Mo Ogrodnik is a filmmaker, professor, and the Founder/Director of FIND, a hybrid cultural lab dedicated to creating a transnational portrait of the UAE through the lens of artists, scholars and technologists. As Associate Dean of the Arts for NYU in Abu Dhabi, she helped create the Film, Music, Theater, Visual Art, and Interactive Media programs from 2010-2013.
She started her film career in the early 1990’s while working on Right Thinking, a documentary about the emergence of the New Right and the KKK for Kevin Rafferty and Michael Moore. She then produced films for National Geographic Television’s Explorer Journal, a series that put cameras in the hands of explorers from around the globe and told their stories. Her first film, Richard and Nicole, won numerous festival awards and sold to WNET. Her first feature film, Ripe, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, was theatrically released, and continues to be shown on television. She co-wrote Uptown Girls, starring Brittany Murphy and Dakota Fanning, released by MGM. She co-wrote and directed, Deep Powder, a narrative film produced by Killer Films that premiered at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival and will be distributed Fall of 2014. Currently she is working on a multi-media project about South Asian women working in the Gulf
She is currently an Associate Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she teaches writing and directing. She received a Bachelors of Arts from Harvard University and a Masters of Fine Arts in Screenwriting and Directing from Columbia University and is a member of the WGAE.
