The Team Behind Midnight Odyssey
Li Wallis
Li is a director who writes and produces her own material inspired by her collective work and life experiences. She was born in Roanoke, Virginia, and spent her formative years in Atlanta, Georgia. A product of the south and armed with a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism, she uprooted, changed gears and became a fine-art oil painter in Europe. Discovering a need, she worked as an artistic program creator for NGO’s and as a filmmaker and photographer covering human interest stories in Africa, South America and Asia. During her humanitarian work, she was granted Special Consultative Status with the ECOSOC and membership in the Clinton Global Initiative.
The world of fiction film beckoned, and Li was lured to film school where she completed one short film per week for a year. She credits this unforgiving schedule with teaching technical capability paired with sheer passion and dedication to the craft. Her previous art career helped her develop a deep understanding of lighting a set, integrating colours and selecting camera angles and movements required for composing scenes. Taking a huge leap, she directed, co-wrote and produced her debut feature film NothingMan - an offbeat, mystery eco-drama.
Together with her creative partners, she founded Midnight Odyssey Productions in order to realize her dream of directing and producing the type of elevated, character-driven projects that dare to venture off the beaten track.
John Dooley
John specializes in script writing and content development for film and TV series. As a former News Photo Editor at The Daily Telegraph newspaper in London, he also worked in a number of editorial photography roles for sister titles The Sunday Telegraph and Telegraph Magazine. After seven years at the publication, he became a freelance photojournalist based in Los Angeles, where he covered the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, 2008 U.S. presidential election and numerous California wildfires. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and Le Monde, among other international publications.
Rounding off several years in the USA, John returned to London to manage and tutor at the Leica Academy in Mayfair. He was chosen to launch the digital version of the M camera through a promotional film. He has been a regular content contributor to Black + White Photography magazine where he wrote his own monthly column, Viewfinder. His photographic writing led to further features for The Independent newspaper, Rouleur cycling magazine, Digital Photographer magazine and The Telegraph Online. Additionally, John was a camera tester for Ricoh Japan, and his collaboration with Hasselblad resulted in the architectural photography book: Crestwood Hills: The Chronicle of a Modern Utopia.
John was the stills photographer for Director Andrew Piddington’s 2015 film Sins Of A Father, starring Lambert Wilson, and produced by Graham Leader (producer of In The Bedroom – nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture in 2002).
Robin Czerny
Berlin based writer, director and producer Robin has worked in the film industry for over twenty years. His award winning work as an actor has provided him with the experience of working on innumerable productions and has given him a thorough insight into scripts and character development. Having played the lead in several feature films in German, he shot his first leading role in English - which was released in 2024.
Always making the best out of every character he was given the opportunity to portray, Robin’s desire for getting behind the camera and realising his own ideas grew. In order to develop his first feature film script, he studied the art of screenwriting and produced several short films. ‘Cannes Affaire,' his latest international film that he wrote, directed and produced, premiered in Berlin and will run in the 2024 film festival circuit.
Robin is one of the co-writers behind Midnight Odysey Productions' next feature film in development entitled, The Assembly.