Filmmaker Bio: Annie Girard and Diana Wright are award-winning, LA-based writer/directors that have written for mobile gaming, digital, narrative podcasts, TV, and film for Disney, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Warner Brothers, PBS, DreamWorks, MTV, HGTV, and Comedy Central, on projects including LEGEND OF THE THREE CABALLEROS, THE SIMPSONS: TAPPED OUT, STAR TREK FLEET COMMAND. They’ve sold projects to Amazon, Crunchy Roll/VRV, Joey Soloway, Jennifer Todd Productions and Field/House Productions. Their animated adult action/sci-fi/comedy pilot is currently in development with Animasia LA. 

Filmmaker Bio: Derek Shane Garcia is a filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. Derek got his start as a Tribeca Film Fellow at the Tribeca Film Festival 2009. He was accepted to SUNY Purchase's Film Conservatory, where he graduated with a BFA in Film in 2013.  Derek has been nominated and won several awards at various film festivals. His films were selected into such film festivals as Chelsea Film Festival (where he was awarded Best Director in 2018) as well as the Tribeca Film Festival, Brooklyn International, Taormina Film Festival, Cork International Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, HBO International Latino NY Film Festival, Williamsburg International Film Festival, Art of Brooklyn Film Festival and Soho International Film Festival. Derek is well-rounded in documentary film, having made two films for CBS Sunday Morning News and Channel Thirteen for Ken Burns Projects that have aired nationally.

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Filmmaker Bio: Rrose Present was born and lived in Barcelona until few years ago. "I experienced the terrorist attacks of August 17th 2017 through the network. In Additive Emotions I show an irrational understanding of the facts by inverting the images and the sound of the first video that I saw  Incorporating light flickers with additives primary colors (primary emotions) that are crisscrossing and overlapping the color, opening the chromatic range of emotions giving light to the emotional impacts received .... ending in a black and silent void."

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Filmmaker Bio: Martin Krafft uses the experimental documentary form to document the rich, complicated experiences of those often overlooked by our society. He studied for a Master's of Fine Arts in Photography, Video, and Imaging at the University of Arizona. His film shorts have been shown in film festivals and museums around the world. Drawing from his upbringing in small-town Maryland, he works to tell the complex stories of rural people.

Filmmaker: As with many creative people in film, Will Ahrens is a multi-hyphenate. He began as an actor but he also attended the renowned USC film/TV program. He has worked in LA theater for many years as producer, actor and director but returned to film in 2010 with his award winning short, In Silence, which he wrote and directed. That film had a successful festival run throughout the country. During the pandemic he wrote his first full length screenplay (winning awards at multiple festivals in 2022) and also completed season 1 of his web series, Theatre Tube: Romeo & Juliet go to Washington, which also got a festival run in 2023. He is riding this creative wave in 2024, starting with Amor Manet which is just starting its festival run.

Filmmaker Bio:  Chaire Louise (Claire Louise) is an artist and filmmaker born and raised in NYC and currently based in London.
 Since moving to London Chaire has received a MRes Art: Moving Image degree with Distinction from Central Saint Martins. Since graduating from The Cooper Union with a BFA in 2019, Chaire has primarily worked between post production and film education and programming. She is currently developing a documentary project. 10 years ago she discovered a spelling mistake on her birth certificate and things have never been the same.

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Filmmaker Bio: Rrose Present was born and lived in Barcelona until few years ago. "I experienced the terrorist attacks of August 17th 2017 through the network. In Additive Emotions I show an irrational understanding of the facts by inverting the images and the sound of the first video that I saw  Incorporating light flickers with additives primary colors (primary emotions) that are crisscrossing and overlapping the color, opening the chromatic range of emotions giving light to the emotional impacts received .... ending in a black and silent void."

Filmmaker Bio: Parker Croft is an American director, screenwriter, and producer. His first short film Suncatcher (2019) received sixty-two festival selections, winning thirteen awards with an additional twenty nominations. He has directed content for the NBA, FIBA Basketball World cup, Shiseido, and numerous music videos for various artists including the All-American Rejects. He co-wrote and executive produced the feature film Falling Overnight which won the Special Jury Prize at Cinequest before streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.

Filmmaker Bio:  Aimiende Negbenebor Sela is a Writer-Director of Nigerian descent, adopted by a Jewish-Israeli family from the Bronx, and a Stevens Institute of Technology Distinguished Alumni Award recipient in Arts and Humanities.
Her award-winning short films have screened at numerous festivals across the world, and her feature screenplays have placed in several competitions including Screencraft Film Fund, Austin Film Festival and Cinestory Foundation Fellowship, Hollyshorts, and in the top 15% at Academy Nicholl Fellowships. Her feature screenplay, Utopia, made it to the second round at the 2018 Sundance Writer’s Lab.

Filmmaker Bio: Eta Dahlia is a poet and filmmaker based in London. His work combines minimalist poetry with a range of audio-visual media. He works with spoken word, video, images, colours and music, integrating these elements into inseparable rhythmic and rhyming compositions to create coherent and complete multimedia poetic pieces. Through these
interdisciplinary pieces Eta strives to reach a universal type of poem, where the understanding and appreciation of a piece is not limited to its original language.

Filmmaker Bio: Maegan Houang is a writer/director based in Michigan and Los Angeles. She most recently served as a co-producer on The Sympathizer, wrote episodes for Counterpart and Shōgun, and co-wrote Justin Chon's feature Jamojaya which premiered at Sundance 2023. She is currently writing Nekrokosm, Panos Cosmatos' (Mandy) next feature. Maegan has also directed music videos for artists such as Mitski, Vagabon, Hana Vu, Charly Bliss and Skylar Spence. Her short film In Full Bloom starring Kieu Chinh (The Joy Luck Club) premiered on Short of the Week and played at various film festivals including Fantastic Film Festival, Atlanta, New Orleans, Nite Hawk, Indie Memphis, Hollyshorts and many others.

Filmmaker Bio:  After a decade producing & directing commercials for the likes of Apple, Adobe, & Sierra Nevada Brewing, writer/director Kevin McDevitt made headlines (Time, Yahoo) with his "Good Blood" viral PSA for the bone marrow donor registry. The music video starred Kevin & his wife Stephanie amidst his recovery from a successful emergency bone marrow transplant, and became an international call to save lives via the bone marrow registry, winning Australia's Cause Film Festival & Be The Match's Awareness Award in the process.

Having determined that life is too short to work in advertising, Kevin now spends his time working with nonprofits like First Descents, building his artist/equity-centered independent film studio Slacker, and being a dad. His new film, "Bike Short," came about as a personal challenge to shoot an action-comedy on a mumblecore budget, using the tools that have just now become available to indie filmmakers. Kevin is currently working on a memoir, his next few film projects, and a brief artist bio about himself for a film festival web site.

Filmmaker Bio: 

Benjamin Rosenthal (b.1984, New York, NY, Lives and Works in Kansas City, Missouri) holds an MFA in Art Studio from the University of California, Davis and a BFA in Art (Electronic Time-Based Media) from Carnegie Mellon University. His work has been exhibited internationally in such venues/festivals as the Stuttgarter Filmwinter (Stuttgart, Germany), Cairo Video Festival (Cairo, Egypt), SIMULTAN Festival (Timișoara, Romania), High Concept Labs at Mana Contemporary (Chicago, IL), ESPACIO ENTER: Festival International Creatividad, Innovacíon y Cultural Digital (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain). His work across media explores what he theorizes as queer “technosexuality” and challenges the supremacy of physical contact in a technocultural age. Rosenthal is Associate Professor of Expanded Media in the Department of Visual Art at the University of Kansas, where he has been since 2012, and teaches video art, performance art, experimental animation, graduate seminar and interdisciplinary practices.

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Eric Souther (b.1987, Kansas City) holds an MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and an BFA in New Media from the Kansas City Art Institute.

His creative research draws from a multiplicity of disciplines, including new materialism, anthropology, ritual, deep time, and toolmaking. These areas are read through one another and coalesce in technological assemblages that form emergent systems or software for exploring relations. I instrumentalize these systems so that they can become performative ways to navigate unexpected images/meaning making. My work takes many pathways, which include interactive installation, audio-visual performance, single-channel video, and software.

His work has been featured nationally and internationally at venues such as the Museum of Art and Design, NYC, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY, and the Museum of Art, Zhangzhou, China.  Souther is an Assistant Professor of Kinetic Imaging in the Gwen Frostic School of Art at Western Michigan University.

Filmmaker Bio: ichael Quinn is a writer and director born in Philadelphia. His play GET IT TOGETHER premiered at the Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles in July, 2022. His play THE RIVER EAST was a finalist in the Epiphanies New Works Festival in Waco, Texas. In 2021, his play FISHTOWN was produced at the Portland Actors Conservatory and the American Lives Theatre Festival in Indianapolis. He lives in Pennsylvania.

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Filmmaker Bio: Alejandra López was born and raised in Puerto Rico.  Alejandra has a knack for social and political content. Her short film "The Blue Cape", which she wrote and directed, has screened at ten Oscar® qualifying film festivals, including Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, Uppsala International Short Film Festival, Guadalajara International Film Festival, Aspen Shortfest, among others, and was acknowledged with an Honorable Mention in the category for Best Live Action at Cleveland International Film Festival. Alejandra became the first Latina to direct for Marvel Entertainment: a narrative podcast titled "Wolverine: La Larga Noche" starring Joaquin Cosio. Then, she directed a narrative podcast for Telemundo: "Tejana" starring Stephanie Beatriz. She has also directed Bad Bunny for W Magazine. An avid traveler herself, Alejandra has visited over thirty countries in three continents. She's currently shooting her first feature.

Filmmaker: Dieter-Michael Grohmann

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Filmmaker Bio: Zoë Pike is a collage-maker, writer, filmmaker, and award winning actress living in Chicago, Illinois with her cats Jeff and Midnight.

Filmmaker Bio: Justyna  Romul is an artist who makes paintings, music, videos, and generative art. His work has been exhibited internationally at festivals, museums, and galleries. Past shows include CutOut Festival Mexico City, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, London Experimental Film Festival, and the Utah Museum of Art. He lives and works in Shaker Heights, Ohio. With an eye to the historical role of experimental art, his work focuses on how the stresses of current culture manifest in the expressions of our collective unconscious.

Director: Pete Burkeet / Writer: Pete Burkeet / Producer: Pete Burkeet

Filmmaker Bio: Zach Green (he/they) is a Calgary-bred, Toronto-based writer-director with an unquenchable thirst for genre-bending queer cinema. In 2023, Zach became the first ever MFA in Screenwriting and Story Design at Toronto Metropolitan University, where he wrote his first funded short, cancer szn, under the mentorship of Oscar-nominated filmmaker Atom Egoyan. He is currently writing the next draft of his first feature, Bizarre Love Triangle, with support from the Telefilm Development Program.

Filmmaker Bio: Rrose Present was born in Barcelona, she returns to her origins and currently lives in "Les Fonts" in Terrassa.  She graduated in Fine Arts at the UB, Seneca scholarship in audiovisuals at the UPV/EHU, Master of Philosophy in Contemporary Art at the UAB. She written in images from a critical "poetic" gaze, with a double sense of reality: the PRESENTIAL, using the body as a tripod for her emotions, and the RE-PRESENTATIONAL, with the series of "video 'without camera' reinterprets 'world camera"'.After a very conceptual period, another adventure begins with a new name Rrose Present, to work on immediate relationships with the present. He abandons the literalness of images to penetrate medial and formal experimentation, with the conscious and unconscious paths that these open, approaching the language of experimental cinema.
Since 2016 he has been part of the distributor The Filmmakers Cooperative NYC with which he has been part of several programs. Her works have been seen at many experimental film and video festivals in countries such as: Brazil, Italy, Portugal, France, USA, Mexico, Colombia, Germany, Cuba, India, Turkey, Greece, France, Spain, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bolivia, Lithuania, Iran, Peru.

