Kelli McNeil-Yellen is a twenty-year marketing and public relations professional who finally made the leap to independent filmmaking with her feature film DARUMA, which she wrote and produced entirely outside of the studio system. Though DARUMA took her and her partner (and the film’s director) Alexander Yellen a collective 17 years to make, DARUMA is now coming to select theaters and platforms on November 15, 2024.

CNN said DARUMA is the first film in US cinematic history to star two disabled leads in a narrative not about overcoming a disability. The film had two sold out screenings at Slamdance and secured media coverage in all of the major trades as well as CNN. 2X Oscar-winner Peter Farrelly loved the film so much that he came on as executive producer to help raise the film’s profile and promote authentic storytelling. The film and the filmmaking team have been featured in numerous media outlets. Kelli hopes that the success of DARUMA will show that there is a real market and audience for authentically cast films and that more narratives like DARUMA will be greenlit.

Kelli is a published author with Scholastic, and sold the book unagented to the publishing giant. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California and the UCLA Extension Screenwriting Program where her script THE BALTIMORE SCHOOL OF CHARM won best feature in 2018.

She is currently developing a slate of projects with her producing partner and husband, Alexander Yellen. She runs the popular substack Marketing & PR for Indie Films: https://substack.com/@klamediagroup She is conversationally fluent in ASL.