The 97th Academy Awards will have an ASMSA connection at this year’s ceremony. A film produced by Class of 2009 alumna Tara Sheffer is nominated for Best Live Action Short Film.
Sheffer is the producer of “A Lien,” a short film about a family that finds itself in a dire situation that develops when a couple along with their daughter arrives at a federal immigration office for an American woman’s husband to begin the interview process to obtain a green card. The film is directed by brothers Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz.
Sheffer has served as producer for 29 short films and written and directed four other films. Films she has been associated have been nominated for awards or selected to appear in the SXSW, Clermont Ferrand, New Orleans Film Festival, Rhode Island International Flickers Film Festival and NYU Tisch King festivals and competitions. Sheffer served as a line producer for the 2020 film “The Letter Room,” which was also nominated for an Academy Award.
She began seriously thinking about filmmaking in a documentary film class taught by James Katowich, a Humanities Instructor of Excellence at ASMSA. Her family was also in the filmmaking business. She later took classes at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., and then earned a master’s in fine arts from the New York University School of the Arts.
The Oscars will be shown live beginning at 6 p.m. Central time on Sunday, March 2, on ABC and streaming on Hulu.