Filmmaker Bio: Born in Tel Aviv in 1972, Liat Glick graduated in 1995 from the prestigious Nissan Nativ Acting Studio. During her acting studies, she won several scholarships. Liat acted in film & theatre and been nominated for Film Academy and Theatre Academy Awards for her work. In the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv, she had leading roles in productions (best promising actress award). Her filmography as an actress includes films such as “Kippur” by Amos Gitai. ”Love” by Vladan Nikolic, “Under Western Eyes” by Joseph Pitchhadze, “Giraffes” by Tzahi Grad, and many more. In 2011 she graduated with honors from the Minshar School of Art Film Department and finished her graduation film “Layla Bahir”. The film was accepted to the Berlin film festival, the short corner in Cannes film festival and many more. In 2020 she directed “Sugar Crash” which was accepted to St. Louis Film Festival and other acclaimed festivals.

Filmmaker Bio: Shanhuan is a genderqueer Chinese-American filmmaker focused on composting extractive methods of cinematic storytelling into regenerative rituals and making the possibilities of speculative worlds real through collaborative storytelling.

Filmmaker Bio: Peter Berle is a filmmaker, musician, and experimental artist from Dallas, Texas, USA. While being a student at Ithaca College, Peter has been the creative force behind many short films and music videos. These projects are primarily experimental, with a focus on the contentious relationships we have with our bodies. Graduating in 2024, Peter continues to build a body of work that he hopes can challenge our relationship with film and art in general.

Filmmaker Bio: Will Darbyshire is a filmmaker and author who splits his time between London and Los Angeles. Will got his start as a content creator, producing deeply cinematic, docu-style vignettes, before going on to release his Sunday Times Number One Bestselling Book 'This Modern Love' with Penguin Random House in 2016. Will's debut narrative short film, 'Us', based off of his book, was screened at over 30 film festivals, and received numerous awards. Will has a knack for telling coming-of-age stories tackling subjects like first love, toxic masculinity, and finding one's place in the world. ‘Cycles’ is his newest short and aims to shine a light on the complexities of codependent relationship and the lengths we go to hold onto things that no longer serve us.

Filmmaker Bio: Guli Silberstein is a London-based digital artist working since his graduation from the M.A. in Media Studies at The New School New York in 2001. Digital-neural networks of artificial intelligence, video processing and post-production work have have been enabling him to create new forms of visual expression and dreamlike sequences reflecting the present day and questions of modern and future life, while at the same time inspired by the tradition of art.
Silberstein's award-winning video works have been shown extensively in festivals and exhibitions, naming a few: WRO Media Art Biennale Poland, Transmediale festival Berlin, FILE São Paulo Brazil, London Short Film Festival, Bemis Center For Contemporary Arts USA, and the Royal Scottish Academy Edinburgh. His artwork is viral online on Social Media, with 150k+ followers and millions of views.

Filmmaker Bio: JAaron Goffman is a writer, a director, and a well established property master. DARCINE’S DAY is Goffman’s drama directorial debut.

Filmmaker Bio: Eta Dahlia is a Russian poet and filmmaker based in London. His work combines minimalist Russian poetry with a range of audio-visual media. He works with spoken word, video, images, colours and music, integrating these elements into inseparable rhythmic and rhyming compositions to create coherent and complete multimedia poetic pieces. Through these
interdisciplinary pieces Eta strives to reach a universal type of poem, where the understanding and appreciation of a piece is not limited to its original language.
Recently, Eta Dahlia's work has been exhibited in the UK as well as in the US, France, Germany, Italy, Romania and Mexico. His first videopoetry album Tsvetochki was selected by over twenty festivals worldwide and was awarded a number of prizes.

Filmmaker Bio: Eta Dahlia is a Russian poet and filmmaker based in London. His work combines minimalist Russian poetry with a range of audio-visual media. He works with spoken word, video, images, colours and music, integrating these elements into inseparable rhythmic and rhyming compositions to create coherent and complete multimedia poetic pieces. Through these
interdisciplinary pieces Eta strives to reach a universal type of poem, where the understanding and appreciation of a piece is not limited to its original language.
Recently, Eta Dahlia's work has been exhibited in the UK as well as in the US, France, Germany, Italy, Romania and Mexico. His first videopoetry album Tsvetochki was selected by over twenty festivals worldwide and was awarded a number of prizes.

Filmmaker Bio: Eta Dahlia is a Russian poet and filmmaker based in London. His work combines minimalist Russian poetry with a range of audio-visual media. He works with spoken word, video, images, colours and music, integrating these elements into inseparable rhythmic and rhyming compositions to create coherent and complete multimedia poetic pieces. Through these
interdisciplinary pieces Eta strives to reach a universal type of poem, where the understanding and appreciation of a piece is not limited to its original language.
Recently, Eta Dahlia's work has been exhibited in the UK as well as in the US, France, Germany, Italy, Romania and Mexico. His first videopoetry album Tsvetochki was selected by over twenty festivals worldwide and was awarded a number of prizes.

Filmmaker Bio: Otwin Biernat, born in Graz, Austria, began his career in theatre and film in Vienna in 2002, progressing from actor to director. After moving to Berlin in 2009, his co-directed film "Codewort Mr. Bean" was selected for the Berlin International Film Festival in 2011. He later worked in television in the Middle East before returning to Europe to co-produce "Homesick," which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2015. In 2017, Otwin completed his first feature film, "Point of View," which won several awards for its innovative cinematic techniques. He also organizes film festivals, serves as a jury member for several international festivals, and is the founder of otWINfilm. Currently, he is working on a film project with actress Kristina Böhm and singer G.G. Anderson.

Filmmaker Bio: Allen Cordell is an award winning filmmaker obsessed with things that are weird and beautiful, especially when filmed at 24 frames per second and layered with insane sound design. He's directed a handful of music videos for Beach House, Dan Deacon, Girl Talk and others, as well as the short film The Lizard Laughed, adapted from a comic by Noah Van Sciver. He co-created the psychedelic horror comedy talk show Drawing with Skinner while working as a content creator at Super Deluxe. When he's not directing branded and social media content for Nickelodeon and Netflix, Allen is cooking up ideas to expand into feature films.

Filmmaker Bio: Cassandra Hunter is a multi-hyphenate, multi-racial artist. As a writer, she was recently selected out of 1,500 applicants for ColorCreative’s inaugural Find Your People Program, founded by Issa Rae and Deniese Davis. She has written four films set to release in 2024.
She is a recent graduate from the prestigious American Conservatory Theater’s MFA Acting program, where she cultivated her affinity for daring, innovative storytelling. Born in North Carolina, she was raised between there and New York City. Currently, she is bi-coastal in both Los Angeles & NYC. Cassandra is the 2022 recipient of the A.C.T. Fleishhacker Award for Acting Excellence.

Filmmaker Bio: Anya Liftig is a performance artist and writer. Her first book, a memoir titled Holler Rat, was published by Abrams Press in August 2023. Called “a searing debut” by Publishers Weekly and cited by Jo Ann Beard as a new influence in her writing, Holler Rat has become a USA Today Best seller. Liftig’s artworks have been exhibited at TATE Modern, MOMA, Queens Museum, Movement Research, Performer Stammtisch Berlin, Performance Space London, and many other venues around the world. As a dancer and actress. Liftig’s work has been published and written about in the New York Times Magazine, BOMB, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue Italia, PAJ, New York, Theater Magazine, and many others. Her experimental film and video work has been screened in festivals in Canada, Greece, UK, Holland, France, and many other countries. Her essays have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and noted in Best American Non-Fiction. She is a Connecticut Council for the Arts Emerging Arts Fellow in Creative Writing, a recipient of a Franklin Furnace Award, and fellowships at MacDowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson, VCCA, Atlantic Center for the Arts and Yaddo.

Filmmaker Bio: Noel has been producing film for the past decade, finding ample success in the twisted world of horror, thriller, supernatural, and dark.

Filmmaker Bio: Born on a secluded animal farm at the top of Malibu's infamous Mulholland Highway, Sam Fox blends highly stylized imagery, music, and psychedelia with horror and genre cinema via her production company Foxy Films. Sam's latest proof-of-concept short, "The Blue Diamond" (ft. Barbara Crampton), premiered opening night at the 2024 L'Etrange Film Festival. In 2023, Sam teamed up with MovieMaker Magazine to make the horror-comedy, "Fck'n Nuts," based on her experience growing up with her crazy family. "Fck'n Nuts" (Fantastic Fest, Beyond Fest, Brooklyn Horror) won Best Midnight Short (FilmQuest), Best Horror Comedy (Flickers Rhode Island), as well as Jury Prize (Knoxville Horror).In 2021, Sam wrote and directed "Bad Acid," which won Best Director (Nightmares Film Fest, as well as several Best Production Design awards. In addition to directing, Sam executive produced Heidi Weitzer's comedy feature "My Divorce Party" (ft. Rumer Willis), which won the Audience Award for Best Feature (Beverly Hills Fest). She also produced Britt Lower's "Circus Person", which screened at Tribeca Film Festival, won Best of Fest (Catalyst), and the Audience Award (Nashville Film Festival). In her free time, Sam enjoys surfing, sailing and disco dancing.

Filmmaker Bio: Ashleigh Coffelt is an award-winning Filipina American director and cinematographer based in Los Angeles. Growing up with a love for music, writing, and visual artistry, she channeled her creative passions into filmmaking. A graduate of Towson University with a BS in Psychology, Business, and Electronic Media and Film, Ashleigh has been recognized as a Sundance Screenwriter's Lab Semi-Finalist and has won numerous awards, including Best Director at Festival de Cannes with Creative Mind Group for “I For I” and the Grand Jury Award at the Adrenaline Film Festival for “5ive.” Her films, which often explore themes of identity, relationships, and psychology, have been featured in various national and international festivals. Ashleigh is currently developing a feature film focused on portrayals of mental illness.

Filmmaker Bio: Jayne Brook is an accomplished actress with extensive television credits, including series regular roles on Chicago Hope, John Doe, The District, and Sirens, as well as recurring roles on shows like Major Crimes, Boston Legal, and Private Practice. Her film credits include Kindergarten Cop, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, Gattaca, and The Sweet Life. On stage, she has appeared in productions such as Third at the Geffen Playhouse, King Lear, and A Heap of Livin in Los Angeles, as well as Much Ado About Nothing and Danny and the Deep Blue Sea in London. Recently, Jayne portrayed Admiral Katrina Cornwell on Star Trek: Discovery and appeared in the short film Sister. She has transitioned into filmmaking, writing, producing, and directing the short film Flip Side, and is currently developing a proof of concept short for a feature film. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, John Terlesky, and their two grown daughters.

Filmmaker Bio: Rafa Yam is a Filipino filmmaker who moved to New Zealand in 2006. He was awarded an athlete scholarship to the University of Otago where he graduated in 2021 with a degree in Film and Media Studies while minoring in communications. Since then, Rafa has written numerous feature length and short screenplays. One of his short scripts titled Para Sayo got him chosen as one of 6 participants to take part in Script to Screen’s Paerangi Project in 2021, and his other project titled Malayo got him selected to PASC’s Short Cuts Lab for Pan Asian creatives living in New Zealand. He made his directing debut with his 5-minute short film titled Last Call which won the U24 Award for Best Film at the 2021 Someday Film Challenge. Still being a young filmmaker, Rafa’s stories center around youth issues with a mix of drama and comedy.

