Kweighbaye Kotee
Founder & Director, Bushwick Film Festival

Kweighbaye Kotee started the Bushwick Film Festival in 2007 with a simple idea: show films she loved to people in her neighborhood. Nineteen years later, it's one of Brooklyn's signature cultural events — nearly 100 independent films a season, more than 5,000 attendees, and a track record of championing filmmakers before the rest of the industry catches on.

Born in Liberia, she immigrated to the United States with her family at the brink of the country's civil war, and grew up attending public school in Newark, New Jersey, before a Wight Foundation scholarship sent her to Blair Academy. She founded BFF while still a student at NYU, graduating with a B.S. in Media, Culture and Communication.

What began as a way to share good films quickly became something larger. As the festival grew, Kweighbaye recognized it was serving a greater purpose — contributing to Brooklyn's artistic, cultural, and economic growth, and opening doors for filmmakers who rarely get them. That conviction still drives BFF today: a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, an MWBE organization, and one of the few U.S. film festivals founded and led by a woman of color.

Alongside the festival, she is a writer and producer, leading World+Me Films, a Los Angeles–based production company focused on bold, character-driven storytelling. Her work has taken her well beyond Brooklyn — speaking at TEDx, Google, SAG-AFTRA, JPMorgan Chase, and Blackstone, co-producing a UN-backed women's peace film festival in Liberia, and leading a masterclass on festival strategy in South America.

Nearly two decades in, the thing that keeps her going hasn't changed much from 2007: bringing people together and sharing stories.