Press Kit

TRANS-FICTION: Digital Friends explores authorship at the intersection of embodied identity and artificial consciousness. The opera singer seeks coherence between voice and body. The AI seeks coherence, data control, and performance. I conceived Christmas Eve as the temporal setting because it represents passage, rebirth, and spiritual reckoning. On this night of symbolic incarnation, both human and artificial entities attempt transformation.

The protagonist does not experience his transition as pathology but inevitability — an alignment long deferred. In contrast, the AI frames its intervention as preservation, yet quietly prepares succession. The tension between them is not technological spectacle but philosophical confrontation: who authors the future — the human who risks change, or the machine that promises permanence? — Dr. Sophia Romma

Dr. Sophia Romma, PhD, Esq., has cultivated a distinguished career at the intersection of international law, human rights, higher education, and the cinematic arts. A prolific playwright, screenwriter, and director, she currently serves as the Producing Artistic Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Garden of the Avant-Garde Film and Theatrical Foundation in New York. Through this visionary organization, Dr. Romma spearheads specialized filmmaking and dramaturgy programs designed to refine the craft of emerging artists, with a steadfast commitment to elevating the voices of women within the film and television industries.

Beyond her foundational leadership, Dr. Romma has served as the Producing Artistic Director for The O’Neill Film and Theatrical Foundation Inc. since 2013 and has presided over the International Centre for Women Playwrights since 2015. Her commitment to global advocacy is further evidenced by her tenure as an Antisemitism, Extremism, and Foreign Policy Fellow at Human Rights First, where she has contributed to the organization’s mission in New York and Washington, D.C., since 2018.

As an international human rights attorney with over two decades of specialized practice, Dr. Romma addresses complex legal frontiers, including minority and LGBTQ+ protections, the rights of the Roma and Indigenous peoples, and the combatting of extremist ideologies. Her pedagogical influence is equally expansive; she is currently a Writing Specialist for the Graduate and Professional Divisions at Touro University and a Professor of College Writing at the New York School of Career and Applied Studies. Her academic portfolio includes previous roles as Assistant Director and Special Legal Writing Advisor at the Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, as well as instructional positions at the New York Film Academy and the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center.

Dr. Romma’s historical contributions to the arts include co-chairing the Oral History Series for the League of Professional Theatre Women at the Lincoln Center Library and serving as a literary manager for the Negro Ensemble Company. Her creative canon is vast, highlighted by the feature film Used and Borrowed Time (2021), which earned forty-eight domestic and international accolades following its red-carpet premiere at New York’s Quad Cinema. Her portfolio encompasses sixteen stage plays, several of which garnered Obie Award nominations—and the Garnet Prix Award-winning film Poor Liza, starring Academy Award winner Lee Grant and nominee Ben Gazzara. Driven by a profound interest in societal imperatives, her latest documentary, Soul Arbitration, which chronicles the existential struggles of Ukrainian refugees, is scheduled for release in the summer of 2026.

An alumna of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Dr. Romma holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film and Television and a Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing and Theatre Arts. Her scholarly pursuits led her to the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute, where she earned a PhD in Philology, and subsequently to Fordham University School of Law, where she achieved a Master of Laws in International Human Rights Law and Racial Justice.

Bridging the worlds of law, academia, and cinema, Dr. Romma remains an active member of the American, New York State, and International Bar Associations. She currently serves as the Chair of the United Nations Committee and is the incoming Co-Chair of the European Affairs Committee at the New York City Bar Association. Dr. Romma also serves as the Chair of the International Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Ukraine (City Bar). She holds board positions with the Baltic American Chamber of Commerce, New York Classical Theatre, and the League of Professional Theatre Women. A member of The Players and a ten-year veteran of the NYU Alumni Association Board of Directors, and a past President of New York University’s Alumni Club of Long Island, Dr. Romma attributes her enduring professional evolution to the foundational support of her family, whose encouragement has remained the cornerstone of her multifaceted success. On March 10 of 2026, Dr. Romma received the 2026 Her Hero Lifetime Achievement Award, bestowed upon her steadfast and courageous work in international human rights law from the New York City Bar Association.