Director Bio: T. L. Quach is a multi-talented and multicultural American filmmaker who focuses on working in Production and Directing Commercial Content and Psychological Thriller Narratives. As a child of refugees and immigrants, Quach was drawn to the short film, Fragmented, as the process was a way to reconnect with her heritage and her grandparents.  Drawing inspiration from Hitchcock and Asian Cinema, Quach's goal as a narrative director is to diversify and modernize films with a Female POC perspective, emphasizing the themes of women's passions and fears, giving the audience an evocative visual experience that entertains, educates, and inspires.

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Writer/Producer: Jiming Lindal / DP: Norbert Shieh / Editor: Cynthia Chen / Co: Producer: Angela PArk

Filmmaker Bio: Matthew Pell is a moving-image and sound artist. Pell’s varied work includes explorations of the natural landscape, urban environments, and glitch art. Pell has created both commissioned and self-initiated projects for public screenings, exhibitions, festivals, musicians and performers. Pell is a Senior Lecturer in Video and Photography at De Montfort University.

Filmmaker Bio: Matthew Pell is a moving-image and sound artist. Pell’s varied work includes explorations of the natural landscape, urban environments, and glitch art. Pell has created both commissioned and self-initiated projects for public screenings, exhibitions, festivals, musicians and performers. Pell is a Senior Lecturer in Video and Photography at De Montfort University.

Filmmaker Bio: Marian Fragoso Basauri (They/Them) is a filmmaker from Tijuana, Mexico (Kumeyaay) based in New York City (Lenapehoking). Their love for indie cinema has inspired them to aim towards creating films that push the narratives of unique individuals that go unnoticed - intentionally centering Queer, fat, BiPoC experiences. They aspire to continuously work on films and that reflect their communities with tenderness and joy rather than experiencing trauma.
In 2021, they became part of the inaugural student cohort of No Evil Eye Cinema’s alternative film school Film Futura. They are a Creative Futures Collective x Soho House 2023 Mentee. Their work has screened in online film festivals and in theaters such as the Village East by Angelika and Anthology Film Archives. Marian holds a Filmmaking BFA from the New York Film Academy.

Filmmaker Bio: India Mitchell discovered her love of storytelling through filmmaking in middle school when her school in California changed to an online format for one year. At that time, India used an old cellphone to shoot footage about her dramatically changing world. India's first student film, "Capes", was honored at film festivals in California in 2022. Her second student film, "The innocent", received many recognitions and was shown at film festivals around the world in 2023. In her third student film, "Guiding Light", released in 2024, India highlights a case involving a teen of the same age from her town that rocked the nation thirty years earlier.

Filmmaker Bio for David Hepburn TBA

Filmmaker Bio: Brooklyn-based writer/director Corey Totten grew up in Bucks County, PA and earned a degree in TV Production from Ithaca College in 2018. After graduating, he worked in Los Angeles for 3 years before returning permanently to NY. He's worked on a variety of scripted and unscripted TV shows, including General Hospital, Hawkeye, and Fallout. He’s been involved in the improv scenes at UCB, PIT, and BCC, and recently became a SAG-AFTRA member, working as a stand-in and background actor, including a featured role in upcoming A24 film, Y2K. Corey wrote, directed, edited and produced his debut short film “Her Curse” in 2023, and is currently working on developing a feature-length adaptation of the script. He also hopes to continue making more horror shorts that center queer characters.

Filmmaker: Tatiana Samano is an acclaimed Mexican American filmmaker known for her exceptional talent and numerous accolades. At just 16, her influential work in filmmaking earned her a platform to address legislators at the state capitol and appearances on local news. Over the years, Tatiana has produced a variety of compelling videos for prominent clients such as Jack Black, Bob Odenkirk, John Lithgow, Kathryn Hahn and many others. 

Filmmaker Bio: Paul L. Carr is a Chicago-based Director, Producer, Writer & Actor and the owner of Busted City Productions, LLC. His feature films are as follows: Busted City, portraying the intense racial politics surrounding the election of Chicago's first Black Mayor, Harold Washington. American Barbarian, a dark comedy/psychological horror film dealing with the aftermath of Donald Trump's election. Empire, a sci-fi fantasy dealing with ecological Armageddon. Casual Criminals, a zany slapstick comedy in the style of Mel Brooks. His short films include: Interlude, an evocative fantasy set to opera and inspired by Alice In Wonderland. And most recently, Hitchhiking To Mars, a surreal and silent film set in the deserts of New Mexico.

Filmmaker Bio: Rrose Present was born in Barcelona where she graduated in Fine Arts for the University of Barcelona. Beca Séneca audio-visual UPV. She also holds a Masters degree in Philosophy of Contemporary Art from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Fundació Miró. Rrose combines experimental video, video art, curated and a reflection about the image written in images from a "critical" poetic gaze.
She works the moving images from a double sense / meaning of the reality: the PRESENTIAL (camera in hand) using the body as a tripod for her emotions, and the RE-PRESENTATION with the NET Found Footage to digest the images of the GLOBAL ARCHIVE with the series "video 'without-camera"' reinterprets 'camera-world' .

Filmmaker Bio: Jorė Janavičiūtė has a BA in Journalism from Vilnius University (2014), has completed a Film Production course in European Film College in Denmark (2015) and holds a Film Directing MA from Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater (2018). Her short film “Where Things, Where People Disappear” (2017) has been screened in around twenty festivals in Europe and won awards. Her short documentary "<3 / Less Than Three'' had an International premiere in Ji.hlava IDFF 2019. Jorė is currently developing new film projects, lecturing at Vilnius University, writing articles for Lithuanian media, moreover, working as Junior Programmer in Vilnius International Short Film Festival and in casting on film, TV, and commercial productions.

Screenwriter Bio: Erin Brown Thomas is a dynamic director, writer, producer, and editor who's collaborated with heavyweight talent including Selena Gomez, Eminem, Tony Hale, Lena Dunham, Emmy Rossum, and Elisabeth Moss and tentpole companies such as HBO, Netflix, Refinery 29, A Casual Romance, MTV, Snapchat Originals, and Makeready. Her films have received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and have been curated by Vimeo Staff. 
Erin has directed over a dozen award-winning films which have screened in 92 festivals worldwide, including 14 Oscar Qualifying events. Most recently, the experimental "But First" placed her as an Artist in Residence at Palm Springs International ShortFest. She was also selected to participate in the DGA's esteemed Commercial Directors Diversity Program.
Erin’s screenplays have advanced at Sundance New Voices, Austin Film Fest, and Blue Cat Screenplay competition. Her pilot “Managing Life” was enacted via UCB's selective “Let’s Table This” lab. Erin is currently penning a feature for former Paramount Studios President Adam Goodman and in pre-production for her lauded original screenplay Italy ’99. 
When not on set, Erin dangles from the air as an aerial acrobat. Thus, she also founded a viral-hit prod. company, Versatile Assassins which tells complex stories about the human experience through aerial dance. Her youtube has quickly amassed 100k subscribers and over 18M views.

Filmmaker Bio: Rrose Present was born in Barcelona where she graduated in Fine Arts for the University of Barcelona. Beca Séneca audio-visual UPV. She also holds a Masters degree in Philosophy of Contemporary Art from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Fundació Miró. Rrose combines experimental video, video art, curated and a reflection about the image written in images from a "critical" poetic gaze.
She works the moving images from a double sense / meaning of the reality: the PRESENTIAL (camera in hand) using the body as a tripod for her emotions, and the RE-PRESENTATION with the NET Found Footage to digest the images of the GLOBAL ARCHIVE with the series "video 'without-camera"' reinterprets 'camera-world' .

Filmmaker Bio: Sharon A. Mooney is a filmmaker working in experimental, narrative and documentary portraiture, all focused on investigating desire and the human condition. Her short videos and installations have screened internationally in festivals, microcinemas, and other spaces. She is a professor at a film school where she teaches filmmaking, post production, and punk rock cinema.

Filmmaker Bio: Nicole Kohut is a queer storyteller who loves to write about sex and grief. A graduate of Columbia University, with degrees in English Lit and Women’s, Gender, + Sexuality Studies, her work explores the pacified realms of sexuality through the absurd. Over the years, she’s focused on defining her writing voice: dark, brutally vulnerable humor mixed with idyllic childhood dreams (and whatever she’s not ready to tell her therapist). With If You Give A Girl A Candle, Nicole’s directorial debut, she hopes to provide audiences a new—comedic and magical—medium for exploring modern day mental health issues.

Filmmaker Bio: The films of Rrose Present are like haiku: precise, ambiguous, and deeply resonant." Daniel Barnett  Bio Rrose Present was born in Barcelona, she returns to her origins and currently lives in "Les Fonts" in Terrassa.  She graduated in Fine Arts at the UB, Seneca scholarship in audiovisuals at the UPV/EHU, Master of Philosophy in Contemporary Art at the UAB. She written in images from a critical "poetic" gaze, with a double sense of reality: the PRESENTIAL, using the body as a tripod for her emotions, and the RE-PRESENTATIONAL, with the series of "video 'without camera' reinterprets 'world camera"'. After a very conceptual period, another adventure begins with a new name Rrose Present, to work on immediate relationships with the present. He abandons the literalness of images to penetrate medial and formal experimentation, with the conscious and unconscious paths that these open, approaching the language of experimental cinema. Since 2016 he has been part of the distributor The Filmmakers Cooperative NYC with which he has been part of several programs. Her works have been seen at many experimental film and video festivals in countries such as: Brazil, Italy, Portugal, France, USA, Mexico, Colombia, Germany, Cuba, India, Turkey, Greece, France, Spain, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bolivia, Lithuania, Iran, Peru.

Filmmaker Bio: Yaniv Waisman is a producer originally from Venezuela and based in Los Angeles. He has worked in the industry for more than 20 years, 10 of which include producing TV commercials for the hispanic market. He has also produced festival favorite shorts films THERAPY, MIRROR, and EQUATION.   Yaniv is also the founder and Executive Director of Los Cortos, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting Latinx short filmmakers.

Filmmaker Bio: Ashleigh Coffelt is an award-winning Filipina American director and cinematographer based in Los Angeles. As the child of a first-generation Filipina immigrant, she went on to study psychology and business, earning her BS in Psychology, Business & Electronic Media and Film from Towson University.  Ashleigh has gone onto be a Sundance Screenwriter's Lab Semi-Finalist, as well as having been awarded numerous awards including “I For I,” winner of Best Director at Festival de Cannes with the Creative Mind Group and “5ive,” winner of Grand Jury Award at the Adrenaline Film Festival.  Ashleigh’s stories focus on her own experiences, combining an array of themes including identity, relationships & psychology. Several of her 100+ short films have been featured in festivals including the Asian World Film Festival, Annapolis Film Festival & Citizen Jane Film Festival.   She is currently in development of Connection, a short film trilogy dedicated to stories blending human desire for intimacy, technology, and our unfortunate natural tendencies to self-destruct.

Filmmaker Bio: Jessica Silvetti is an award-winning writer and director with a unique perspective shaped by her multicultural upbringing in Mexico City and the USA. A graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, she has written and directed several short films, including HAPPY FOR NOTHING and POOR MAN’S MERMAID, which won a Remi award at WorldFest Houston. Her play LAURA earned the Ebell of Los Angeles Playwright Prize, and her series LOST MEMORIES highlighted Alzheimer's disease in the Latino community. Silvetti's anthology series IN ABSENTIA has won numerous awards, including a Silver Remi Award and a Best Writing nomination at RAINDANCE. Her feature screenplay IZABELA’S VIOLIN made the top 10% in the 2017 Academy Nicholl Fellowship and was a Screencraft Film Fund Semifinalist. Recently, she wrote for the Mexican TV series EL JUEGO DE LAS LLAVES and continues to develop diverse, complex characters for women

Filmmaker Bio: Peter McCully has worked in visual effects for the film industry for over 25 years, running visual effects company Albedo VFX, overseeing work for numerous feature films, television films and series and he has several awards and nominations to show for it. Peter directed the NZFC funded short film “Eeling”, 2009 and wrote and directed the short film “The Gully” (in post-production). He was associate producer of the telefeature “Jean”: (2016) and “Kiwi Christmas”:” (2017). Peter’s visual effects work for “Jean” earned him a New York Festivals silver medal. His previous short film with Media Design School, “Kino Ratten” has been selected by several international film festivals in 2020, winning awards at Palm Springs animation festival and Irvine International Film Festival plus nominations for cinematography and screenwriting.

