Grottofilms is a San Francisco-based film company founded in 2002 by the story team of director David Munro and producer Xandra Castleton. Grottofilms writes, finances, and produces original low- to mid-budget films and develops intelligent commercial film stories for sale and/or co-production. Grottofilms is currently developing a slate of projects and recently premiered its debut feature Full Grown Men at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.

The company is an original tenant of the Writers Grotto, a San Francisco literary collective that Entertainment Weekly has called "one of the few solid literary communities outside the media centers of New York and LA."

XANDRA CASTLETON Writer/Producer Xandra Castleton learned the film trade from Robert Redford, Spike Lee, Ang Lee, and Tim Robbins. As Series Producer of PBS TV's Independent View, Xandra created in-depth profiles of filmmakers, writers, and actors from coast to coast, winning an Emmy award for her portrait of John Waters. Before co-writing and producing Grottofilms' debut feature Full Grown Men, Xandra produced two award-winning short films: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness, which she also co-wrote, and Compulsory Breathing. The films were singled out by festivals juries worldwide as “triumphant,” “remarkable,” “wonderful ...touching ...[and] hilarious.” Xandra produced the feature documentary Wild at Start: High-Tech Adventures and the American Dream, and coordinated the Francis Ford Coppola segments of the IFC Films release, A Decade Under the Influence. Xandra was director and curator of the critically acclaimed El Rio Outdoor Cinema screening series. Xandra has been a lecturer on African and Latin American Cinema, an arts journalist in West Africa, and a film reviewer for Surface magazine. She studied film production in the MFA program at San Francisco State and received her BA in Women's Studies and Cinema from Smith College. She is Brazilian-American and speaks Portuguese, French and Spanish.

DAVID MUNRO Writer/Director David Munro is a filmmaker “on the verge” according to Filmmaker Magazine. Critics called his first film Bullethead “visionary,” “tour de force,” and “among the best short films in the past ten years” according to Sundance programming director John Cooper. David's second film First Love, Second Planet won awards at numerous festivals, including best student film in the nation at the Kodak/UFVA Fest. First Love was praised by Filmmaker Magazine as “excellent...an amazingly moving and strange tale of alienation and intense sexuality.” Filmmaker Magazine subsequently named David “one of 25 new indie faces,” predicting “his feature films are sure to launch a fresh voice…within original storytelling frameworks.” David’s first screenplay, Life For Beginners, was a finalist in the prestigious Nicholl Screenwriting Competition. A third short Compulsory Breathing aired nationally last fall on PBS’s prime-time "Independent Lens" series hosted by actor Don Cheadle. Full Grown Men is David's feature directing debut. David attended film school at San Francisco State University and studied English and political science at Brown University. Prior to film study, David was a copywriter at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising. His commercial work as both a writer and director has been featured in CA Annual, The One Show, and the Clio Awards. He was born and raised in Miami, Florida.

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