Kaitlyn T. Busbee is an Iowa-bred, now Brooklyn-based artist. Her award-winning films explore female-centric stories. Reveling in both the drama and the humor of everyday life, she strives to excavate and deeply explore what makes us tick as humans by examining moments both big and small. Busbee is currently an MFA candidate at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in Graduate Film. She received the Martin Scorsese Scholarship, Maurice Kanbar Scholarship, and the 2023 ARRI Volker Bahnemann Award for outstanding cinematography. She was also awarded the Black Family Film Prize, a competitive grant, for her most recent short film Layaway (HollyShorts 2023, Chelsea Film Festival 2023 - Winner of the US Shorts Audience Choice Award). Busbee is the recipient of a 2024 Spike Lee/Sandra Ifraimova Production Fund grant for her upcoming graduate thesis film, Jarfly. Busbee was recently selected by Spike Lee as one of three student filmmakers to write and direct short films for Coca-Cola and Vitamin Water, centering on the art scene of New York City. She was DP on the short film In Passing, premiering at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. Busbee was DP and Field Producer for Uprooted, part of an HBO Max/Sesame Workshop docuseries (Through Our Eyes), about the climate crisis told from the perspective of affected kids. Most notably, Busbee was Co-Director, DP, and Editor for the indie feature These Hopeless Savages, starring Matt Dellapina (CBS’ Tommy, NBC’s The Blacklist, and Netflix’s The Iliza Shlesinger Sketch Show), MacKenzie Meehan (CBS’ Bull, HBO’s Vinyl and The Wolf of Wall Street) and Sean Christopher Lewis (award-winning playwright and contributor to NPR’s This American Life). After screening at over 30 festivals worldwide, the film is now available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV through the film's distributor. The Legend in My Heart, her feature shot in China, won Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Universe Multicultural Film Festival. Her comedic short, Sexpert Franzen, played Tribeca’s 30 Under 30 Film Festival where she was named “one of the next wave of gifted young filmmakers.” Her recent short film, Bed Bugs, just completed its festival run. The film screened at 13 festivals, received 5 awards, and recently had its broadcast premiere on PBS. Busbee is in development and workshop on a feature screenplay set in the world of Layaway, writing a TV pilot exposing the underworld of the alt-right through the lens of small-town America, and in post-production for her thesis short film, Jarfly, to complete her MFA.
