Jada Trabue

Jada, a Black woman from Louisville, KY, discovered her love for film and filmmaking early on. Her relationship with horror began as a love-hate affair, sparked by her stepdad who introduced her to the genre with A Nightmare on Elm Street. Watching horror films in the basement was already unnerving, but her stepdad took it further, wearing masks and turning each screening into a 4D experience.

Despite the fear, horror grew on her, along with nightmares and sleep paralysis. In college, Jada studied media literacy, theater, and communication, developing a passion for analyzing media and creative writing. Grad school deepened this, with studies in global cinema through lenses like colonialism, feminism, race, and gender. She brings this analytical fire to horror, and can break down a film like no other.

Her love for the genre lies in the intersection of allegory and critical analysis, which draws her to classics like Rosemary’s Baby, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the works of Julia Ducournau and Stanley Kubrick.

While not primarily a horror filmmaker, Jada creates them. Her award-winning short Don’t Wake The Baby and her latest film Saint Marvek explore Black women in unsettling, terrifying situations. After all, that’s her lived experience.