S.E. King is a writer + director + producer working through a lens of comedic empathy for the underdogs and satirical honesty for those in power.
S.E. is the co-founder of Melba Productions with Leah Judge and they are currently in production on The Cherry Vanilla Story, a feature documentary about the punk icon who was David Bowie's publicist and a Warhol muse, with confirmed subjects spanning legends of film, music, and the downtown New York counterculture. The project was selected for Gotham Week Project Market '25.
King's debut feature, Our dad, Danielle — following a trans woman coming out at 57 in Texas — won the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at Manchester Film Festival, the LGBTQ+ Voices Jury Award and Audience Award at Portland Film Festival, and the Audience Award at Vail. It streams globally. King was next commissioned to direct The Miami Bull Project, a branded doc on diversity in finance, which screened at the Miami and Dumbo film festivals and won a Silver Telly.
Born in Puerto Rico, raised in Texas, King studied and performed comedy in Chicago, where King’s solo show good crazy/bad crazy earned a Time Out Chicago Critic's Pick and #1 Don't Miss Show, plus a Chicago Reader Critic's Choice and Highly Recommended — the Reader called King "unstoppable" and "hilarious." King also co-created Entertaining Julia, a weekly variety show, and Mama Truth's Open Mic For Open Souls, a variety-show parody that was a Chicago Tribune Best Bet multiple times and traveled to New York as an Andy Kaufman Awards semi-finalist.
King has since written and directed for Funny or Die Originals, developed and directed original comedy pilots for NBCUniversal Digital, written and produced for Rachel Dratch's Late Night Snack on truTV and Relativity Media, and produced music videos including MILCK's "Quiet," the anthem performed at the 2017 Women's March. King’s dramedy scripts — Diane From Kernville, about a badass broad in her 70s the world abandoned, and other stories about complex women with integrity — have placed in the Top 8 at Nantucket's Tony Cox Competition, as a multiple Second Rounder at Austin Film Festival, and as a Semi-Finalist at HollyShorts and Cinequest amongst others.
King is also developing a series of picture books, because some of the biggest conversations start in the smallest of places: stories for the outsiders and sensitive kids learning to see and love themselves, rooted in identity, family, and the wild beauty of growing up "different."
King is a proud member of Film Fatales— and really LOVES an em dash.