AFI Film Fest 2023 Exclusive: Armani Ortiz & Gelila Bekele on directing Maxine's Baby: A Tyler Perry Story
Premiering recently at the 2023 AFI Film Festival as the Centerpiece was Amazon Studios' Maxine's Baby: A Tyler Perry Story, directed by Gelila Bekele and Armani Ortiz. The film will be available on Prime Video November 17, 2023.
Writer, actor, filmmaker, studio head and media titan, Tyler Perry, is America’s consummate multihyphenate. But underneath this entertainment behemoth is a man working humbly to heal his childhood trauma by transforming his pain into promise. Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story, a nod to his mother’s love, is a tender and intimate portrait of visionary and innovator Tyler Perry: his harrowing but faithful road to the top of an industry that didn’t always include him. Nearly a decade in the making, with unfettered access, directors Gelila Bekele and Armani Ortiz lead us into the inner-world of a man, whose story has never fully been told, as he becomes a father and a media mogul with a mission to pave his own road to the top. The product is a profound lesson on remembering where you came from to know where you want to go.
Gelila Bekele is an Ethiopian American model, activist and documentary filmmaker. Bekele’s filmmaking credits include MAI: LIFE IS NOT HONEY (director), AMBESSA (executive producer) and MODEL ACTIVISTS (director). In 2018, she authored the photography book “Guzo,” a visual chronicle of daily life in Ethiopia.
Armani Ortiz is a film and television director, producer and writer. In addition to directing short documentaries, including Puff Daddy’s MMM, Ortiz has directed episodes of the Tyler Perry shows THE OVAL, RUTHLESS, SISTAS and YOUNG DYLAN, as well as the BET series THE QUEEN’S MEN. MAXINE’S BABY is his debut feature-length documentary.