Award-winning filmmaker and first-generation Nigerian-American Adetoro Makinde began her creative journey at the famed Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C. She launched her production company Backdoor Films and its social impact subsidiary Hyphenate Africa after having produced and directed multiple film premieres at the Sundance Film Festival. Makinde’s diverse portfolio includes films like the Golden Globe nominated The Tale to social impact-focused narratives like The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind to documentaries like Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski. She has worked with media moguls like HBO, Participant Media, Netflix, and esteemed actors like Leonardo DiCaprio. Some of more recent projects include a Hurricane Katrina biopic—The American Can—based on her original script and an experimental documentary-short on ableism and racial justice, In the Wake of Mourning.

Makinde is the program director of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts’ Netflix Africa Partnership Program. Among her numerous awards, she is a Fellow of the Facebook SEEN Emerging/Independent Filmmakers, Blackhouse Multicultural Producers, and Made in NY fellowships. She is also a grant recipient from NY Foundation for the Arts, City of New York Mayor Office, Ford Foundation, and HBO Corporate and Social Responsibility. She is the former chair of diversity, equity, and inclusion for Film Fatales and is the current president and co-founder of Women Independent Producers. For Women History Month 2022, IMDBPro selected Makinde as “Female Producer To Watch" in the indie genre.