southward turn when Sarah becomes interested in handsome fellow camper Steph. A seemingly innocent romantic overture touches off an abrupt shift in the dynamic between the two girlfriends, steering a previously ecstatic camp outing down a psychological rabbit hole.
Butter on the Latch

The Empire Builder is America’s busiest long-distance train route, running from Chicago to Seattle. Throughout these corridors sit runaways, adventurers, and loners – a myriad of passengers waiting to see what their journey holds. A touching and honest observation, co-directed by the iconic Albert Maysles, In Transit breathes life into the long commute, and contemplates the unknowns that lie at our final destination.
In Transit

Against the simmering anxieties of post-Roe America, a Chinese-American teenager and her boyfriend attempt to buy the morning-after pill in a small town where reproductive rights are contested and quietly policed.
The Truck

Chinese teenagers from the wealthy elite, with big American dreams, settle into a boarding school in small-town Maine. As their fuzzy visions of the American dream slowly gain more clarity, their relationship to home takes on a poignant new aspect.
Maineland

A young woman struggles to maintain her fantastical Universe when her love goes sour. As she seeks rescue from her vices of money and sex - faith becomes her sole companion and she soon discovers the only form of salvation will require rebirth.