Daresha Kyi is a writer, producer and director who uses film and television projects in English and Spanish as powerful tools for personal, political and social transformation.
A graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a degree in Film & TV, her most recent film, LOVE, JOY & POWER: Tools For Liberation (2025) which explores the vital role Cliff Albright, April England Albright and laTosha Brown, the co-founders of the Black Voters Matter Fund, played in flipping Georgia blue in 2020 and handing President Biden control of the Senate in 2021 and the dangers they faced to do this vitally important work. The film premiered at the American Black Film Festival.
Mama Bears (2022) premiered at SXSW 2022 and will premiere on PBS’ Independent Lens on June 20, 2023. In 2018 she directed a short film about transgender rights for the ACLU that has garnered over 5 million YouTube views, was screened at SXSW, and won two Webby Awards and an Emmy.
Chavela (2017), which she directed and produced was nominated for the Teddy award and won the 2nd place Panorama Audience Award at the 2017 Berlinale, as well as Best Documentary and Audience Awards at Outfest and the San Francisco LGBTQ Film Festival among others. Chavela secured theatrical distribution domestically and internationally and was screened on 160 screens in 42 countries.
Land Where My Fathers Died (1991) is an award winning short narrative written, produced and directed by Daresha in which she also co-stars with Isaiah Washington in his first film. The film details what happens when a fiercely independent young African American woman and her nouveau-nationalist photographer boyfriend decide to visit the father she hasn't seen in years. The tragicomic reunion shatters her illusions and provokes the two lovers to reveal that they are both the wounded children of alcoholics.
Daresha has also produced Dispatches from Cleveland for Aubin Pictures, Kristina Wong’s How NOT to Pick Up Asian Women, Emmy-winning writer Kevin Avery’s satirical take on The Wiz called The Whizz as well as his hilarious comedy, Thugs The Musical and a short documentary about violence against lesbians called Just Because of Who We Are.
Daresha has been a fellow through Soros Equality, Film Independent, Sundance Institute and Women In Film, Breaking Through The Lense, Firelight Media Documentary Lab, Chicken & Egg Eggcelerator, Creative Capital and A Blade Of Grass. Her films have received funding from NEA, IDA, NBPC, NYSCA, NYFA, Frameline, Jerome, and the Women in Film Finishing Fund, among others.
In addition to her film work, Daresha has produced award-winning television for WE, AMC, Oxygen, E!, Telemundo, Bravo, and FUSE, to name a few.