Filmmaker Bio: Winter Tomisato is a director/screenwriter who has won creative writing awards for stage plays, pilots, and short scripts in competitions like Creative Writing Artist of Promise and Vortex Magazine. They have also worked behind the camera as a first assistant director & cinematographer, as well as an assistant for SHOWTIME and Nickelodeon. Winter currently works in costumes for Universal Studios.  Outside of writing, Winter volunteers for Made in Her Image, a non-profit movement dedicated to the advancement of women of color in film and television, as well as the No More Deaths Tempe Chapter, a group of people committed to giving water, food, and medical services to migrants in distress. In their free time, Winter enjoys playing kickball with friends and watching anything written by Mindy Kaling.

Filmmaker Bio: Devany Greenwood is a French-American writer and director based in Los Angeles, known for her poetic and feminist approach to storytelling. Her work explores trauma and tenderness through the female gaze, focusing on silences and negative space. In 2021, she founded Cosmica Productions to amplify marginalized voices. Her feature script Into the Thicket, a blend of magical realism and coming-of-age drama, has received high acclaim, including a 9/10 on The Black List. The proof of concept for the script premiered at the LA Shorts International Film Festival in 2023, earning multiple accolades. She is currently in pre-production for two upcoming films: Ex Memoria and Hug of Thunder, both slated for release in 2025.

Filmmaker Bio: Jazz Pitcairn is an award-winning writer, director, and producer from the Cayman Islands, best known for writing on HBO’s Emmy-winning series, A BLACK LADY SKETCH SHOW (ABLSS).  ​  At 17, Jazz was nominated for Best Local Filmmaker at the Cayman International Film Festival and continued her career at NYU Tisch. Thereafter, Jazz worked for several major studios like A24, HBO, and Apple TV+ before landing as a Writer on ABLSS, making her the first Caymanian to write for an American network television show at just 23 years old.

Filmmaker Bio: John Hoffman, like most other people has come from some-other place to New York City. He is a filmmaker and photographer. Before John dove head-first into filmmaking, he was a stage performer and director. He learned that theatre and film are not that dissimilar: without a compelling narrative even the most extraordinary visuals and characters still fall short.
Now his bread and butter is telling rich, colorful stories through filmmaking, photography and illustration.

Filmmaker Bio: Duran Jones is a graduate of The American Film Institute Conservatory, class of 2021. During his AFI tenure, he also graduated from the 2020 PGA Power of Diversity workshop, where his pilot “Daywalker,” was a standout. In 2021 he was selected as a Sundance Feature Film Producers Lab Fellow with the script "The Incredible Heist of Hallelujah Jones, which is currently in development with Netflix and 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks (Spike Lee). “Hallelujah” the short film proof of concept for that feature, produced by Jones, won the Grand Prix for Best Short and the Best Producer Award at the Holly Shorts Film Festival; qualifying for the Oscars. Jones is currently building his independent film slate under his company BLK MGC Content and recently completed a residency in the Mara Brock Akil "Writer's Colony."

Filmmaker Bio:  Jennifer Kim is an L.A.-based screenwriter, producer, journalist, and former high school teacher. The daughter of disco-loving Korean immigrants who settled in Appalachia, she draws inspiration from her fish-out-of-water upbringing, often writing about misfits and rebels with a blend of humor, heart, absurdity, and social relevance. 

A versatile storyteller, Jennifer has contributed to major outlets, including USA TODAY, NPR, LA TIMES, and KCRW, while her creative writing has been published in several literary anthologies. Her screenwriting accolades include being an ISA Top 25 Screenwriters to Watch in 2024, CBS Writers Program finalist, ISA Grand Prize winner, and more She has an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA. Jennifer began her producing career at KCET-TV (PBS) in news and children's programming (she even got to hug Mister Rogers). For the Japanese American National Museum, she served as the series producer of an educational, historical series.

Jennifer's short film, KOREAN AMERICAN WITCHES SOCIETY, premiered at the Dances With Films Festival. Her script was a Top 10 finalist in Roadmap Writers' Shorts competition. Jennifer is repped by IAG, Industry Entertainment, and Amplified, who are packaging a biopic she wrote.

Filmmaker Bio:  Julien Mouquet is a 24-year-old filmmaker with a Master's in Filmmaking from the London Film Academy. He began his journey in Southeast Asia during a gap year in 2018, directing short documentaries for a humanitarian agency in countries like Cambodia, Malaysia, and Myanmar. He gained experience in London, earning a Bachelor's in Film and Drama from Queen Mary University, with aspirations of becoming a director, screenwriter, and actor, while exploring roles in production and editing.

In 2021, Julien worked as a videographer, screenwriter, and editor for Pernod Ricard in Spain.

Julien combines comedy and drama to tell stories that are sensitive and imaginative, aiming to move audiences while making them laugh. He focuses on tackling challenging subjects with an optimistic tone, encouraging positive perspectives. As a writer, he draws inspiration from observing people's behavior and interactions within his circle to create rich characters. As a director, he values human connection, teamwork, and building relationships—essentials in filmmaking.

Filmmaker Bio: Angela Atwood is a Missouri-born, Buffalo-bred, NYC-based director, actor, writer, and producer, graduate of The William Esper Studio, and mother of Two Lovely Adult Human Beings. Her award-winning short, Lady Hunters, is currently in development as a feature film

Filmmaker Bio: Lex Lumpkin, born on January 21, 2006, in Indianapolis, Indiana, is a multi-talented actor, writer, director, and pianist. He moved to Burbank, CA at thirteen and wrote his first script, "The Boy with the Magic Pen," for Nickelodeon at age fourteen. During quarantine, he produced his own award-winning short film, The Hidden Truth, which won four festival awards. His follow-up project, Late Night Pickup, explored suspenseful horror. Lex is passionate about storytelling and creating films that positively impact humanity.

Filmmaker Bio:  Lovell Holder has produced the feature films "Peak Season," "Midday Black Midnight Blue," "The End of Us," "Working Man," "Some Freaks," and "Loserville" (which he also directed).  His debut novel, "The Book of Luke," will be published by Grand Central Publishing (an imprint of Hachette) in December 2025.

Filmmaker Bio: Alican Durbas graduated from Yeditepe University, Department of Art and Culture Management, and completed his master's degree in the same department. His short film "Soil", which was nominated for the best short film of 2017 by SIYAD (Turkish Film Critics Association) was screened in many international film festivals, such as Tirana and Istanbul film festivals. His video works were shown in various exhibitions. As a participant of the Istanbul Biennial 2019-2020 Production and Research Programme, he develops his projects. With his script "Tessera", he won the best screenplay award at the script contest organized by Axolotl Magazine (a Turkish magazine combining the writings of time-based artists) within the 39th International Istanbul Film Festival, in 2020. He just finished his short film "Distant Mirror". He attended Talents Sarajevo in 2011 and Berlinale Talents in 2022.

Filmmaker Bio: Marcus Freed, TBA.

Filmmaker Bio:  Matthew Pell is a moving-image and sound artist.  Pell’s varied work includes explorations of urban environments, the natural landscape, and glitch art. Pell has created both commissioned and self-initiated projects for public screenings, exhibitions, musicians and performers. Pell is a Senior Lecturer in Video and Photography at De Montfort University.

Filmmaker Bio: Matthew Pell is a moving-image and sound artist.  Pell’s varied work includes explorations of urban environments, the natural landscape, and video art. Pell has created both commissioned and self-initiated projects for public screenings, exhibitions, musicians and performers. Pell is a Senior Lecturer in Video and Photography at De Montfort University.

Filmmaker Bio: Mário Fernandes was born in 1984, Portugal. As an independent filmmaker, he directed films of various genres, including “The Last Day of Leonard Cohen in Hydra” (2018) or “Mnemosyne” (2022). Since 2013 he has been coordinator and programmer of the “Encontros de Cinema do Fundão” – International Film Seminar in Portugal. In 2020 he published the book “Encontros Cinematográficos”, a compilation of his texts and interviews with several filmmakers: Victor Erice, Pedro Costa, Michael Cimino, Manuela Serra, Billy Woodberry, Mercedes Álvarez, Andrea Tonacci, Peter Nestler, Pierre-Marie Goulet, Pablo Llorca, among many others.

Filmmaker Bio:  "The Montrealer Édith Jorisch directs and writes works of all genres (fiction, documentary, virtual reality). Her work offers a human, bittersweet perspective on contemporary vices. Her most recent short film, ""Tibbits Hill,"" won the award for Best Quebec Fiction Film at RVQC (2022).  The ecofiction ""Plastisapiens"" by the director received an award at IDFA and was also presented at Tribeca, SXSW, and FIPADOC.  Édith is currently working on the scripts for two feature-length films."

Filmmaker Bio: Michele Labrucherie is a filmmaker with over a decade of industry experience. Recently, her time has been spent as a 1st Assistant Director, working on renowned projects like "American Crime Story," "CSI," and "Snowfall." Beyond the DGA, Michele is also a writer, currently nurturing a range of projects in the development pipeline. This latest venture, “Noteworthy”, marks an exciting foray into the world of directing, promising fresh perspectives and creative storytelling on the horizon. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, she brings a unique perspective to her craft, championing diversity and inclusion in the world of entertainment.

Filmmaker Bio: Nancy Ma is a performer, playwright, and filmmaker from Chinatown New York.

Filmmaker Bio: Catherine Mosier-Mills is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She currently works as a Story Producer on Netflix's "Selling Sunset" and "Selling the OC." Her thesis film, an animated short, was shortlisted for a Student BAFTA. She films on a vintage Eclair Cameflex with 35mm film.

Filmmaker Bio: Mora Carew is a Nigerian-American writer, director and producer. Her fantasy/drama short film "2 Eye Drops from Normal" won the Programmers' Award for Short Narrative at the 2022 Pan African Film Festival and was subsequently licensed by AMC Networks. Her fantasy/drama short film “Paint” is on the 2024 festival circuit. From 2018-2019, Mora was the apprentice to director Peter Bogdanovich in writing and directing, and assisted him in completing Orson Welles' final film "The Other Side of the Wind", and the Buster Keaton documentary, "The Great Buster - A Celebration" Although she mainly writes in the fantasy/drama genre, Mora is a graduate of famed improv & sketch comedy school UCB and 4-time recipient of their Diversity Scholarship. She was selected for the Alliance of Women Director’s Shadowing program in 2020 and their Directing Actors fellowship in 2022. Mora has a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh and currently works at Shondaland as the Sr. Finance Manager. She was selected as a co-moderator for the 2024 Television Academy’s “Peer Circle” program.

Filmmaker Bio: Roberto Strazzarino, a 69-year-old Italian filmmaker, grew up near the Ferrania film factory, which sparked his passion for filmmaking. Self-taught since the era of 8mm film, he honed his visual storytelling skills through "in camera editing" competitions. His filmmaking journey began in the 1960s, and he has been a correspondent at the Venice Film Festival since 1979. After retiring, Roberto fully dedicated himself to filmmaking, attending courses at Sentieri Selvaggi School in Rome and Holden School in Turin. In 2019, he studied "Sight and Sound Filmmaking" at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. His lifelong passion for film continues to drive his creative work.

