Destiny

  • Director

    J. (Jose) Anthony Roman

  • Country, Year, Length

    United States, 2023, 12:47

  • Category

    Narrative Short

  • Format

    Digital

  • Festival Year

    2025

Synopsis

A girl spends the day with her father, pitting her against his addiction. The film is based on the filmmaker’s childhood experiences.

Film Screening & Ticket Information

When & Where to See this Film!

…COMING SOON…

Film Information

From the Director

Director Statement

Destiny is an opportunity to tell a story very much from a child’s perspective. This mirrors my experiences growing up in New York City in the 1980s with my father, who battled a heroin addiction until his death from AIDS in 1993.

Director Biography

Born In Puerto Rico, then brought to New York City when he was months old, Anthony is the son of a Vietnam vet and a high school dropout.
By high school, Anthony was working in fast food and enrolled in youth theater companies, where he honed his ability to write. He cut class often to go to auditions, using his own written monologues as audition material. Directly after high school, Anthony skipped college and started his own theater company. He ran, wrote, and acted with the company for 5 years before they disbanded. Anthony would leave acting behind and focus solely on writing. As a playwright, three of his full-length plays were produced in New York City. Several of his one-act plays were staged mostly in New York, but also in Los Angeles and Bristol, England. Some of the companies and festivals that staged and workshopped Anthony’s work include The Hip Hop Theater Festival, Labyrinth Theater Company, and the Rebel Verses Theater Festival.

To provide for himself, and fund his projects, Anthony kept day jobs which included educational theater artist, counter-terrorism supply salesman, marijuana delivery (way before it was the norm), bartender, retail, busboy, residential real estate assistant property manager, dog walker, and exterminator.

In 2016 he was accepted into Tisch’s School of the Arts (Film and TV Program), and graduated with honors with a degree in writing and directing in 2019. Anthony interned for Martin Scorsese for a year, and also was part of the first group of interns at Desus and Mero on Showtime. His intermediate short film, Scarfaced, was a finalist for NYU’s New Vision and Voices Festival 2018. It won best male actor award for fellow CAT youth theater alumni, Victor Almanzar. Scarfaced was also accepted into the 2019 HBO New York Latino Film Festival, as well as the 2019 Dominican Film Festival in New York City, BLVD IV, The Latinx21 Festival, the Lift-Off Global Network Film Festival, and a Semi-Finalist in the 2019 Los Angeles CineFest.

In November 2020, Evelyn Torres at the ICU was named a finalist in the 2nd Annual Ya Tu Sabes Monologue Slam, produced by Nosotros and sponsored by NBC. The 2nd Annual Ya Tu Sabes Monologue Slam streamed on Facebook Watch on December 9th, 2020.

Burn, Baby, Burn, Anthony’s 2nd film was the official selection of 20 film festivals.

Anthony started his production company, No Matinees Enterprises, to produce his work in 2022.

His next project, The Journey of Malcolm Miracle and Dave was an official selection of The New York Latino Film Festival, Katra, and won him a best director award at The International Puerto Rican Heritage Film Festival in 2023.

Anthony currently works as the production assistant to the editorial team for Martin Scorsese features, including Killers of the Flower Moon, as he pursues a career as a writer and director for film and television. Anthony is also a published fiction writer.

Credits

    • J. (Jose) Anthony Roman
      Director
      The Journey of Malcolm Miracle and Dave, and Burn, Baby, Burn
    • J. (Jose) Anthony Roman
      Writer
      The Journey of Malcolm Miracle and Dave, and Burn, Baby, Burn, Ya Tu Sabes Monologue Slam 2020 by Nosotros/NBC
    • Liz Sweeney
      Producer
    • Annie Watkins
      Producer
    • Max Woertendyke
      Producer
      Brightwood
    • Zoe Fowler
      Key Cast