Deborah Puette
CO-DIRECTOR/WRITER
A queer, femme writer/director/actor, Deborah Puette grew up in a family of hunters and snowmobile riders who taught her to use a shotgun when she was eight. She's lived in small towns and large cities around the globe and calls on her eclectic past to write sophisticated, female-forward, character-driven stories about smart, complex, messy people. Her deep understanding of both America’s heartland and its “coastal elites” allow her to treat all of her characters with compassion and humanity, no matter where they’re from.
Deborah attributes her extensive experience as an award-winning actor to her early success as an emerging writer. On the television front, Deborah’s pilot, PLAY LIKE A GIRL, was a Finalist for the 2021 Writers Lab underwritten by Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Oprah Winfrey. Her newest pilot BLAZE propelled her to the finals of the 2021 Warner Bros. Writers’ Workshop, won the Grand Prize in Roadmap Writers’ JumpStart competition, and in April 2022 received a coveted placement on the prestigious GLAAD List, a compilation of the best unproduced LGBTQ-inclusive scripts from GLAAD and The Black List.
Raising her daughter -- an exquisite transgender human -- to be a confident, kind, responsible citizen of the world is, and will forever be, her proudest achievement.
Robert Enriquez
CO-DIRECTOR/PRODUCER
Robert Enriquez is an American filmmaker of Filipino descent whose career in the entertainment industry spans over twenty-five years. As a director and producer, Robert has made many films that have gone on to distribution in more than eighteen different countries and has brokered deals with Amazon, Google Play, Comcast, Showtime, Netflix, and Lionsgate. His projects have placed in top-tier film festivals and received Emmy and Tony recognition. Cash for Gold is his fourth feature as a director.
In addition to being a hands-on filmmaker, Robert is passionate about nurturing the voices of tomorrow and is a veteran of mentoring and building the careers of young filmmakers and artists. He founded and operates Red Baron Management and Films, a successful talent management and production company of over twenty years. His clients have starred in countless films and TV shows such as Run The World, the current remake of The Wonder Years, The Last OG, GLOW, Happy Together, Straight Outta Compton, 22 Jump Street, The Equalizer, The Carmichael Show, Blackish, and many more.
Robert is the West Coast Director of the Sunscreen Film Festival, a festival backed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2016.
Ahmos Hassan
PRODUCER
Ahmos Hassan, founder and CEO of Chariot Entertainment, is an entertainment entrepreneur whose career has spanned over two decades as a producer, manager, and trusted advisor. He has guided careers, built audiences, and executed multi-faceted deals for his clients, spanning the spectrum from television and film, to live theater, to literary publishing. Among his array of credits is Executive Producer of the two-time Emmy Award-winning television series “Life with Louie”, which also won three Humanitas Prizes. He co-produced the Broadway musical, “Doctor Zhivago”, which opened on Broadway in 2015. Currently he is producing the feature film “Cash for Gold”.
Through Chariot Entertainment, Hassan is developing and producing television and film content that contain authentic Muslim characters or Muslim related themes, elements still limited in mainstream programming. He has long-standing philanthropic involvement in the Muslim American creative community and has advised on multiple major film/TV projects. As one of the few Muslims recognized in both the creative and management segments of the industry, Hassan was tapped by the U.S. Department of State under the Obama administration, to serve as an advisor on diplomacy strategies, engaging the entertainment sector and public at large.