Martina Reese

At the midpoint of a successful career in graphic design, Martina Reese fell in love with filmmaking.

Since her 2010 exploratory debut shorts, she has generated an expanding body of provocative, intriguing, short films.

Reese's first feature film was a 75-minute micro-budget black-comedy titled "Zombie" (2021), available on Amazon Prime [ Reese's second feature film, "Exile," follows a brief period in the life of an undocumented Polish immigrant living in Chicago and is available on Tubi [ and was selected Best International Feature Film at the 2022 Polish International Film Festival.

PERSONAL STATEMENT
Trained as a graphic designer but only partly fulfilled by my years in that career, film creation woke me up from a persistent sense of going through the motions.

I love filmmaking because it is hard but not impossible.

I have never been comfortable in a narrow discipline and film brings everything together.

To me, at best, films are groping and imperfect attempts to express something elusive and ambiguous.

FAN COMMENT
Martina Reese brings an intriguing and subtle sense of mystery to each project.

She gives her audience the benefit of the doubt, assuming they are intelligent beings who can rise to the challenge of understanding tacit clues.

This ineffable quality makes every one of her films a rich viewing experience that lingers. --Hilary R.