Hi, I’m Delphyne Bella Panther-Brutzkus, a Chicago-born filmmaker who makes shorts that feel more like experiences than stories. Film to me, is the most consuming artform, sound, color, sculpture, performance all tangled up,  and I use it to untangle a section of human experience. To pull concepts out of the air and ground them into something we can sit with, laugh at, or discreetly sob through. Where a mathematician writes formulas, I make films: to explain the strange formulas of human emotion.

     I gravitate toward films that balance vulnerability with play. Some turn the mundane into something oddly funny or oddly beautiful, others lean into the wacky, the experimental. 

     My short Chew This! A spitfire short on voyeurism, and femme bodies, structured like a punk song and inspired by Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece is screening at the 32nd Annual Chicago Underground Film Festival. I’ve also worked as Assistant to the Director on Haroula Rose’s All Happy Families (2022–2023), and my work has screened at the DePaul Experimental Film Festival. 

     Currently, I'm developing three shorts that circle around memory, transformation, and place. Molt With Me looks at the beauty of shedding versions of ourselves through the natural metaphor of molting, framed by a shifting circle of friends. The Lily Blossoms Made My Throat Itch reconstructs my grandmother’s presence from memory, clay, and voicemail, dwelling in the tender space between absence and reconciliation. And an untitled Chicago love letter traces personal history across city streets and seasons, mapping belonging through apartments, and bus rides.

     Across everything, I stay hands-on: I write, direct, edit, and build worlds from clay, paper, and perform. I’ve done hair, makeup, costumes, animation (stop-motion, claymation, hand-drawn), and production design.

At the heart of it, my work lives at the crossroads of defiance, sensitivity and experience, play with absurdity, and ultimately celebrate the messy, beautiful process of being human.