Adrian Cardenas is a Cuban-American writer/director and former Major League Baseball player for the Chicago Cubs who was born and raised in Miami, Florida. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from NYU with degrees in creative writing and philosophy. He has published articles for the New Yorker and CNN, and received his M.F.A. in film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Adrian has written, directed, and shot films that have screened at top festivals, including SXSW, Atlanta, Miami, Palm Springs, etc., and have been selected as Vimeo ‘Staff Picks’. His thesis short, THE ARTISAN, was the first Cuban film ever featured on ‘Short of The Week’. In 2019, he was selected as a Marcie Bloom Fellow, a Sony Pictures Classics mentoring program designed to introduce up and coming filmmakers to the film industry. Most recently, Adrian was one of eight Miami-based recipients of the Oolite Arts’ grant. The grant helped him finish his most recent short, IN AN ORDERLY FASHION, which is being submitted to festivals and developed into a feature of the same name. Adrian’s currently an adjunct professor in screenwriting at the University of Miami’s film department.