Stories of multiracial and immigrant families navigating identity, loss, belonging, and what it can cost to protect the people they love.

DGA Student Film Jury Award winner | NAACP Image Award nominee

Kira Powell is a writer-director and SAG-AFTRA actor of Black American and Ecuadorian heritage. She holds an MFA in Directing from the American Film Institute Conservatory. Her work explores how race, migration, grief, and inherited fear shape the ways families try to protect one another—particularly when the line between care and harm begins to blur. Her filmmaking blends emotional realism with psychological tension, centering the inner lives of women and girls of color.

Her AFI thesis short Best Eyes won the Directors Guild of America Jury Award for Outstanding Directing at the 2024 DGA Student Film Awards. The film premiered at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), was nominated for Outstanding Short Form (Live Action) at the 2026 NAACP Image Awards, and won First Place in the Afro-Latino Short Film Competition presented by AAFCA and LEJA. Her films have screened at festivals including AFI Fest, Urbanworld, the Maryland Film Festival, and Black Harvest. Her psychological horror short The Good Mother premiered at Screamfest.

Kira is a 2026 Cine Qua Non Lab Fellow and is currently developing her debut feature, The Second Child, a psychological drama-thriller about grief, maternal protection, and immigrant isolation.

As an actor, she has appeared in film, television, and national commercials. Her credits include the indie feature The Endless, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and Jif’s “Squirrel” commercial, recognized by Adweek as one of the year’s best advertisements. She is also the creator and performer of the award-winning solo show Caught in the Mix, an exploration of Afro-Latina identity, anti-Blackness, belonging, and self-acceptance that later informed the story and thematic foundation of Best Eyes.

Outside of filmmaking, Kira is an avid traveler who has visited more than 40 countries and finds joy in journaling, singing, and discovering great seafood wherever she goes.