Zoe's Dumpling Crisis follows a 16-year-old Zoe who enlists the help of her two grandmothers, one Russian and the other Turkish, for a school cooking project. As the rivalry of the maternal figures escalates over the course of the night, Zoe wishes she hadn’t bothered to ask them in the first place. It’s just a cooking project! As the need for culturally identity clashes with the kneading of dough, Zoe soon realizes how important both of her grandmothers are to her… and that sometimes the way into people’s hearts is through their stomachs.

Director Bio: Ellen Rodnianski

Ellen is the writer, director and one of the producers of Zoe's Dumpling Crisis. She was born in Germany, grew up in Russia, moved to the US for college—first to Chicago and then to LA— and has been living in Los Angeles since 2016. She is a graduate of The University of Chicago and earned her MFA from the Stark Producing Program at USC. Ellen is an early career filmmaker who has worked as a showrunner's assistant on a Netflix TV show, and is currently focusing on writing and directing her own projects.