Thank you for Playing
ABOUT
When one-year-old Joel is diagnosed with terminal cancer, his parents Ryan & Amy begin working on an unusual and poetic video game to honor Joel's life. Following the family through the creation of the game and the day-to-day realities of Joel’s treatment, Thank You For Playing is a thought-provoking testimony to the empathetic power of art, examining how we process grief through technology in the twenty-first century, and the implications of documenting profound human experiences in a new artistic medium: the video game.
Malika Zouhali-Worrall is a British/Afro-Arab filmmaker based in New York. An Emmy Award-winning director, her directing credits include the feature-length documentaries, Call Me Kuchu (Berlinale, Netflix, BBC World, 2012) and Thank You For Playing (Tribeca, POV/ITVS, News & Television Emmy Award, 2015), the web series Earn A Living (ARTE, IDFA, 2018), and her recent short for PBS American Masters, Strange Grace: The Art of Amyra León (2020). In 2021, Malika completed her fifth short film, Video Visit, for Field of Vision, which is due to play at BAM Cinemafest and Blackstar in Summer 2021. As an editor, she most recently edited Through The Night (Tribeca, POV, 2020), a feature-length film by Loira Limbal that was a New York Times and Hollywood Reporter critic’s pick, and recently named on The Guardian’s Ten Best Documentaries of 2020 List. Malika is a 2019 Chicken & Egg Awardee, a 2020 Sundance Momentum Fellow, and a 2020 William Greaves Award recipient.
DAVID OSIT is an Emmy Award-winning director, editor and composer. He is the director of MAYOR, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Full Frame Film Festival and the NEXT:WAVE Award at CPH:Dox and was a New York Times Critic's Pick. David is one of the directors of the feature documentary THANK YOU FOR PLAYING, which premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, broadcast on POV in 2016, and was nominated for three Emmy awards, winning for Outstanding Arts & Culture Documentary. He also edited and produced OFF FRAME, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and Berlinale in 2016. He was also an editor for the documentary miniseries THE VOW, which premiered on HBO. His first film, BUILDING BABEL, premiered at True/False in 2012. David is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents and the Sundance Nonfiction Director'sLab.
CREDITS
Malika Zouhali-Worrall
Malika Zouhali-Worrall
Malika Zouhali-Worrall