Stories that move through the body before they reach the mind.

Lanre Olabisi is an award-winning writer-director whose work moves between drama, humor, and soul. He has directed multiple episodes of ABC’s The Rookie and its spinoff The Rookie: Feds, and is set to direct on the first season of Starz’s Power: Origins. 

His screenplay On the Other Side — in which a seven-time NASA reject discovers a family heirloom that swaps her with her astronaut self and opts for the ultimate upgrade: inter-dimensional identity theft, won at the 2025 Austin Film Festival Script Competition, selected from over 17,000 submissions across 112 countries.

His debut feature, August the First, premiered at SXSW, earned a Gotham Award nomination, and won top prize at seven international film festivals. IndieWire proclaimed that “Olabisi is most definitely a talent to watch.” His follow-up feature, Somewhere in the Middle, won top prize at eight international film festivals and was nominated for Outstanding Independent Feature at the Black Reel Awards. Both films were acquired by Netflix, Showtime, and Hulu.  His short film, A Storybook Ending, streamed on HBO for three years; the feature screenplay was selected into Film Independent’s Screenwriting Lab. He is an alumnus of the HBOAccess and Disney/ABC Directing Programs. 

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A former collegiate wrestler at the University of Michigan and a brown belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Lanre brings physical authenticity to all of his action and combat sequences. His long-standing Vipassana meditation practice grounds a calm, focused intensity on set.