Filmmaker Bio: Alec Cohen-Schisler (he/him) was born and raised in Palo Alto California. He got a Flip Video Camera for Hanukkah when he was 9 years old and hasn't put a camera down since. He attended NYU for film and has worked for companies like the NFL, Aputure Lighting, and EA. He is currently in development for his first solo feature film, but he doesn't know which script to choose.

Filmmaker Bio: David A. Flores is an LA-based writer/director with Tucson, AZ roots. He tells character-based stories with a genre twist.

Filmmaker Bio: The first animated film of Luís Soares “Any Other Man” premiered at Curtas de Vila do Conde in 2012, it won several prizes among them: António Gaio Prize at Cinanima, Mikeldi de Oro at ZINEBI in Spain and Brand New Award at IndieLisboa. His second animated film “Poise” premiered at IndieLisboa in 2020, it was selected for more than 50 festivals worldwide, of which stands out: Melbourne, Slamdance, Athens International Film & Video Festival, Curta Cinema Rio de Janeiro, Festival of Animated Film Stuttgart, St. Louis, Cinanima and Monstra.

Filmmaker: Luis Carlos Rodriguez

Filmmaker: Luis Carlos Rodriguez

Filmmaker Bio: Ryan Nielsen is a Writer and Director based out of Los Angeles, California. He was born and raised in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and attended the University of Iowa, where he received Bachelor's Degrees in English & Creative Writing and Cinema.

Filmmaker Bio: P. Patrick Hogan was born and raised on the island of Guam, attended Northwestern University in Chicago and then received his MFA from USC film school. His thesis film "The Business Card" was an award-winning short that had the distinction of being the first student film ever sold to an airline for in-flight entertainment.

Pope Dreams - Patrick's feature directorial debut - screened at over 26 festivals around the world, won 11 Best Film awards, and was picked up for distribution by Porchlight Entertainment. It aired on Lifetime Network, was distributed in over 40 countries, and was released on home video and streaming through Netflix and Amazon. His short films Virtually and Killing Time have, to date, screened at over 100 film festivals and won 21 best film awards.

Along with working as a writer/director, Patrick is a highly accomplished supervising sound editor with more than 100 television shows and movies to his credit. He's earned 10 Emmy nominations and 3 Golden Reel Awards for his work on such shows as HBO's "Six Feet Under" Fox's "Family Guy", the Netflix hits "Cobra Kai" and "Umbrella Academy" and the critically-acclaimed Hulu series "Reservation Dogs".

Filmmakers: Kayla Burch and Steve Brock

Film and stage actor Steve Brock was born in Los Gatos, California. He is the eldest of two sons of Donna Brock (Lecrivain), a teacher, and Les Brock, an electrical and computer engineer. He was involved in musical theater in high school and in college.

Amongst the several productions he has acted in, Steve has shot his third film, "Echoes of Kerberos" (2020), in which he wrote, produced, and acted. It has earned several wins in festivals. His other productions are "Even Steve" (2015), based on an alternate universe view of his own life, and a short film that he wrote with Aga Kadlubowska about family alcoholism called "Making Amends" (2015). In 2018, he finished a successful run of his one-person show, "My Calico Soul". In 2019, he starred in and produced Apples to Affleck (2019) which also has several festival wins.

He is also a singer/songwriter and has released two CDs "Cry by the Light of the Moon." (2014) and "Infinity" (2018). He has trained with Amy Lyndon (2018-). He also is a graduate of Second City (2014).

Filmmaker Bio: Iris Almaraz is an East LA Chicana filmmaker whose formative childhood experiences ricocheted from homelessness to graduating from one of the most prestigious arts high schools in the country. Her first short film premiered at The International Film Festival in Rotterdam and her 30k feature was listed as a top-five film pick by Latine festival programmers. As the L.I.F.E. (Latina Independent Film Extravaganza) Festival Director, Iris’ passion to support Latina Directors has created a hub where filmmakers have traveled from as far as Brazil to showcase their work. This year, Iris will be running a filmmaking workshop with the organization Operation Street Kidz for at-risk youth from lower income neighborhoods, in support of her upcoming short film “Rocketship,” which is a recipient of a grant from the Eastside Arts Initiative. She produced “Red Onion” last year in the Women of Color Filmmakers Advanced Directing Program, as part of her growing interest in creating more autobiographical work, as a form of catharsis and healing from the trauma of her youth.

Filmmaker Bio: Erin Brown Thomas is a neurodivergent filmmaker and theology school dropout with a passion for directing sad comedies and dystopian thrillers. Over the past 15 years, her work has earned awards at Oscar-qualifying festivals like Hollyshorts and Cinequest, as well as top honors at Catalyst Story Institute. Erin’s films have been celebrated at festivals such as Austin Film Festival and Palm Springs ShortFest, where she was an Artist in Residence. She was also a 2020 finalist for Shondaland’s Women in Film Mentorship program. As a writer, Erin’s features have advanced in numerous competitions, including Sundance and the Nicholl Fellowship. Previously, she edited films for Emmy-winners like Richard Shepard,  Jenni Konner, Lena Dunham and Elizabeth Moss.

Filmmaker Bio: Eric Michael Kochmer is a writer, director, and producer with a background in experimental theater and experimental film, mentored by Elizabeth Swados at La MaMa Theatre while attending Marymount Manhattan College, and by George Landow/Owen Land shortly after. Between 2006 and 2012, he appeared in over 40 feature and short films before moving behind the camera.

For the next eight years, he dove into directing, producing, editing, and writing low-budget independent features and short films, resulting in four features, ten shorts, and a series of over 100 segments.

Becoming a combination of a creative producer and line producer, he has also consulted on over 500 films through his work with the filmmaking collective and production company We Make Movies, and regularly collaborates independently with companies such as Stoopid Buddy Stoodios and R&R Media.

Filmmaker Bio: Janet Marrett is a Writer Director passionate about the human experience, particularly those of diverse ethnicities. She is founder of Mediathirsty and a member of Directors UK and BAFTA.

Since 2019 she has written, directed and produced three successful independent award-winning short films, ASUNDER, CLEARING & KINDRED, which have been included in Cannes Court Métrage, BAFTA-qualifying Aesthetica and British Urban Festivals, Canadian Screen qualifying Toronto Black, Halifax Black and Houston International Film Festivals among many others in the UK, USA, Canada, Ireland, St Vincent & Ghana winning her Best Director, Best Short Film, Best International Short Film, Platinum & Gold REMI awards .

Her debut feature treatment was selected for development by Torino Film Lab in 2021.

Janet is currently developing a slate of long-form screenplays for TV & Film.

Filmmaker Bio: Matthew Brdlik is an award winning film director from Chicago Illinois who prides himself on the strong themes and tonality behind his work. After finishing producing and directing the documentary series Wild Gamble for Shed Films, Matthew has set out to create a number of original independent shorts, before embarking on his debut feature film.

Filmmaker Bio: Will Lee is a Los-Angeles based filmmaker and blu-ray hoarder. His short film, RINGWORMS, was a creative lifeboat during the pandemic and a story that became deeply personal. He takes inspiration from Sam Raimi, David Cronenberg, and a little bit of Junji Ito, pushing vulnerable characters with relatable fears into a nightmarish crucible that demands transformation. His favorite horror films are The Thing (1982), The Shining (1980), and Mandy (2018).

Cast: Faye Tamasa, Skylar Okerstrom-Lang / Producer: Katrina Ungewitter, Ian Hedman / Director: Will Lee / Writer: Will Lee, Ian Hedman / Cinematographer: Rafael Gomez / Editor: Will Lee / Composer: Marc Giguere

Filmmaker Bio: Sofie Somoroff is a filmmaker from NYC and currently based in LA. Her most recent short film, LOVE IS A FIRE, about an acidic yeast infection, won Best Midnight Short at both FilmQuest and Nightmares Film Festival (“The Cannes of Horror” - iHorror), and screened in the Academy Award Qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival. Prior to that, she made a series of musicals about living in Los Angeles: MY FIRST NIGHT IN LOS ANGELES, about a girl learning self-love while crashing in her friend’s living room, and MY WORST NIGHT IN LOS ANGELES, about needing to poop while on a Hinge date. Her undergraduate film thesis, CUT, is a sci-fi retelling of her grandmother's experiences in a home for unwed mothers in the 1960s, and was released on Dust last year in honor of Women's History Month.

Filmmaker Bio: Michael Gabriele - "I must have watched the original Superman movie over 100 times as a kid. Wearing the costume complete with the underwear, I knew the quest ahead of me involved making movies myself. The idea that I could take something that starts in my imagination, build it up, and ultimately realize it on film was incredibly compelling. The Superman underwear doesn’t fit anymore but I haven’t stopped creating. I've directed commercials, short films, music videos, a web-series, and 360° content for VR headsets. I've won multiple awards including two Midwest Emmys🏆, had films screened at multiple film festivals including multiple Oscar Qualifying ones and won multiple awards including "best of festival" twice🎞, created a successful web-series with over 45 million views👀, and have developed multiple techniques to wrangle cats on set😻. My goal is to make meaningful connections with people through my films. I like telling stories that will make an emotional impact on the viewer. I’m laser focused, efficient, extremely driven and won’t rest until I’ve done my absolute best work."

Filmmaker Bio: Duran Jones is a graduate of The American Film Institute Conservatory, class of 2021. During his AFI tenure, he also graduated from the 2020 PGA Power of Diversity workshop, where his pilot “Daywalker,” was a standout. In 2021 he was selected as a Sundance Feature Film Producers Lab Fellow with the script "The Incredible Heist of Hallelujah Jones, which is currently in development with Netflix and 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks (Spike Lee). “Hallelujah” the short film proof of concept for that feature, produced by Jones, won the Grand Prix for Best Short and the Best Producer Award at the Holly Shorts Film Festival; qualifying for the Oscars. Jones is currently building his independent film slate under his company BLK MGC Content and recently completes a residency at the Mara Brock Akil "Writer's Colony."

Filmmaker: Charlotte Junière

Filmmaker Bio: Frankie Campisano is a non-binary writer, comedian, and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. They specialize in a specific flavor of absurdist dark comedy a favorite mentor once charitably compared to “Aaron Sorkin on acid.”

Frankie currently works for NBCUniversal as a member of the company’s global executive search team, having transferred from 30 Rock to the west coast in 2021. Outside of their day job, Frankie is also a freelance script development analyst, an active member of the Young Entertainment Professionals network and regularly reads and evaluates submissions for contests and film festivals.

Their previous entertainment industry experience includes time at Strategy PR/Consulting, Sony Pictures Classics, Jigsaw Productions, Fox Broadcasting Company, and Flapper’s Comedy Club.

Frankie creates original material under their Nice Hog! Productions banner.

Co-Director/writer, SG Egan is currently a filmmaker and housewife living in Philadelphia. She has been, in other lives: a 10-K combing Wall St. writer; an avant-gardist gallery artist; a dirtbag Girl Friday; a queer cartoonist; an American bassist starving in Scotland; and an aggressively androgynous New Yorker-approved “Dracula.”

Filmmaker Bio: Gemma Ryan is an actor, dancer, writer, and producer born and raised in the San Fernando Valley. She started musical theatre at the tender age of 7, and continued training in theatre and dance throughout childhood and her teen years. She began working professionally as an actor at age 12, and has recently forayed into the world of writing and production.

Filmmaker Bio: Peter McCully has worked in visual effects for the film industry for over 25 years, running visual effects company Albedo VFX, overseeing work for numerous feature films, television films and series and he has several awards and nominations to show for it. Peter directed the NZFC funded short film “Eeling”, 2009 and wrote and directed the short film “The Gully” (in post-production). He was associate producer of the telefeature “Jean”: (2016) and “Kiwi Christmas”:” (2017). Peter’s visual effects work for “Jean” earned him a New York Festivals silver medal. His previous short film with Media Design School, “Kino Ratten” has been selected by several international film festivals in 2020, winning awards at Palm Springs animation festival and Irvine International Film Festival plus nominations for cinematography and screenwriting.

