I have lost a language that flowed in and out of my dreams as a child. I don't dream in Spanish anymore. A story of cultural assimilation in six words. More than that, this melancholic statement suggests the issues of identity, loss of identity, and a desperate desire to reconnect and reclaim a part of my soul that was forced to feel foreign. This thread runs through all my personal work, but none more so than this project. I am the daughter of first-generation Puerto Rican migrants who settled in Illinois, the granddaughter of men who worked the sugarcane fields on the island, and the granddaughter of women who taught themselves to read and write in both Spanish and English. Their struggles, sacrifice, and determination course through my veins and are the soul of the projects I write. I am the first in my family to go to college, the first to earn an advanced degree, and the only to pursue a career in the arts. I am a screenwriter who reclaims classic film genres and reimagines story worlds from the perspectives of the characters most often sidelined or excluded: women and people of color. My work explores intergenerational stories that speak to lineage, legacy, and cultural inheritance. My dedication to the arts of screenwriting and filmmaking is related to a mission of cultivating authentic and nuanced representation of folks whose identities are historically marginalized, misrepresented, or excluded. The stories I craft, the perspectives of my characters, and the form in which my scripts unfold serve to challenge and broaden the norm.

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Missy’s Biography

Missy Hernandez is an award-winning independent filmmaker and screenwriter whose scripts center Latiné experiences in the US and Caribbean. Her work is intersectional, feminist, often political, and unapologetically fantastical. Missy’s feature script, I Don’t Dream in Spanish Anymore, won Best Horror Feature at the 2025 Nashville Film Festival Screenplay Competition, Best Feature Screenplay at the 2024 Nantucket Film Festival’s Tony Cox Screenplay Competition, and the 2024 Athena List. Her short film script, Lejos de Aquí, was a finalist for the 2025 Shore Scripts Short Film Fund and won the Mentorship Prize for the 2025 Outstanding Screenplay Shorts Competition. Missy’s short film, Madrina (2025), premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival and is currently on the festival circuit. Missy was a Writer and Co-Producer of American Thief (2020), the co-writer and producer of The Last Election and Other Love Stories (2021), and the Writer’s Assistant and Associate Producer for season one of the HBO/A24 series Random Acts of Flyness (2018). Missy graduated from Columbia University in New York with a BA in Cinema Studies and an MFA in Screenwriting. She is an Associate Professor in the School of Film and Television at Columbia College Chicago. Her previous projects have received support from the Illinois Arts Council, Cine Qua Non Labs, NALIP Media Market, the Chicago International Film Festival’s CIX: Lab, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, the Jerome Foundation, Stowe Story Labs, and IFP/The Gotham.