Akiko Izumitani (@directorakiko) is a female director/producer/writer born and raised in Japan. She's also a senior producer at Aniplex of America. She worked as a project manager at 20 Century FOX and coordinated with multiple FOX international territories to track the schedules of Blu-ray and DVD projects, Aspera transfers, and coordinating with replicators for transferring the images for mass replication. She is familiar with video format as well as audio format. She is fluent in both English and Japanese and works as a Japanese freelance translator for the film distribution company, production companies, the entertainment law firm, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange company, and several other cooperation. Akiko first earned recognition through her feature-length documentary, "Silent Shame" (2010), an in-depth exploration of Japan's war crimes in WWII. It won numerous awards worldwide, including Best Feature in the Beijing Movie Festival, and has a screening at an Oscar Qualified film festival. It has been sold to several territories. Several years later, Akiko directed "Kung Fu Date,” which won the Remi Award at the Houston Film Festival, and "Sukiyaki with Love" (Semi-Finalist of NBCUniversal Shortcuts). Her action short film, “The Other Side” won The Best Short Film in Sacramento Asian Film Festival and ECA Award by ICG and had a screening sponsored by ICG at DGA. Her latest film, "Yae: Blind Samurai Woman" won the Best Film at the Downtown Los Angeles Film Festival and Reel Sisters Award at the Oscar-qualified festival, Reel Sisters Film Festival. She was a semi-finalist of NBC Universal ShorCuts (Top 14 out of over 250) in 2013, ABC Director's Program in 2014, Sony Director's Program (Top 25 out of over 400) in 2017 and 2019, and NBC Female Forward (Top 20 out of 1000) in 2018. She was also considered to be an episodic director of AMC’s The Terror Season 2 by Scott Free. Akiko was selected as one of the top rising Asian American filmmakers in 2013. She also studied screenwriting, taught man-to-man by Monte Merrick (Writer of Mr. Baseball and Memphis Belle) and Jonathan Tsuneishi (A script analyst at 20 Century Fox.) She is an active member of Santa Monica Screenwriting Group to exchange notes with Nicole Perlman (Writer of Captain Marvel and Guardians of the Galaxy), Ben Kim (Writer of Queen Sugar), and James ‘Doc’ Mason (Writer of The S.H.U) over ten years.