LeAnne Russell is a Cuban-American filmmaker and actress working between New York and Miami. She has worked at The Wooster Group, performed at Art Basel Miami Beach, the Upright Citizens Brigade, and has appeared in national commercials in both English and Spanish. As a documentary filmmaker, she has worked as a producer for award-winning director Eugene Jarecki. She is currently developing her first feature film as actor-writer-director set in Miami.
LeAnne’s interest in her Cuban heritage and history has been a theme throughout her work. LeAnne was a research assistant at the Cuban Research Institute collaborating on various projects on the Cuban Republic as well as contemporary arts and civil society. Her undergraduate thesis explored censorship in Cuban cinema in the 1990s. In July 2017 LeAnne was a CubaOne Fellow on the literature-focused trip to the island led by Presidential Inaugural poet Richard Blanco and MacArthur Genius anthropologist Ru
She holds a B.A. in Spanish Literature and Mandarin Chinese from Florida International University and studied abroad in Buenos Aires and Beijing. She holds an M.F.A. in Theater from the Actors Studio Drama School.