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Philip studied film directing at SUNY Purchase. While attending, he worked closely with Hal Hartley as his personal assistant during the rehearsals of Hartley's opera, Soon. After graduating, Philip began his career producing and editing numerous documentaries, commercials, music videos, and non-fiction television series.

His first narrative short, At Night, a nightmarish psycho-sexual thriller inspired by Edward Hopper's Night Windows was an official selection of the Slamdance Film Festival, Milan International Film Festival, and Rhode Island International Horror Film Festival. Filmmaker Magazine described the film as "a marvel of precise camera placement, tracking shots and sound design. The film is starkly beautiful and deeply unsettling."

Recently, The Gentrifiers — a television series pilot co-written by Philip — was selected for the IFP Screen Forward Lab, IFP No Borders Project Forum, and screened at the New York Television Festival.

He's currently developing his first feature screenplay, The Gloaming, a film about an emasculated, resentful, high school custodian and South Sudanese refugee that explores the confusion, paranoia, and unfathomable violence that erupts on the fringes of the American Dream. The project was selected for the Hamptons International Film Festival Screenwriters' Lab, IFP Emerging Storytellers Project Forum and a top three finalist in the Nantucket Film Festival Showtime Tony Cox Feature Screenplay Competition.

His newest short film, Open House (based on The Gloaming), made its world premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival and is an official selection of Short Of The Week.


CONTACT: 
Email: phil@philipaceto.com