Vladan Nikolic is an award winning filmmaker from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, who lives and works in New York City. Before coming to New York, Mr. Nikolic worked as director for the first independent TV network in Yugoslavia. Since then, Vladan has worked as writer, director, producer and editor on shorts, feature films, documentaries, commercials and music videos. His awards include the TV Sarajevo Award and Zeta Film Award for Best Screenplay, Eastman Kodak Award for his short film Serendipity, Telluride Indiefest Best Film Award for his feature Burn (2001), and others. His first narrative feature film Burn prompted Amy Taubin of the Village Voice and Film Comment to write that “Vladan Nikolic proves himself a director to watch with this intense, nightmare thriller about Yugoslavian refugees in New York.”

His second feature, LOVE (2005) premiered at the Tribeca and Venice film festivals to critical acclaim. It went on to win awards at film festivals in Geneva, Switzerland, Barcelona, Spain, and the Best Director Award at the Tiburon International Film Festival in San Francisco. LOVE opened theatrically to rave reviews and has been released theatrically and on DVD.

Vladan has also directed and produced the documentary The City (2007), and produced the documentary Fire Under the Snow (2008), as well as the fiction feature Here and There (2009).

Most recently, he wrote, directed and produced the feature ZENITH (2010), which is also part of an extensive trans-media project. The film has been released in a unique and innovative way, combining theatrical, video, and online releases over multiple platforms. In 2011, parts of ZENITH were released through bit-torrents at SXSW and received an unprecedented million downloads, and a cult following within days of its release.

Vladan is Associate Professor at The School of Media Studies at The New School, where he teaches Film Directing, Production, and Digital and Transmedia Filmmaking; he also teaches at New York University.