Ashley Avis
Ashley Avis is an award-winning American filmmaker. She recently wrote, directed, as well as edited the feature film Black Beauty for Disney+ starring Oscar winner Kate Winslet, Mackenzie Foy (Twilight), and Iain Glen (Games of Thrones). Disney debuted the movie worldwide in November 2020.
Black Beauty will mark Ashley’s fourth feature film, in addition to writing, directing, and producing hundreds of commercials and branded content to date.
Upcoming projects include writing and show running the television series Breyer Hollow for Imagine Entertainment’s Executive Producers Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Stephanie Sperber; as well as directing and producing the documentary Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West (2021).
Commercially Ashley is known for the elegance and storytelling of her short-form work. She has directed for clients such as Chevrolet, Mercedes-Benz, Pfizer, Footlocker, Asics, Red Bull, Coca Cola, Cali Burger, and dozens of independent brands.
In 2016, she won the Mercedes-Benz Award for her auto-fashion fusion spot “Bespoke,” and in 2019 she directed as well as edited Chevrolet’s fourteen-part “Goalkeepers” campaign featuring Olympians Mia Hamm, Hilary Knight, and Laurie Hernandez, encouraging young girls to stay in sports.
An Editor of over a decade, she cuts the majority of her own work–and is the co-founder of Winterstone Pictures, a boutique production company in Marina del Rey, California.
Ashley’s visual style has been called “timelessly romantic,” (White Lies Magazine), while Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times has said her work on Black Beauty is “beautifully uplifting… writer-director Ashley Avis and her production team have created a gorgeous, sweeping epic.”
In the fall of 2020, Ashley founded and launched The Wild Beauty Foundation–a new organization to help illuminate key issues wild and domestic horses are facing today through entertainment, youth-focused educational programs, and on the ground rescue efforts.
Ashley lives near the ocean with her husband and producing partner Edward Winters. When she isn’t working, she can be found passionately rescuing horses in need, and recently adopted two wild horses of her own.