Janicza Bravo

Bravo in 2018, photo by DFree/Bigstock.com

Birth Name: Janicza Michelle Ford Bravo

Place of Birth: New York City, New York, U.S.

Date of Birth: February 25, 1981

Ethnicity: Panamanian [African, Jewish, possibly other]

Janicza Bravo is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actress. She has directed and co-written the films Lemon (2017) and Zola, and has directed and written the films Gregory Go Boom and Women’s Tales: House Comes With a Bird. She has also directed episodes of the series Forever, Mrs. America, In Treatment, Them, Kindred, and The Listeners, and written for the show Hot Package. She has appeared on the shows Camping and Too Much, and in the films Greener Grass, Fully Realized Humans, and Sharp Stick.

Janicza is the daughter of Ana María Ford and Rafael Ángel Landers, who are tailors, from Colón, Panama. Her mother is pictured here. Janicza was partly raised on an army base in Panama City, Panama, while her mother was in the U.S. military. When she was twelve, her family settled in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York City. She has stated that her mother is Jewish, and that her and her mother’s Jewishness comes from her maternal grandmother. Janicza is fluent in Spanish.

Janicza has said:

In this movie [Lemon], the aspect of my culture that is most clear is the Caribbean side of my culture. My parents are both Panamanian. I’m first generation, I was born in America, but I moved to Panama when I was [a] baby. I lived there until I was 13. Spanish is my first language. And while there isn’t an obvious Latinness throughout the film, me, Janicza, as a person of color, as a Latin woman, as a Jewish woman, as a woman, my feelings are in the movie through and through.

Source: https://www.heyalma.com