Filmmaker: Jack Zullo is an actor, writer and filmmaker, born in Manhattan and raised on Long Island, New York. He burst onto the LA scene in 2007 with a 6 month run in the hit sketch shows, "Friendly Neighbors" and "Bathroom Talk," and hasn't looked back. Most recently, he earned accolades in 2016's mixed-media bio show, "Live From the Grave....It's John Belushi!" playing the title role. His film and TV credits include, JIMMY KIMMEL, EPIC RAP BATTLES OF HISTORY, and BRICK STONE NEWS. He is stage trained by Sondra Lee (contemporary stage method) and The Actor's Gang (The Style), improv trained by Keith Johnstone, Groundings (I, II), and is a Westside Comedy graduate, plus a litany of on-camera workshops. He's also produced four short projects.

Filmmaker Bio: Juan Carlos Martín. Músico compositor en espectáculos en Teatro Corsario Juan Carlos Martín, músico-compositor en espectáculos de Teatro Corsario.  Obras con Teatro Corsario Insultos al público (1986). De Peter Handke. Sobre ruedas (1987). Tras los «pasos» de Lope de Rueda. Pasión (1988). Inspirada en la imaginería barroca. El gran teatro del mundo (1990). De Calderón de la Barca. Asalto a una ciudad (1991). De Lope de Vega / Sastre. Amar después de la muerte (1993). De Calderón de la Barca. Clásicos locos (1994). Entremeses barrocos. La maldición de Poe (1994). De Jesús Peña. La vida es sueño (1995). De Calderón de la Barca. Coplas por la muerte (1996). De varios autores. Vampyria (1998). De Jesús Peña. Edipo rey (1998). De Sófocles. El mayor hechizo, amor (2000). De Calderón de la Barca. Titus andrónicus (2001). De William Shakespeare. Don Gil de las calzas verdes (2002). De Tirso de Molina. Celama (2003). De Luis Mateo Díez. La barraca de Colón (2005). De Fernando Urdiales. Aullidos (2007). De Jesús Peña. Los locos de Valencia (2007). De Lope de Vega. El cuervo (2009). De Edgar Allan Poe / Francisco Pino. El caballero de Olmedo (2009). De Lope de Vega.

Filmmaker Bio: Masha Vlasova  is an experimental and documentary filmmaker, originally from Russia, who immigrated to the U.S. as a pre-teen. [Their] films have been exhibited and screened at venues such as Smack Mellon, Anthology Archives, Abrons Arts Center, the Border Project Gallery in New York City, Vox Populi in Philadelphia, and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University. [They have] been awarded the Alice Kimball Fellowship, the JUNCTURE Art and Human Rights Fellowship, a Research Fellowship at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and a Fulbright Fellowship in Filmmaking. [They] currently teach film production to college students.

Filmmaker Bio: David Picci was born and Raised in Lausanne, Switzerland. He moved to Los Angeles right after high school to pursue his childhood dream of making movies.

Filmmaker Bio:  Stephanie Paris is a Los Angeles-based Director/Producer who began her career as a camera assistant on low-budget horror films. Now, she writes, directs, and produces features, short films, and commercials full-time.

In 2022, she directed a Netflix series for Kevin Smith promoting Masters of the Universe and her first feature, Portraits, is set for release with Gravitas Ventures in 2024. Stephanie also wrote and directed two short films, Antiques and The Booker. Antiques screened at major festivals in 2023, while The Booker will release in 2024. Her latest project, Speak With The Dead, is a mystery horror about the Fox Sisters conducting a séance in 1850.

She previously produced That Guy Dick Miller (SXSW 2014) and the Easter segment in the anthology Holidays (TIFF 2016). Stephanie has also produced and shot bonus features for DVD/Blu-rays for filmmakers like David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, Ted V. Mikels, Jack Hill, and Roger Corman, reflecting her deep passion for the horror genre.

Filmmaker Bio: Matthew Catanzano was a Mainstage performer and head writer at Improv Asylum in Boston for seven years, performing in two-act revue-style shows and teaching and directing at the theater. [They] created long-running original shows like the annual Halloween Show, now in its 10th year, and the pop-culture improv show Dirty Donkey Kong for PAX East weekends. After moving to NYC in 2014, [they] partnered with Broadway Video's Above Average Productions, creating web series like Portrait STUdio and Congressional Hearings, with sketches featured on Buzzfeed and College Humor. One sketch, Sex in a Haunted House, has over 100 million YouTube views. Now based in LA, [they] produce live shows like The Last Video Store and continue to create content for Simply Unemployable and The Happy Ghost Productions. A big fan of Halloween and horror, Matthew hosts a to-camera movie recommendation series called Deep Cutz and regularly perform in the LA comedy scene.

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Cast: Niousha Noor (The Persian Version & Kaleidoscope on Netflix, Hulu's Girls Just want to Have Fun)  James III (Astronomy Club on Netflix, All That, Black Men Can't Jump in Hollywood) 

Filmmaker Bio: Justin Fox is an Emmy nominated visual effects artist living in Los Angeles, California. Early in his career, he received a crash course in low-budget filmmaking while reading scripts and recycling coffee grounds for B-movie producer Roger Corman. After achieving his goal to get his screenplay produced, Justin transitioned to the world of big-budget visual effects for film and TV. When he's not busy juggling computer-generated imagery, Justin enjoys the erratic challenges central to life as an author and filmmaker.

Filmmaker:  Daniel Paese

Filmmaker Bio: Tyler C. Peterson (he/him) is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker and founder of the Capital Emmy-winning production company Lux Daze Media. He is known for writing and directing short films such as STAN BEHAVIOR, COPPER & WOOL, and SUMMER HILL. Raised in rural Maryland, Tyler's work often explores outsider characters within niche communities, presented with a dream-like visual style. Now in LA, he is developing feature films while promoting STAN BEHAVIOR on the festival circuit, with selections including Frameline and Provincetown International. The film stars Ginger Minj and Yvonne Zima.

Filmmaker: Steve Brock

Filmmaker Bio: Rakefet Abergel is an accomplished director, writer, and producer known for her unique voice. She began her career as an actress and later created three award-winning short films: Jax in Love, Boo, and Still, along with several screenplays. She has been recognized with numerous awards and honors and her films have screened at festivals around the world. Her films explore issues related to identity, relationships, and personal growth, and she has been praised for her ability to tackle these topics with sensitivity and nuance. An established multi-hypenate, Abergel’s creative vision has earned her a loyal following of fans and admirers, and continues to inspire and provoke audiences around the world.  

Filmmaker: Dieter-Michael Grohmann

Filmmaker Bio:  Alyssa Brayboy is the Co-Founder and CEO of Buttons, a Black and Latina female-owned production company dedicated to amplifying diverse voices in film. In 2023, she was nominated for Best Comedic Performance and Best New Media & Experimental at the Best of NFMLA Awards for her role in Shadow Self, which she co-wrote, executive produced, and starred in. Alyssa has also been nominated for Best Comedic Performance for The Safety Plan, Best Supporting Actress for Already Lucky, and won Best Supporting Actress at the Silicon Beach Film Festival for Coyote. With over 15 years in storytelling, she has worked on Marvel’s Runaways, interned at the Actors Company, and studied with top acting coaches. Her directorial debut, Sugar, marks the beginning of her journey in creating impactful stories

Filmmaker Bio: Megan Maher is an American writer, director, and producer known for blending thriller and fantasy with unique visuals. She is recognized for her work on the ABC show Queens and the upcoming Hulu show Washington Black. Inspired by a chance meeting with Mara Brock Akil, Megan pursued a career in TV writing and filmmaking after moving to Los Angeles. She has worked with notable industry figures such as Michael Elliot, Miles Feldsott, Diarra Kilpatrick, and Selwyn Hinds. In 2022, Megan founded 6IXTH CHILD PRODUCTIONS, LLC, to create culture-defining stories and amplify diverse voices.

Filmmaker Bio: Ashley Maria is an Emmy-nominated director and writer based in Los Angeles, CA, known for her comedy/horror short Friday Night Fright, which won a Directors Guild of America award, and her breakthrough documentary Pioneers in Skirts. Her documentary, which explores obstacles faced by pioneering women, has been screened on PBS and worldwide in all United Nations languages. Originally from North Carolina, Ashley earned her degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before moving to Los Angeles to complete her Master’s at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. She is a recipient of the DTLA Film Festival’s “Best New Director” award and was recognized by the DGA Women’s Steering Committee as a filmmaker shaping the future of women in film. Ashley also teaches directing at UCLA and sound at the American Film Institute’s Young Women in Film program, and serves as a North American delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

Filmmaker Bio: Amy French is a multifaceted talent from Los Angeles, working as a director, writer, and actress. After studying theater at Emerson College, she spent a decade in theater and sketch comedy before transitioning to filmmaking with her feature "EL SÚPERSTAR: THE UNLIKELY RISE OF JUAN FRANCES" in 2008. Her career highlights include directing for YouTube Premium's "HYPERLINKED," creating branded content for various companies, and developing television projects with her writing partner Kerry Carney. Outside of her professional achievements, Amy is married to a physicist, has a son, and possesses unique talents such as Total Outfit Recall and the ability to hold her breath for an unusually long time. She is represented by Haven Entertainment and Verve Talent and Literary Agency, and is a member of Film Fatales and Women In Film.

Filmmaker Bios:  

Tessa Markle grew up in Pennsylvania, fell in love with acting from a very young age and pursued a degree in Theatre at Washington & Jefferson College before moving to Los Angeles to pursue the career full time. Since then, she not only has worked on the screen, stage, in commercials, and in voiceover, but also co-founded Femme Regard Productions where she dove into producing and began co-hosting a film podcast, Femme Regard Podcast, both with her co-creater Carolina Alvarez. She is very proud to say that her work has won multiple festival awards and is excited to see what opportunities arise in the future!

Born in Queens NY to immigrant parents, Carolina Alvarez grew up singing, acting, and dancing which led her to pursue a degree in Musical Theatre at AMDA. Upon graduating she felt diminished by the roles that were up for her to audition for and her push to begin creating her own stories began. In 2018, she co-founded Femme Regard Productions with Tessa Markle, aiming to challenge cinematic stereotypes and provide more opportunities for women both in front of and behind the camera. She is passionate about telling stories that showcase the female perspective in sensuality and expression while incorporating her Polish/Colombian cultural backgrounds.

Filmmaker Bio: Award-winning film director Talita Maia was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her two latest short films were selected for Oscar and BAFTA-qualifying film festivals, including LA Shorts, RIIFF, Carmarthen Bay, and Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. She received recognition with a Remy Award for Best Drama, as well as awards for Best Actor, Best Actress, and Outstanding Directing. Talita began her career in advertising, working as a junior account manager for one of Brazil’s largest agencies. After relocating to the US, she earned a 2-year Certification in Film Studies from UCLA Extension and developed a career in voice-over and on-screen acting. Her television credits include roles in “Community” (NBC), “Why Women Kill” (Paramount+), and the “iCarly” revival (Paramount+). She also starred as the female lead in the independent pilot “Blow Me,” alongside Tony Shalhoub and Jeremy Sisto. In voice-over and dubbing, Talita has lent her voice to over 12 lead roles in cartoons, documentaries, and series for networks like Netflix, FOX, and TV Globo. Additionally, she has worked as a 1st Assistant Director, Assistant Editor, and Post-Production Assistant for feature films.

