ARACELI LEMOS (DISCOVERY DAYS – Co-Founder / Director) is a film director, writer and editor based in Athens and Los Angeles. Her debut feature HOLY EMY, a Greek / French / US co-production, had its world premiere at the 2021 Locarno Film Festival in the Cineasti dei Presenti section where it received a Special Mention Award from the Jury for First Features. Variety described the film as an “excellent debut about faith, mysticism and displacement.” HOLY EMY screened at festivals worldwide (including AFI Fest, Goteborg, Thessaloniki, New Orleans, Seville, and Sun Valley), was nominated for two 2023 Independent Spirit Awards (Someone To Watch, and the John Cassavetes Award), 15 Hellenic Academy Awards where Araceli won the Best Director award, and was distributed by MUBI. As an editor and producer, Araceli has frequently collaborated with the filmmaker Panayotis Evangelidis on his documentary portraits of intimate relationships. Their latest feature film, IRVING PARK, won the Mermaid Award at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival. As an editor, Araceli’s work also includes the documentary THEY GLOW IN THE DARK (dir. P. Evangelidis), which received the Hellenic Film Academy Award for Best Documentary, and LOST LA (Season 2) for the Los Angeles based public television station KCET, which was nominated for a regional Emmy Award. Her 2012 graduate thesis film from CALARTS, the dark comedy short MIGUEL ALVAREZ WEARS A WIG, screened at festivals worldwide including Tampere, Drama, Leeds and Outfest. Araceli is the founder of Discovery Days (formerly the International Project Discovery Forum), an annual development lab for Balkan feature filmmakers held annually in LA in conjunction with the LA Greek Film Festival. She holds an MFA in Film Directing from CalArts and is an active member of the underground comedy scene in LA.