Aimiende Negbenebor Sela is a Writer-Director of Nigerian descent, adopted by a Jewish-Israeli family from the Bronx.
A former Computer Engineer who left the I.T. world to pursue a career in the Arts, Aimiende's award-winning short films have screened at numerous festivals across the world, and her feature screenplays have placed in several competitions including Screencraft Film Fund, AFF and Cinestory Fellowship Competition (where she’s since become a first round judge in both contests), and in the top 15% at the Nicolls Academy Fellowship Competition. Her latest screenplay, Utopia, made it to the second round at the 2018 Sundance Writer’s Lab.
As a prose writer, one of Aimiende’s short stories, Peach Cobbler, was published in the summer 2016 issue of African Voices Magazine. A publication dedicated to fostering cultural understanding and awareness through literature, art, and film.
Growing up as that kid glued to The Sound of Music, back in Nigeria, to the adult now dazzled by the complexity of the characters in 12 Angry Men, films have always helped Aimiende make sense of the world. As a result, her work interrogates the human condition, but with empathy; as she truly believes we all live the same lives, we’re just colored differently.
Her production company, Sela Films LLC, was born out of this belief in order to help push the boundaries of innovation, inclusion, diversity and creativity with a focus on humanism.
Hermit, her latest short film, is a drama about a grieving husband coming to terms with this loss of his soulmate on a night that would’ve marked their eighteenth wedding anniversary.
Aimiende currently resides in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and their fourteen year old Shih Tzu, Orlando.
