Courtney Sanello is an actor, director, model, and creator.
Representation:
Untamed Artists LA
Brenda Fisher 267-266-9168 brenda@untamedartistsla.com
Multiple award-winning actor, director, producer, and production designer for film First Refusal, Court is grateful for her directorial debut’s international success in the festival circuit; screenings include: Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theatre, Milan’s historic Multisala Colosseo, and the legendary art-deco gem, Babylon in Berlin.
Modern-day Multi-hyphenate – Film TV and Stage actor, director, singer, cellist and visual artist, Court is a first generation American, coming from a line of German featherweight Champion boxers and Italian brick sh*touses in construction and demolition.
Meisner-trained actor (William Esper) and magna cum laude double major Bachelor of Business Goizueta Business at Emory graduate, Court integrates her Art and Business acumen into continuously developing, expanding and refining her creative brand.
Close friends call her firecracker, one even accurately identified her as an ENTJ Commander personality type, (to which court immediately responded by intensely investigated repetitively, a very Commander-ey thing to do), Court’s endless energy thrives best when challenged and working in the unknown (chaos). Fiercely loyal, throwing herself entirely into every project, Court also has little tolerance for injustice and will be the first to defend.
@courtneysanello @firstrefusalfilm
As 2023’s sole recipient of the Shawna Shea Film Festival’s Women Film Foundation Award, I had the opportunity to showcase my directorial film debut of my own design. I felt it was my duty to not only honor Shawna Shea’s spirit and legacy, but to also to creatively challenge myself in the most extreme way. That meant taking on not just multiple roles of Director, Producer, Writer, Actor, Production Designer and Storyboard artist; but also revealing my greatest vulnerability: being openly honest with sharing the deepest darkest parts of my soul and the demons that live inside me and publicly sharing them. It’s scary.
FIRST REFUSAL was shot twice; the first attempt not matching my vision, thus making all footage unsalvageable. Many colleagues advised that “sometimes you have to lower your expectations.” My response was, “Yes. Sometimes.”
With Court in FIRST REFUSAL, I wanted to create a character – a lost soul – with an extraordinarily resilient spirit who chooses to live in her own manufactured reality to be with the person she loves and needs most, her soulmate and brother, Ken.
There are several universal themes captured in FIRST REFUSAL: Letting go of your most precious object in order to grow, dependency; whether it is a codependent relationship or substance abuse, and the painful transformation from self-denial to self-awareness.
The use of strong visual imagery was the primary driver to communicate FIRST REFUSAL’S story, in an effort to not come off as overly dramatic. The negative space of having minimal dialogue is purely intentional; breathing life into film’s strength as a visual medium, “to show, not tell.”
I initially created storyboards to establish the world and style of FIRST REFUSAL, only inserting dialogue afterwards when absolutely necessary to drive the story. I was very militant in excising any hint of exposition, cutting back dialogue up until and even during our two days of filming. The language is conversational and relatable, as if it’s any other day of banter between two siblings.
But ultimately, at its core, this is a film about love, about holding onto something so much that it prevents your own personal growth, and about how trauma can force an individual into a new stage of development, forging their own path of their choosing.
– Courtney Sanello
