Michael Goldburg is an award-winning filmmaker who earned his M.F.A. at NYU's Graduate Film Program where his thesis film won a Warner Bros. Pictures Production Award and a Dean's Craft Award for Excellence. Michael has continued to make acclaimed short films, commercials, and web series; including the prizewinning short film, Happy Trails, a comic road trip from hell, which screened at several major international film festivals and won a Special Honor from the American Gem Screenplay Competition. Michael's new, hilariously absurd, horror-comedy short, What’s Eating Dad?, was named one of the Top 10 Horror Shorts of 2014 and has won mutiple other accolades, including Best Comedy-Horror Short at the Atlanta Horror Film Festival, the Audience Award at Siouxland Film Festival, the People’s Choice Award for Best Film at the Red Hook International Film Festival, and the Judges’ Prize and Audience Award at the Iron Mule Comedy Film Festival. Michael also co-directed the grand-prize winning web series, Cafe Conversations, for FliggeeBox and is currently directing Tragic Relief, a bleakly funny web series by writers from The Onion and Comedy Central, which was nominated for several Channy Awards at the Channel 101 screening series at UCB East. Michael is currently in pre-production on his first feature, the hilarious con man comedy, Sure-Fire, www.surefiremovie.com. Michael was also awarded an AIVF Screenwriting Mentorship and is developing several other feature screenplays, including a feature version of What’s Eating Dad?, an adaptation of John Blades’ (former book editor of The Chicago Tribune) comic novel of suburban paranoia, Small Game, as well as a shocking small-town murder mystery, Black River, inspired by a true story.