With a career spanning narrative features, documentaries, television, shorts, and commercials, writer, director and producer Rod Blackhurst embodies a genre‑agnostic ethos: storytelling rooted in character, craft, vision, and entrepreneurship.  
His critically acclaimed work includes the Emmy and Critics Choice Netflix Original AMANDA KNOX (TIFF), BLOOD FOR DUST (Tribeca/Deauville) and HERE ALONE which has the distinction of being the first Midnight Section film to win the coveted Tribeca Audience Award.  
Blackhurst lives in Nashville with his wife and two daughters, and runs the film and television studio Witchcraft Motion Picture Company (NIGHT SWIM, THE WHITE ROOM) with longtime collaborator Noah Lang and Ross O’Connor. 

Director's Statement 
DOLLY is an elegant and twisted fairytale born out of a deep love of gritty genre films and wanting to see something bonkers that a 13-year-old me would pine to rent (somehow) from the local video store (that was also the jewelry and appliance repair store) in rural upstate New York. I knew this film needed to have a strange deranged beating heart, not just for our protagonist, Macy, but the titular Dolly who I hope is a shockingly complex and ultimately oddly sympathetic figure - and a character who will bring much madness to audiences for years to come. Because as outsiders, this film is a renewed investment in our ethos as filmmakers, our proud tribe of misfits, and our families, especially our children, who I hope never meet a life sized, blood-soaked doll in the woods.