Parida Tantiwasadakran is an award-winning Thai-American writer/director and sound mixer whose films have premiered at multiple festivals around the world, including Slamdance, Short Shorts & Asia, and the Chicago Children’s International Film Festival. Her UCLA thesis film, "Young People, Old People & Nothing in Between," was longlisted for the 2024 Academy Awards after winning Best Live Action Short at the Oscar-qualifying deadCenter Film Festival. The film premiered on NOWNESS, was reviewed on RogerEbert.com, won awards at festivals in Berlin, Busan, and Vancouver, and was distributed in Japan and Taiwan. She holds an MFA in Directing from UCLA and a BA in Creative Writing from Columbia University.
As a sound mixer, Parida worked on "Sunfish" (dir. Sierra Falconer), which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. She has done commercial work for Whole Foods, BuzzFeed, WeFolk, and Univision, and has worked with talent such as Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp, and cast members of "Boy Meets World" for an upcoming documentary. She believes that working in sound enriches her sensibilities as a director, keying her into the power and vitality of the auditory experience in film.
Parida is the recipient of the Adrienne Shelly Foundation Award (past recipients include writer/directors Chloé Zhao, Dee Rees, and Ana Lily Amirpour), the UCLA Graduate Council Diversity Fellowship, the Carl David LGBTQ Memorial Fellowship, and the Foreign Language & Area Studies Fellowship bestowed by the U.S. Department of Education—all of which reflect her commitment to diversity and to uplifting other underrepresented filmmakers along the way.
She is currently writing her first feature, a mystery-comedy akin to a teenage "Knives Out," based on an AP test–stealing scandal that occurred at her high school. She is also in pre-production on "Lukee the Undead," a horror-comedy short about a Thai immigrant chef in Los Angeles who runs a restaurant with her useless niece and nephew, Jal and Anna, dies, and returns from the dead to whip them into shape. Parida is from the suburbs of Walnut, California.
