Adaeze Elechi is a Nigerian writer and award-winning filmmaker whose works interrogate concepts of belonging and alienation, memory and identity, and trauma and healing. Her work and ideas aim to deconstruct and redefine the concept of “Home” beyond geographical location and search for broader, deeper definitions of belonging that transcend physical borders.

In her explorations and storytelling, she employs varied combinations of traditional documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques (using new and archival media), audio storytelling, and poetry, memoir, and fiction writing. She conducts in-depth cultural, historical, and journalistic research, and brings the gathered data to life through intimate interviews, verité scenes, portraiture, and writing with people living lives connected to the concepts she is exploring.

Additionally, she has over ten years of experience as a video and podcast media professional in the roles of director, producer, editor, and post-production supervisor. In these professional roles, she helmed departments that played significant roles in the organizations winning awards such as Webby Awards (mindbodygreen), and being named one of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions (Outlier.org).

Her documentary film The Keepsake was acquired as part of Third World Newsreel’s collection of films in 2024. Her articles, essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica Magazine, mindbodygreen, Callaloo Literary Journal, and the Black feminist anthology In Words of Our Own - Black Women & Being (Canadian Scholars & Women’s Press). Her collection of short stories and poetry, Harmattan, was published in 2019 by Bottlecap Press, and the eponymous short story from the book was a finalist for the 47th New Millennium Award for Fiction. Her poems have been performed at various literary festivals including the New York City Poetry Festival.

She is a Logan Nonfiction Program Fellow and a recipient of the Catapult Film Fund Research Grant and Fellowship. Her films have screened in film festivals in the U.S. and Canada, including the St. Louis International Film Festival.

She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.