AFIC WDA Director Profile

Liv Colliander is a Danish director and writer based in Los Angeles.

She earned her MFA in directing from the prestigious American Film Institute Conservatory in 2015, where she received the Alessandro F. Uzielli Scholarship. Liv has also received awards from Hempels Medarbejder Foundation, Knud Højgaards Foundation, and Nordisk Film Foundation. Her thesis film DRYLAND has screened at festivals internationally and will premiere on TV and online in the beginning of 2018. DRYLAND won Best US Short at Laughlin International Film Festival, received an honorable mention as Outstanding Student Film from the Nevada Women's Film Festival, won Best Supporting Actress at California Women's Film Festival and was a Golden Egg finalist at the Reykjavik International Film Festival.

Before attending AFI, Liv worked her way up through the Danish film, commercial and television industries. She worked beside some of the country’s finest filmmakers, and earned broad experience at Denmark’s most renowned production companies: Nordisk Film, Zentropa, Fridthjof Film, Moland, Bacon CPH and many others. Liv graduated from the European Film College in 2006, followed by studies at the Short and Documentary Film School in Denmark as a directing fellow in 2006 and 2008. Since shooting her first short film on her father's VHS camera at the age of six, Liv has written and directed over ten short films, among them MANDEN UDENFOR (Odd Man Out), starring Søren Pilmark and several other celebrated Danish actors. The film premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and aired on Danish TV. Since graduating from AFI, Liv has directed numerous commercials and music videos, and she has enjoyed taking part in the WIF Mentorship Program.

In 2017 Liv also became part of the commercial directing duo ZEITGEIST, with fellow filmmaker and husband David Henry Gerson. Together they create magical lifestyle and fashion commercials, with Hollywood production company PICROW.

Liv is currently developing a Sci-Fi TV show, as well as her first feature. Through her films, Liv is interested in exploring humanity’s fundamental loneliness, and how that loneliness affects our struggles to fit into the rules of society. She has a deep love for strong fierce female characters who aren’t afraid to fight back - and who tend to be ticking time bombs. Perhaps due to her recurring status as an alien, Liv's stories often follow the stranger or outcast that is desperate to fit into a world filled with secrets and lies - today as well as in our future. When she is not on set or hiding away writing, Liv travels the world and wonders what her life would have been like as an astronaut exploring the hidden secrets of the far away universe...