Filmmaker Bio: Puppett (they/them) is a queer non-binary director and editor specializing in character-driven genre and quirky comedy with a focus on social impact. Their work has been featured in Academy Award-qualifying festivals like Tribeca, Slamdance, Urbanworld, and Outfest. Their debut film, WEDLOCKED, written by Guinevere Turner and starring Sally Kirkland and Beth Grant, secured multiple distribution deals. Other credits include directing an episode of the Emmy-nominated, GLAAD Award-winning series RAZOR TONGUE and the sitcom web-series NOT DATING, which premiered at the Seattle Queer Film Festival. Puppett is currently developing a half-hour comedy exploring family, polyamory, and the complexities of love

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Producer: Rebecca Rufer has been producing film, TV, and digital content for over 10 years. She has partnered on projects with OWN, Hollywood Reporter, Discovery, Blumhouse, Seeso, and BET. Before becoming an independent producer she worked for many years in talent development for Lucasfilm. She has performed as a dancer in music videos and live performance. She loves impact-driven and personal stories, and she holds a personal committment to social and political change.

Filmmaker Bio: Wheeler Winston Dixon is the James Ryan Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and co-editor of the Quick Takes book series for Rutgers University Press. He has authored over thirty books and more than 100 articles on film history, theory, and criticism. An active experimental filmmaker, Dixon's work is held in The Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. His recent publications include Synthetic Cinema (2019), The Films of Terence Fisher (2017), and A Short History of Film (2018). Dixon's films have been screened globally at venues such as The Whitney Museum, Anthology Film Archives, and numerous international film festivals.

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Filmmaker Bio:  Mário Gajo de Carvalho has 4 university diplomas in Arts and Cinema. His first short "The Millionaires" premiered and was awarded at IndieLisboa 2011. He directed "The Boy and the Owl" that premiered at the 29th CineMagic in UK. He co-directed "Circus Movements" in 2019 that premiered at the 57th Ann Arbor Film Festival and was selected for the 68th Melbourne Film Festival, 16th Vienna Shorts, 23rd PÖFF Shorts and more than 100 film festivals, winning 34 awards.

Filmmaker Bio: Kirsta Peterson is an actor, director, writer, and producer who studied Theater at New York University. She has completed five feature screenplays including "Fare Forward", "Persuasion", "The Dark Lady", "Dad Moon", and "Beach Week". She has completed multiple short scripts including "The Pretenders" which she also produced and starred in and was an Official Selection at LA Shorts Fest, and "Dis-Abuse" which received Honorable Mention at the Roma Shorts Festival. Her short film, "The Class", which she produced, wrote, and starred in, also marks her directorial debut.

Filmmaker Bio: Farid Tahmasebi is an independent Iranian filmmaker and cinematographer. He graduated from Tehran University of Art with a bachelor's degree in Cinematography. Aysan, one of the short films he shot as the director of photography, won several awards, including the Iranian short film association award (ISFA Award). He participated in an exchange program with the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf where he worked as Cinematographer in the documentary film Black Canvas. His passion to tell stories has always inspired him to create visuals thorough cinematography or directing. "The Deafening White Noise" is His latest short film as director.

Filmmaker Bio: Hing Tsang is a filmmaker and teacher based in Ipswich, working at the University of Suffolk. He was trained as a documentarist and is the author of “Semiotics and Documentary Film”, alongside numerous articles about documentary, fiction and experimental practice. He has collaborated for several years with Jose Navarro, an Anglo-Peruvian mime and puppetry artist. Previous collaborations have been seen in festivals across Asia, Latin America and Europe. Hing Tsang’s work incorporates elements of both experimental and documentary filmmaking.

Filmmaker Bio: Hing Tsang is a filmmaker and teacher based in Ipswich, working at the University of Suffolk. He was trained as a documentarist and is the author of “Semiotics and Documentary Film”, alongside numerous articles about documentary, fiction and experimental practice. He has collaborated for several years with Jose Navarro, an Anglo-Peruvian mime and puppetry artist. Previous collaborations have been seen in festivals across Asia, Latin America and Europe. Hing Tsang’s work incorporates elements of both experimental and documentary filmmaking.

Filmmaker Bio: Douglas DeVore has traditionally worked in television, earning regional Emmys for his work on NBC and PBS. He has directed 67 episodes of the PBS children's series, "Mark Kistler's Imagination Station." and one mediocre Jack in the Box commercial. This is his first short film.

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Music by Jonathan Coulton, Starring Cormac Linde

Filmmaker Bio:  Koura Linda is a die-hard independent filmmaker and the Founder/CEO of Space Dream Productions. Without attending college, or officially graduating high school, hands-on work with and in the film industry for over 20 years has helped her build a tool belt of professional lived experience that supports her work as a Producer and Director.

Born in Manhattan, Koura has lived everywhere from a few blocks from Times Square, to right off Hollywood Blvd, to teeny small towns in the middle of nowhere. A life of travel helps her connect with human stories as she has seen so many different ways of life.

Now, having survived a major medical event in 2011 which left her living with multiple disabilities, Koura takes each day as a chance to try something new. Under her leadership, Space Dream Productions (the company she co-owns with her husband and two minority partners), has completed over two dozen projects all across the US, with over 200 award nominations and special mentions, and over 60 awards to date, including 19 different "Best Picture" winning and nominated projects at festivals around the world. Koura's portfolio allows her to use her voice and platform to empower other filmmakers and share her knowledge through her podcast, Filmmaking (Actually).  She also works tirelessly not only to advocate for people like her who work professionally in film while living with multiple disabilities, but in creating inclusive and accessible work spaces for her team and her collaborators.

Filmmaker Bio: Zack Van Eyck is a film and television writer, director, and producer known for works like "Jupiter Landing" (2005) and the award-winning documentary “Daytona Dream" (2010). His latest project, the sci-fi/psychological drama “The Hitchhiker Effect,” will premiere at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival on February 22, 2024. Zack’s television productions, including "Sweet Caroline" and "Coitus of the Week," are featured on Amazon Prime and have won 14 awards and nominations. He began his career young, publishing his first novel at 12 and winning awards in journalism. In addition to filmmaking, Zack is an astrologer and a member of the punk rock tribute band Ramones Alive.

Filmmaker Bio: Sam "Gebar" Gebremiche (Director/ Editor) is an aspiring film director originally from Eritrea, Africa. Born and raised in Eritrea, he moved to America at age 11 with his family. He pursued his dream of filmmaking while graduating from San Francisco State University with a degree in Cinema. In 2016 he started his own production company called Ordinary Visions. He has directed two short narrative films and a variety of music videos. He started filming music videos in 2016 and has filmed various artists ranging from Blueface, rexxliferaj, Fenix Flexin, Lil Bean, AzChike, Young Slo-be, EBK Young Joc, Rucci, Drakeo the Ruler, and many more.
Please see Gebar's instagram account for more: @g.e.b.a.r

Filmmaker Bio: Camille Corbett is a Fulbright Scholar and versatile artist known for her compelling comedic storytelling and strong female characters. Born and raised in Atlanta, GA, Camille is a first-generation Jamaican American with a passion for shaping unconventional protagonists. She actively participates in the LA comedy scene through improv, stand-up, and sketch performances and has written for notable projects including a Jamie Foxx sitcom for Netflix and an animated Disney+ show. Camille's original animated pilot "BADDIES" is in development with Cartuna, and she has also produced and starred in a pilot distributed by Comcast, for which she received the Panavision New Filmmaker Grant. Currently, Camille is in post-production for her horror short “THE ISLAND,” also funded by Outback Presents.

a Budínová / Writer: Chanelle Madison / Cinematographer: Ale Rubiera/ Editor: Paul Dixon
 

Filmmaker Bio:  Charlie Norton is a dynamic filmmaker born and raised in Bridgewater, MA currently residing in New York City. Possessing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Filmmaking from Hofstra University, he has over 7 years of experience in multi-media production.

Charlie has produced and edited narrative content on both coasts, screening at organizations such as Dances with Films Los Angeles, SoHo International Film Festival NYC as well as the Oscar Qualifying Flickers Rhode Island International Film Festival. in 2016, he launched his production company, Flying Card Productions, and serves as a creative director and producer. His project experience ranges from independent to studio productions and is known for his detail oriented workflow. Outside of the industry, Charlie likes to play ice hockey and travel in his free time.

Filmmaker Bio: Manuel Fernández Ferro (Madrid, 1978). He has a Barchelor Degree in Communication Studies and studied filmmaking in University of Sydney (SCA). In 2013 he shot “The Red Carpet” a documentary documentary awarded with more than 20 international awards and more than 100 selections at festivals around the world. It was also nominated for the Goya Awards (Spanish Film Academy Awards). Now presents the experimental short film “The Lovers of Avignon” (2023), an allegory of pictorial cubism into motion real image. He is currently working in a famous spanish television program called Cuarto Milenio as the filmmaker of the horror and science fiction shortfilms contained in that program.

Filmmaker Bio: Tom Cavanaugh received his M.F.A. Playwriting from the Actors Studio Drama School in 2000. Tom's full-length play, BEHOLD, 2010 finalist, the New American Playwrights Program at Utah Shakespeare Festival and won a 2011 Pickering Award for Excellence in Playwriting. ADAM & YOSHI, full-length play was a finalist in McKinney Repertory Play Competitio, Texas and 2013 New American Playwrights Program Utah Shakespeare Festival. 2014, Tom's full-length play, INLAND EMPRESS, premiered in Los Angeles and THE FIELD a short play by Cavanaugh premiered at CTI Theatre Festival in In Missouri. 2018, Tom won the Artists & Playwright Festival at The Know Theatre in Binghamton, NY with his short, ROCKS ON THE PLAYS. Tom’s screenplay of BEHOLD won Best Feature Screenplay at the 2020 Bowery Film Festival in N.Y.C. 2021, Tom's Zoom show, NOW, NOW, NOW… , won BEST NATIONAL SHOW at Pittsburgh Fringe, Best LIVE-STREAM SHOW at Big Sky Fringe, won an OVATION AWARD at Hollywood Fringe. Tom was one of twelve selected playwrights at the 2023 PLAY LAB at The William Inge Theatre Festival. 2022, Tom's short film, SERVICE ME won Best Comedy at the LA Independent Film Channel Festival in Los Angeles, Best Relationship Short Film at the Silicon Beach Film Festival, Best Short Short at the New York Long Island Film Festival and Best North American Short Film at the NY Independent Cinema Awards. Cavanaugh's short play, MOM & MOM was a finalist at Pittsburgh New Works Play Festival in Pennsylvania. 2024, INLAND EMPRESS was published by Next Stage Press.

Filmmaker Bio: Clare Cooney is an LA-based director with an affinity for grounded dramas and thrillers. Clare's feature film DEPARTING SENIORS will premiere this August at FrightFest in London. The film was part of the inaugural Cannes’ Fantastic Pavilion 2023 and was featured in Variety. Her award-winning short films RUNNER, PICK UP, and AFTER (A LOVE STORY) have played at Academy- Qualifying festivals across the country. Clare has been featured twice in NewCity magazine’s Film 50 list and has received press from Deadline, Variety, Roger Ebert, and TimeOut.

Filmmaker Bios: Arthur James, a 24-year-old Writer & Director hailing from Los Angeles, California, is on a mission to revolutionize cinema and propel it to new heights. His diverse portfolio reflects a profound grasp of what elevates cinema to greatness and significance. Through immersion in the works of cinematic legends and personal encounters with luminaries like Martin Scorsese, Arthur has garnered accolades from prestigious film festivals worldwide, recognizing his prowess in writing, directing, and producing outstanding films. Driven by a genuine passion for the craft, Arthur aspires to emerge as one of the foremost voices in contemporary cinema. He is committed to carrying forward the torch lit by the greats before him, dedicated to demonstrating that cinema stands as the most impactful art form of all. With a unique ability to transcend conventional storytelling, Arthur consistently delivers cinematic experiences that resonate deeply, leaving an indelible mark on audiences.

