Seattle Filmmaker In Focus: June Zandona

The Seattle Film Society (SFS) has been steadily amassing a community of directors, cinematographers, and film appreciators since its formation in 2023. SFS elevates formalized outlets for these filmmakers with more artistic development and programmed opportunities for career progression.

Every quarter, SFS hosts the In Focus series celebrating Seattle directors and cinematographers that features shorts, music videos, and more in a diverse range of content. SFS chooses a director who has a strong intention and vision to their stories with robust elements of “framing/staging/blocking, confidence in editing, making distinctive choices, and thematically cohesive style choices,” said the SFS Artistic Director, Marcus Baker.  

February 2025’s In Focus event showcased director and cinematographer June Zandona, known for her work on Penelope, The Sex Lives of College Girls, Special, and I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore. The screening featured three of Zandona’s shorts: Dancer, Wedding Video, and This is Concrete. 

The eight minute short, Dancer, follows a man, played by Charlie Latan, obsessing over an inflatable dancing man’s erratic flips to strippers’ erotic spins. Throughout the film, he is static and sulking until a dancer leaves him vulnerable, exposed, and literally stuck in his seat. Zandona makes the viewer itch with a growing uneasiness with tight transitions from dark sets to sexual longing in bright public spaces. 

Poster for Wedding Video

June Zandona

In Wedding Video, Zandona travels to a simpler time before social media. The film follows an art-school graduate turned wedding videographer, played by Maddie Downes. When Downes captures mundane b-roll wedding moments on her retro camcorder, a stoic horse compels Downes outside. Suddenly, a mysterious man, played by Devin Dadoo, confronts her for a cigarette and small talk. 

In this most dialogue-heavy scene, the camera direction toggles between quick, playful banter and flustered-filled beats that make the viewer feel the need to fill some silence. From line to line, the viewer is kept on the edge of their seat itching to hear how the uncomfortable yet casual conversation shifts from one topic to the next. Though, something seems too familiar; she knows what will happen next. 

Downes’s character is a seasoned videographer; this isn’t her first time capturing an “I do”. She stuns the audience facing the facts of the wedding and silently opens herself to the crumbling tragedies transpiring right before her eyes. The weight of her empathy crushes her into snotty sobs. 

Zandona has mastered short-form storytelling. Wedding Video is wonderfully structured as a short, working a clear beginning, middle, and end. The film is packed with absorbing details that leave the viewer wondering: Did the director mean to have the detail on the camcorder?

After all three shorts were screened, Meg Valliant, a director and cinematographer, hosted Zandona on the director chair for a talkback. The audience prodded Zandona with questions about serendipitously captured prop details and how dialogue changes the work between dancer and actor.

With the cinephile-filled room, Zandona went into the technicalities of her favorite camera equipment from body, lighting, tripods, and more—when she could get her hands on the costly equipment. Zandona recognizes how important platforms such as In Focus have helped her excel and the opportunities the programs bring to the Seattle filmmaker community.

Meg Valliant (L) with June Zandona (R) at the In Focus screening.

The Evergreen Echo

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There is no set theme for these In Focus series showcases, and the open-ended process empowers directors to choose what “their pet themes or narrative interests may be” says Artistic Director, Marcus Baker. Baker continues, “There are filmmakers here [in Seattle] who have big ideas, big takes.”

SFS also hosts Locals Only, a short-form screening block with key themes surrounding the films. Attendees discuss aspects of filmmaking such as time loop techniques, developing character relationships, and overall direction skills and technique. This program allows filmmakers and their appreciators to dive deep together as a peer-focused educational opportunity. 

Everyone has an opportunity to showcase their work as a filmmaker. SFS hosts open screenings for directors to show any short-form film under ten minutes. If you have a film on a flashdrive, you’re good to go.

The Seattle Film Society continues to fulfill and grow their passionate mission to foster a diverse, collaborative, and close-knit Seattle film community.