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The team
APOLLA ECHINO - DIRECTOR & EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Apolla is an award-winning filmmaker of mixed descent (Métis, Italian and German) who specializes in telling stories at the intersection of commercial and documentary, with a strong focus on women and BIPOC.
As a director with large-scale production experience, she has an intimate understanding of how the world behind the camera shapes the one in front of it.
Having paved a unique path as a filmmaker by tackling subject matters and cultures that others may find daunting, Apolla has created a name in the documentary film and commercial world – adding heart and soul to otherwise male-dominant fields. Her breakout film, about surfing the South Island of New Zealand in the Winter as a solo female, gained global recognition and added the missing female perspective to the surf world.
Her documentary films include "Hard Labour", about a transgender woman working in the oilfields of Alberta, premiering in 2022; “The DNA of Adventure”, which premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, and a documentary series about adventure travel as a solo woman (“A Woman’s Guide to the World” – Air New Zealand, Outside TV). Apolla’s 2015 feature film was “A New York Love Story,” about a love affair between a dancer and painter.
As producer, Apolla has led some of the most important conservation documentary films in recent years – 2019’s “The Game Changers”, with Executive Producer James Cameron, and the Academy Award-winning team behind “The Cove”, and “We Are One”, about the anti-poaching and conservation efforts to protect our most endangered species.
As an avid winter surfer in New York, she’s most inspired in the cold waters, waiting for the next wave.
JESSIE TORRANCE - PRODUCER
Jessie is a Producer based in New York City. She has produced Emmy-winning work focusing on thoughtful and engaging non-scripted content for Zola, Holiday Inn, Tribeca Studios, and Spotify.
Her broadcast credits include the PBS documentary series Breaking Big with Carlos Watson. Festival credits include documentary shorts The DNA of Adventure, which screened at the 2019 Tribeca Film festival, and Art of Healing, which screened at Bushwick Film Festival, New York Shorts Festival, and the Newburyport DocuFest.
Torrance carries a degree in Film and Television from Boston University, with a concentration in screenwriting and documentary filmmaking, and serves on the screenplay submissions jury for New Hampshire Film Festival.