Maddie Abdalla is a fourth-year Radio-Television-Film major at UT. She is from College Station, TX. Maddie has dedicated their time in film school to documentary filmmaking with an emphasis on ethical documentary practices. Find more about Maddie here: Maddie Abdalla (myportfolio.com)
Riley Church is a senior Radio-Television-Film and Plan II Honors double major. They also have a certificate in Museum Studies. Riley is from Austin and is passionate about objective storytelling through the lens of archival materials, information, and oral histories. Riley has had work screened and awarded at over 45 film festivals around the world, including two grand prizes for their film, DEBATABLE (2023). More of Riley's work can be found on Instagram and their portfolio.
Maddie and Riley met in the Spring of 2023 in Prof. Iliana Sosa's Adv Documentary filmmaking class. Both had an interest in doc ethics but struggled to find a place for that conversation inside UT's extremely narrative-focused film department. They quickly became friends and later production partners, eventually pitching this project as a Production Thesis Project, where a documentary had not made it through the intense selection process in almost a decade.
