Melissa Haizlip is a Peabody Award-winning, Emmy-nominated filmmaker born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands, New York, and Connecticut, where she attended Yale University.
Her work responds to pressing social issues at the intersection of racial justice, social justice, activism, and representation, with a focus on female transformation and empowerment, advocating for and amplifying the voices of women and people of color.
Melissa's feature documentary, Mr. Soul!, won the 2022 Peabody Award for Best Documentary and was nominated for the 43rd News & Documentary Emmy Awards for Best Sound. The film was shortlisted for the 93rd Academy Awards for Best Original Song, and won several awards, including the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Writing in a Documentary, the 2020 Critics Choice Award for Best First Documentary Feature, and the 2018 International Documentary Association Award for Best Music Documentary.
Melissa has directed and produced several other films, including Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop, which premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival and won several awards, and You're Dead To Me, a short film about a grieving Chicana mother coming to terms with the loss of her transgender child on Día de los Muertos.
She has also produced two-channel art films that have been exhibited at several museums, including the Hammer Museum, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Melissa has received grants from several organizations, including the Ford Foundation JustFilms, National Endowment for the Humanities, International Documentary Association, National Endowment for the Arts, Black Public Media, Firelight Media, ITVS, Awesome Without Borders, and Puffin Foundation.
She is a member of several professional organizations, including the Directors Guild of America, Producers Guild of America, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, and a Fellow Member of The Broadway League. Melissa lives and works in New York.
