Jesse Trussell was born in rural Texas and attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he graduated with High Honors with a degree in Radio-Television-Film with an emphasis in Media Studies. His senior thesis was on concepts of hegemonic masculinity in the films of Orson Welles.

He has worked at the Austin Film Festival since 2004 in various capacities, working in programming for the last 3 years overseeing the festival’s main feature and short film competitions and moderating panels and discussions with notable filmmakers like Oliver Stone and Danny Boyle. He now serves as the festival’s World Cinema programmer. At the beginning of this year he accepted a position at the film distributor B-Side Entertainment working in their festivals department as a liaison helping festivals around the world with the content systems that B-Side offers to film festivals. In addition, Jesse has produced documentary projects that have played the festival circuit and on public television, and writes the blog I Prefer Your Earlier Work.

Shorts Judge