Biography

Phyllis Toben Bancroft is an award-winning writer, director and producer whose work centers women navigating identity, memory, desire, loss and transformation. Her anthology feature, Echoes: Four Stories of Becoming, brings together four distinct stories about women confronting the forces that have shaped their lives and is available on Prime Video.

Bancroft earned an MFA in Producing from the AFI Conservatory and has built a career across independent film, television and arts education. Her short film ...with salt screened at more than 30 film festivals and received multiple honors, including Best Director from the Black Women Film Network and Best Female Director at the Urban MediaMakers Film Festival. Her additional directing credits include Burned, produced through BET’s Lens on Talent program, and The Merge. She also wrote and produced SPENT, which received $100,000 in production financing through BET.

In addition to her filmmaking work, Bancroft founded The Red Balloon Playroom, where young people created more than 30 short films, and WriteitCrewitShootit!, a creative accountability community for writers and filmmakers. She is a member of the Actors Studio Directors Unit and has participated in residencies including Hedgebrook and La Maison de Beaumont in France.

Bancroft is developing Hide and Seek, a grounded supernatural coming-of-age feature about a 13 year old girl who discovers that her ability to disappear is connected to a hidden ancestral legacy.
- IMDb mini biography by: Phyllis Toben Bancroft