Niav Conty’s films span darkly humorous investigations of the transgressive and taboo, intimate and troubling coming-of-age portraits, acutely contemporary sci-fi, and cutting-edge Machinima. She is an active freelance director, cinematographer, screenwriter, and editor in New York City.
Niav attended Skidmore College on a full scholarship for music performance, lived in China as a student of classical painting and calligraphy, and worked as an actor in New York. She moved to France to begin making films, where she studied with Boris Lehman and Pedro Costa, and worked closely for many years with Oscar-winning maverick director Joseph Strick (1923-2010).
She returned to New York in 2010 to study with avant-garde filmmaker Chantal Akerman (1950-2015) and complete her M.F.A. at City College.
Her award winning films have travelled to festivals worldwide. She is a recipient of the Kodak Award for cinematography, and the Princess Grace Award. Small Time, her 2020 feature shot in rural Pennsylvania over five years has won 9 awards, including the Spirit of Freedom Award, the EDA award for best female directed feature, and Best Feature and Best Director several times over. The film boasts Oren Moverman as exec. Producer and is released nationally by The Film Arcade. Her newest feature, Person Woman Man Camera Tv about an interracial couple disintegrating during the 2020 pandemic, is currently in festivals.