Armenian writer-director Ryan Mekenian calls Los Angeles, the ancestral land of the Tongva people, home. He is a recipient of the Emerging Arts Fellowship from the California Arts Council.
His short documentary, Spokespeople, celebrates the vibrant bicycle communities of Los Angeles and their fight for mobility justice. The film won the Jury Prize for Best Short Documentary at the Annapolis Film Festival and was an official selection at the prestigious Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival. It also screened at other Oscar-qualifying festivals, including the Rhode Island International Film Festival, Santa Fe International Film Festival, Bogotá Short Film Festival, and the Edmonton International Film Festival. The documentary is now distributed widely by ShortsTV.
Mekenian's feature screenplay, The Man in the Flying Lawn Chair, was a quarterfinalist for the Academy Nicholl Fellowship and received the Screenwriting Discovery Award Grand Prize at the Rhode Island International Film Festival. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from USC's School of Cinematic Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.