Following five of the nation's top teenage speech competitors, SPEAK. captures the euphoria of victory and the devastation of defeat as they craft and perform original oratories over the course of a 9-month season. Their dream Is simple: To win the Super Bowl of public speaking, the NSDA Nationals.
Filmmaker Bio:
Jennifer Tiexiera is an award winning documentary director, producer and editor who most recently helmed the Emmy-nominated series, "Unveiled: Surviving La Luz del Mundo" for HBO and the feature length documentary, “Subject,” which made its debut at the 2022 TriBeCa Film Festival. In 2020, she completed "P.S. Burn this Letter Please," which debuted at the 2021 TriBeCa Film Festival and won the Audience Award for Documentary Feature at the 2020 OutFest Film Festival. Previously, she edited “17 Blocks," which was awarded Best Editing in a Documentary Feature Film at the 2019 TriBeCa Film Festival, and other highlights include editing and producing the documentaries, "A Suitable Girl," winner of the Albert Maysles Award at the TriBeCa Film Festival and "Waiting for Hassana," official selection of the Sundance, SXSW, and Toronto Film Festivals Other career highlights include editing the documentary "Salam Neighbor" and the 2011 SXSW Documentary Grand Jury Winner, “Dragonslayer.
Guy Mossman is an American cinematographer and director who made his first short film in 2000 in Paraguay. In 2002, he was awarded a prestigious Park Fellowship at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill to pursue an M.A. in Journalism and Documentary Filmmaking. Since then, Guy has dedicated himself to lensing documentary films, non-fiction television and commercials. His love of character and vérité storytelling, and an eye for light and composition, has been acknowledged by critics and directors alike. Guy is best known for his dramatic photography on the Oscar short-listed documentary f ilm, Buck, which also won the Audience Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, Mariachi High, Bending The Arc, the 2020 Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Award-winning Feels Good Man, and Discovery Doc’s The Lost Lincoln — EP’ed by Mark Wahlberg. In 2022, Guy co-directed the critically acclaimed documentary The Human Trial with his wife, Lisa Hepner. His camera work on Buck was singled out in the Los Angeles Times for being ‘both beautiful and evocative’; and the LA Times TV critic Robert Lloyd said of 4 Los Jets, ‘he gives every element its due; the clamor, the quiet, the details of décor and decoration, the richness of the landscape, the look of air under floodlights.’
