Nico Opper

Nico Opper

Nico Opper is an Emmy®-nominated queer and trans filmmaker based in Oakland, CA. Their feature directorial debut, Off and Running (Tribeca Film Festival premiere, POV), received nine Best Documentary festival awards and a national Emmy nomination. Their episodic twelve-part series The F Word (Participant Media & PBS Digital Studios) was nominated for a Gotham Award and an IDA Award, and named a top series of the year by Indiewire. They produced the ITVS feature documentary Try Harder! which premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and a Cinema Eye Honor. They also directed, wrote and produced When I Write It (Tribeca, Hot Docs, POV) and Visitor’s Day (AFI Docs, Mill Valley, Guadalajara, DOC NYC, PBS).

Opper executive produced the ITVS feature Breaking the News (Tribeca, Independent Lens, GLAAD Award nominee for Best Documentary), the New York Times Op-Doc What You’ll Remember, and the forthcoming ITVS feature Flood (Special Mention at IDFA, Independent Lens 2026).

Opper is a recipient of the prestigious Chicken & Egg Award, which recognizes eight women and gender expansive nonfiction directors from around the world annually. They’re also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a Eureka Fellowship, the largest unrestricted grant awarded to a Bay Area artist. They currently serve as a Film Expert for the US State Department’s film diplomacy program.

Opper recently completed their debut feature screenplay Searching for Mateo, which was supported by an SFFILM Krishnan Shah grant and a Cine Qua Non screenwriting residency, and just wrapped production on Triple Mitzvah, a fiction short produced by Reboot Studios.

A graduate of NYU Film School, they regularly mentor LGBTQ+ scholars as an alum of the Point Foundation, and have formally mentored emerging filmmakers through Sundance Ignite, SFFILM and BAVC Media.