Filmmaker Bio:  Brandt Andersen is an activist and artist. In November 2023, he joined the Jordanian Airforce on humanitarian aid drops over Gaza. In 2019, Andersen visited and filmed hospitals outside of Aleppo, Syria with CanDo. Andersen has organized film camps for refugees in Jordan and Turkey on behalf of CARE. He has visited and filmed the living conditions in refugee camps in Jordan, Greece, Italy, and Turkey with the UNHCR.

Andersen has produced over 30 films. His directorial debut “Refugee” was shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short in 2020.

Filmmaker Bio: Born and raised in LA, Ursula Rudorfer is an up-and-coming filmmaker with three award-winning films under her belt. Her newest film, "The Visitor", a tale of loneliness and the dangerous lengths we go to for connection, is currently on the festival circuit and getting rave reviews!

Filmmaker Bio: Dawn Alden (she/her) is a mover, a shaker and a Maker. She holds an MFA in Acting, and has over 30 years experience in that, stage combat, and new play development. She founded and ran an all-female theatre company in Chicago (Babes With Blades), acts with and runs a film production company in LA (Vicarious Films) and co-hosts a podcast (34 Circe Salon).  She is dedicated to creating work by and about women, for everyone.  vicariousfilms.com, babeswithblades.org

Filmmaker Bio: Filmmaker and musician Neil Young (N. Young or Neil 'Cloaca' Young) has made many performance and collage films of varying lengths, including several shorts in collaboration with composer Jessica Pavone, and his most widely-seen work is the feature-length portrait film MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS (2018) made in collaboration as co-director with friend and longtime Graves student Jake Meginsky.

Solo and in collaborations, Young has exhibited at Rotterdam, NMAAHC, Ann Arbor Film Festival, SXSW, CPH:DOX, Anthology, Issue Project Room, FLEX Fest and many more museums, cinemas, microcinemas, art spaces, bars and backyards.

Filmmaker Bio: Tim Luna is is a German producer / director based in Mexico City. Produced and directed short films and produced independent feature films that have been released internationally. Worked in the music industry for many years as a producer and director for music videos. He won a Silver Méliès for Best European Fantastic Film (Tears of Kali, 2004) as producer. Works often as art director for his own productions.

Filmmaker Bio: Danny Farber is a director, actor, and producer born and raised in Chicago, IL who is experienced with long form narrative projects, commercials, music videos, and branded digital content. Farber has a home base in Los Angeles, California but is 'globally local,' having worked in various international markets.  Farber has worked with Universal Music Group, Warner Records, Def Jam, Chance the Rapper, Hannibal Buress, and various other companies and brands. Over the course of his career, his projects have garnered tens of millions of views across all social platforms.  Farber's diverse filmmaking portfolio includes vertical dramas, music videos, commercials, and narrative projects. His work has been honored at various film festivals, with awards such as Best Director for "Huge" at the 4th Dimension International Film Festival in 2021, and Best Comedy for "Darren & Jack" at the Hollywood Blvd Film Festival in 2020.  Recently, Farber directed feature-length vertical dramas for platforms like ReelShort and GoodShort, and he wrote, directed, and starred in the short film "Thoughts as Prayers," executive produced by Amy Poehler.  As an actor, Farber has appeared in TV shows like "Chicago Fire" (NBC), "1923" (Paramount+), and "Proven Innocent" (FOX). He played Lance Corporal Hoss in "A Grunt’s Life" (VetTV) and and landed a supporting role in the 90’s indie crime feature film, "And On the 8th Day.” Farber has also starred in national ad campaigns and hosted the true-crime show "Killer Bites" on Facebook Watch.  In digital comedy, Farber has performed in sketches for Cracked and had been featured on Funny or Die and The Onion. He has trained at Second City, The Groundlings, UCB, and iO. Farber won Best Supporting Actor for "Huge" at the IndieX Film Fest in 2021 and was nominated for several other awards.  Powered by creative anxiety and restless ambition, Farber continues to act and direct in projects that he creates for himself..

Filmmaker Bio: Donald Watson is a seasoned stage and film actor/producer/director and president of Auburn Productions. His Whitey web series is an award-winner for his direction, producing and acting, notable for Best Web Series at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and others. He also received awards for his short film adaptation and direction of the acclaimed poem, Let There Be Peace. He appeared with Jason Clark in Chappaquiddick and stars in Auburn’s award-winning short film, Memory Lane as a father with dementia. He recently appeared in the comedy feature Motorvation, the series L.A. Macabre, and the psychological thriller Altered Perceptions. Donald: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1144423/

Boston-born and bicoastal, Donald has portrayed Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and other founding fathers in various venues. As an entrepreneur, he maintains the touring company, Boston Town Crier, that conducts Freedom Trail tours from Boston Common, and is a member of the Freedom Trail Foundation.

Filmmaker Bio: Rrose Present was born in Barcelona, she returns to her origins and currently lives in "Les Fonts" in Terrassa.  She graduated in Fine Arts at the UB, Seneca scholarship in audiovisuals at the UPV/EHU, Master of Philosophy in Contemporary Art at the UAB. She written in images from a critical "poetic" gaze, with a double sense of reality: the PRESENTIAL, using the body as a tripod for her emotions, and the RE-PRESENTATIONAL, with the series of "video 'without camera' reinterprets 'world camera"'.
After a very conceptual period, another adventure begins with a new name Rrose Present, to work on immediate relationships with the present. He abandons the literalness of images to penetrate medial and formal experimentation, with the conscious and unconscious paths that these open, approaching the language of experimental cinema.
Since 2016 he has been part of the distributor The Filmmakers Cooperative NYC with which he has been part of several programs.
Her works have been seen at many experimental film and video festivals in countries such as: Brazil, Italy, Portugal, France, USA, Mexico, Colombia, Germany, Cuba, India, Turkey, Greece, France, Spain, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bolivia, Lithuania, Iran, Peru.

Filmmaker Bio:   Francesca Eaddy is a Texas native and Los Angeles local actor and emerging filmmaker who discovered her love for the arts at a young age. Her journey has taken her to prestigious stages like the John F. Kennedy Center and renowned fellowship programs like the Sundance Institute Labs. With a self-taught background in filmmaking, Francesca is a storyteller at heart, bringing authenticity, creativity, and a fresh perspective to every project.

Passionate about empowering underrepresented voices, Francesca actively collaborates with organizations that champion gender and racial diversity in film. As she continues to learn and grow in her craft, she remains open to collaborating on projects that align with her vision of creating impactful narratives that resonate with a wide audience.

Filmmaker Bio: Michael Trevino, known for his charismatic on-screen performances, has now stepped behind the camera to make his mark as a burgeoning director. With a background in acting that spans several successful projects in film and television, Michael brings a wealth of experience and insight to his directorial debut. His journey in the entertainment industry has not only honed his craft but also fostered a deep understanding of the collaborative nature of filmmaking. As a first-time director Michael hopes to share Two Roads with a film festival loving audience.

Filmmaker Bio: ERIKA GOYZUETA is a filmmaker who was raised in Bolivia and New York City. She attended NYU TISCH School of the Arts studying film and television. Following her studies, Ms. Goyzueta was an associate producer on the prize winning documentary, ROMANTICO, and has worked as Wardrobe Supervisor on many Emmy nominated television series and feature films such as THE GOOD WIFE (CBS Television) and MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN (Warner Bros. Pictures). Following the nearly two year lockdown caused by the worldwide pandemic, Ms. Goyzueta emerges with VIDA, a short experimental film. She is also working on a graphic novel, LUZ MAR, drawn from the vivid childhood experiences in Bolivia which have inspired the visuals found in her filmmaking.

Filmmaker: Truman Hatfield is a DP, editor, and grip from Los Angeles, with an extensive background of portrait and adventure photography. A film-obsessed 21-year-old, he left his BFA Photography program at ArtCenter College of Design to pursue film production and freelance photography. Truman works primarily as a DP on music videos and stylized short films, as well as grip & electric on indie shorts and features. He also has experience on numerous graduate student film sets at institutions such as AFI Conservatory, USC SCA, Chapman Dodge, and more. With a large background in rock climbing and martial arts, he has a close relationship with stunts and often involves action in his projects.

Filmmaker: Giorgos Efthimiou

Filmmaker Bio: Alycia Cooper is a multi-hyphenate talent in Hollywood, working as an actor, comedian, writer, producer, and director. She began acting at age 5, developed a love for stand-up comedy, and eventually moved to Hollywood to pursue her passion for entertainment. After landing early roles and jobs, Alycia gained experience as a WGA Trainee and a Segment Director on “The Dr. Phil Show,” joining the Director’s Guild of America. She wrote and directed her first award-winning short film, Trade, and has since directed several other successful projects, including Just Us and Fat Stripper. Alycia has directed a TV web series episode, released six stand-up comedy albums, and continues to create groundbreaking work. 

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Producer: V.C. Rhone Associate Producer: Lania K. Stewart

Filmmaker Bios: Antonio Zapiain Luna and Ian Geatz’s creative partnership began during their college days at DePaul University, united by a love for unconventional storytelling. After reuniting in Los Angeles, they launched "We Need Some Space," blending their unique talents. Antonio, a skilled cinematographer, captures visually striking narratives, drawing inspiration from filmmakers like John Carpenter and Wong Kar Wai. Ian, an art director and contract carpenter, brings abstract concepts to life through his expertise in set design, influenced by legends like Stan Winston and Rob Bottin. Together, they formed Space Cowboy LLC, dedicated to pushing the boundaries of storytelling in film.

Filmmaker Bio: Alexandre Alagôa is an experimental filmmaker and multimedia artist working between Lisbon and Luxembourg. He holds degrees in Multimedia Arts, Audiovisuals, and Sound Art from the University of Lisbon. Alagôa has taught and lectured on Experimental Film for institutions like Atelier de Lisboa and CineReactor. In 2020, he co-founded turva, an audiovisual label focused on experimental art. His films have been featured at international festivals and exhibitions, including Go Short, Vienna Shorts, and Flatpack.

Filmmaker Bio:  Driven by social commentary and subtle behaviours that humans display when put in uncomfortable situations, all of Keshav Shree's scripts and short films start important conversations that are often considered taboo. The last short 'Happy Retirement Mr Pickering,' is a dark comedy that tells a story about a man coming-out to his wife in retirement. The next short 'Where are you really from?' is an awkward comedy exploring accentism.  In addition to directing, working as a doctor in the highly-pressurized environment of A&E has equipped Keshav with transferrable skills such as strong time management and interpersonal communication skills.

Filmmaker Bio: Donald Watson is a seasoned stage and film actor/producer/director and president of Auburn Productions. His "Whitey" web series is an award-winner for his direction, producing and acting, notably for Best Web Series at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, among others. He also received awards for his short film adaptation of the acclaimed poem, "Let There Be Peace".
He recently appeared in Jorge Ameer’s 2023 award-winning mind-bender, "Altered Perceptions"; he wrote, produced, directed and stars in Auburn’s latest film "To Grieve or Not to Grieve", as a widower trying to move on. He appeared with Jason Clark in "Chappaquiddick" and stars in Auburn’s award-winning short "Memory Lane" as a father with dementia. He performed in the comedy feature "Motorvation", the series "L.A. Macabre" and more.

Filmmaker Bio: Sandi is passionate about making films about women and other people whose stories are often overlooked, and her greatest hope is to help people, through her work, feel less alone.

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Producer Bio: Born in Montreal, trained in New York City, based in Los Angeles. Why Dogs Howl is Gary Teitelbaum's first film as writer or producer.