Atlanta-based writer and director Omar Derby is closing out the summer festival circuit on a high note. His short film The Good One recently won Best Dark Drama at the 2026 Georgia Shorts Film Festival, and this month Derby brought two films to two hometown festivals: Keep On Truckin’ screened at the Atlanta Underground Film Festival (AUFF) on August 8 which won the Best Director Short award, and both Keep On Truckin’ and The Good One will screen as official selections at the Oscar-qualifying, BronzeLens Film Festival on August 21. Media are invited to attend the BronzeLens screening and to request interviews with Derby and members of both films’ casts and crews.
The Good One follows a newly released convict who discovers a dark family secret after visiting his unsuspecting brother for help with their mother’s home. Derby wrote and directed the film, which was named Best Dark Drama at the 2026 Georgia Shorts Film Festival, where it competed against four other shorts.
Keep On Truckin’ follows an amateur MMA fighter who struggles to cope when the championship match that launches his career falls on the same night as his mother’s final hours. Derby co-wrote, produced, directed, and edited the film.
“Both of these films come from a very personal place—one about the unseen consequences of family trauma on brothers, the other about grief colliding with the biggest night of your life,” Derby said. “To have them selected by hometown festivals, and to have The Good One recognized with Best Dark Drama, means everything. Atlanta audiences are seeing these stories first, and I couldn’t ask for a better home for them.”
Beyond his festival slate, Derby has built a growing footprint in vertical and streaming content. He recently directed for Mansa, the mobile-first streaming platform co-founded by actor-producers David Oyelowo and Nate Parker, helming an upcoming crime/romance vertical series starring two well-known Black actors, with further details to be announced by Mansa in the coming weeks. Derby directed The Marriage Clause, among other vertical projects, continuing to expand his work across the format. In 2022, he licensed his short film Anna v. Anna to Aspire TV, marking an earlier milestone in a career built on finding new homes for character-driven stories.
The screenings will take place at the BronzeLens Film Festival on Friday, August 21, 2026, at 4:20 PM at Tara Theatre, 2345 Cheshire Bridge Rd NE, Atlanta, GA 30324. Tickets and festival information are available at www.bronzelens.com.
