ABOUT DOROTHY
Dorothy Xiao is a Los Angeles and Orange County based award-winning narrative film director and writer with a degree in Psychology from UCLA. A Chinese American daughter of immigrants, Dorothy creates grounded family dramas with a hint of fantasy, focusing on the complexities of vulnerable emotions like loneliness and grief. Dorothy has directed 12 short films and has worked on over 30 film and video projects with companies like CBS, HBO, and Disney. She is an Alliance of Women Directors - Directing the Actor Lab Fellow and winner of the 2023 CAPE Julia S. Gouw Short Film Challenge.
Dorothy’s films total over 600,000 views online and have screened at multiple film festivals such as the Nevada City Film Festival, DTLA Film Festival, and the Oscar-qualifying Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. She directed the award-winning short film COLORFUL MINDS for the 2022 CBS Leadership Pipeline Challenge, which won a donation of $75,000 from CBS to the nonprofit Painted Brain. Her short film DIVE BAR recently played on board Alaska Airlines. She is an alumnus of the Jubilee Media Fellowship, where she wrote and directed the short film EXPOSURE, which now lives on a Youtube channel with over 7 million subscribers.
In her past life prior to being a filmmaker, Dorothy worked in animal research administration, wrangled 5th graders for an after school program, and oversaw web development for nonprofits. Dorothy was also the Branding & Communications Manager at Visual Communications, the first non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the voices of Asian American & Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander filmmakers, where she was a short film programmer for the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.
Dorothy is an avid supporter of empowering underrepresented voices in media, and when not making films, Dorothy binge watches movies with her stuffed bunny Rabby, reads juicy romance novels, and drinks copious amounts of boba milk tea.
Affiliations: Alliance of Women Directors, Women In Media, Women of Color Unite, Ghetto Film School Roster, Blackmagic Collective, Filmshop LA
