Nico Opper
2021 Eureka Fellow
Nico Opper (Pronouns: they, them, she, her) is an Emmy®-nominated filmmaker whose work centers on the voices of young people, examining how they forge their identities in a time defined by globalization, consumerism, media connectivity, and vast economic and social inequalities. Opper is interested in the relationship these individuals have with their environments, as they increasingly reject labels and blur categories of race, sexuality, and gender. Opper’s work has screened at The Tribeca Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, AFI Docs, Guadalajara Int’l Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, and DOCS MX and has won Best Documentary and Audience Awards at Outfest, Silverdocs and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Their feature films have been broadcast nationally on P.O.V. and World Channel, and their recent series was nominated for a Gotham Award and an IDA Award. Opper is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and has been featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s annual 25 New Faces of Independent Film, Indiewire Magazine’s, 25 LGBT Filmmakers on the Rise, and DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 list of documentary talents. She’s an assistant professor at Santa Clara University and Creative Director of the BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship, currently working on a short hybrid film about teenage Oakland musicians wrestling with gentrification and a VR project about gender-expansive youth expressing themselves through photography. *Artist biography at time of award.
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