Senior Programmer, Features
Senior Programmer, Features
Senior Programmer, Features
Associate Programmer, Features
Associate Programmer, Features
Shorts Programmer & DOC NYC U
Associate Programmer, Shorts
Associate Programmer, Shorts
Jaie Laplante
For the past 12 years, Jaie served as the Miami Film Festival’s Executive Director and Co-Director of Programming, where his achievements included greatly expanding that festival’s documentary selections, as well as launching successful initiatives such as a digital screening platform, the GEMS festival, and the Google Talks on Gender & Racial Gaps in Film & Technology. He simultaneously oversaw year-round programming at the historic Tower Theater in Miami’s Little Havana. He previously served as Associate Director of the New York City Wine & Food Festival and as a programmer at festivals focused on shorts and LGBTQ+ films. He has served on numerous film festival juries, including the U.S. Competition jury at DOC NYC 2021.
Ruth Somalo
Senior Programmer, Features
Ruth is a Spanish programmer, curator and filmmaker. She has worked with DOC NYC for twelve years, programs for the Architecture and Design Film Festival and often curates independent nonfiction programs like “Holy Fluids” (UnionDocs), “Broken Senses” (Anthology Film Archives) and “The Limit Of Our Gaze” (KJCC). Ruth has programmed for International Festivals like DocumentaMadrid, was the co-director of Impugning Impunity Human Rights Film Festival and serves as President of The Flaherty Board of Trustees.
Karen McMullen
Senior Programmer, Features
Karen is a Features Programmer at Tribeca Festival, Director of Programming at TIDE and screener for Sundance Film Festival. She’s a juror at Pan African and Bentonville Film Festivals, Black Public Media and Cinema Eye Honors. She moderates for African Film Festival, Pure Nonfiction, Netflix, NYWIFT, HBO and more. She’s a guest speaker on television, radio and at filmmaking organizations. She’s a Brown University graduate and has editing credits on features, documentaries, and short films.
Brandon Harrison
Senior Programmer, Features
Brandon Harrison began at DOC NYC as screener, before joining the programming team in 2019. He has curated features, shorts, and series at Brooklyn Film Festival, Nashville, and Tribeca, while also serving on various documentary juries and committees. He is currently a Development Executive at Words+Pictures.
Bedatri D. Choudhury
Associate Programmer, Features
Bedatri is a culture journalist and documentary film professional. She has managed documentary projects at Doc Society, Working Films, The Gotham Film & Media Institute, and CAAM, among others. An alumna of the NYFF Critics Academy, Sundance and SXSW Press Inclusion Initiatives, the National Critics’ Institute, and Berlinale Talents, she lives in New York City. Presently, she is the Managing Editor of Documentary Magazine.
Kim Garcia
Associate Programmer, Features
Kim Garcia is a New York based filmmaker whose work has shown at Newfest, Fringe! Queer Film and Art Fest, and Seattle Queer Film Festival. She has filled various roles in exhibition and operations at Tribeca Film Festival, CAAM, NewFest, and Nantucket Film Festival. Currently, she is a screener for American Documentary’s POV program and moonlights as a film projectionist at repertory cinemas throughout the city.
Samah Ali
Programmer, Shorts & DOC NYC U
Samah Ali is a distributor and film programmer based in New York City and Toronto. A lover of documentaries and virtual reality, she programs for Academy Award qualifying festivals DOC NYC, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, and Hot Docs Film Festival. She is also the founder of Sisterhood Media, a production and distribution company streaming films on their platform, Sisterhood Media TV. You can interact with her on Twitter @sistersamah.
DeWitt Davis
Associate Programmer, Shorts
DeWitt has worked in the film industry for the last 18 years in all aspects of production, post-production, and film restoration. He has been with DOC NYC since year one and became an Associate Programmer of Shorts in 2017. Witt has also worked with the programming and technical teams of the Miami, Montclair, Nantucket, and Architecture and Design Film Festivals. He created the education series Cinematographers at Museums, where cinematographers give lectures in front of fine art paintings at the Metropolitan Museum.
Annie Ning
Associate Programmer, Shorts
Annie Ning is a filmmaker and programmer with a deep love for documentary, experimental storytelling, and public media. Currently, she co-leads the programming team at the Asian American International Film Festival, where she previously served as a Documentary and Shorts Programmer. She has worked as part of programming operations at Tribeca Festival, and also as a screener and evaluator for the Shorts Incubator at Disney Launchpad.
Day Al-Mohamed
Day Al-Mohamed is a writer, independent filmmaker, and disability policy strategist. She is passionate about authentic representative storytelling and its ability to reframe history and promote culture. Al-Mohamed is author of two alternate history fantastical novels, Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn and The Labyrinth’s Archivist, as well as comics and critical essays, including, most recently, a series of essays, Inspired, for PBS’ American Masters. Her award-winning Civil War documentary, The Invalid Corps, sold to Alaska Airlines and the pilot for her historical series on disability – Renegades – was just released on American Masters PBS, July 2021.
Al-Mohamed is a founder of FWD-Doc (Documentary Filmmakers with Disabilities) and a regular host on Idobi Radio’s Geek Girl Riot with an audience of 80,000+ listeners. A firm believer in community and supporting others, she is active in Women in Film and Video (WIFV), Docs in Progress, and Brown Girls Doc Mafia, as well as FWD-Doc. She was an advisor for Sundance Institute’s Accessible Futures Intensive program in 2021, and is on the disability advisory board for SFFilm. A skilled moderator, Day presents often on the representation of and importance of disability in media, including AFI, IDA, DOC NYC and at NALIP. However, she is most proud of being invited to teach a workshop on storytelling at the White House in February 2016. She lives in Washington, DC with her wife, NR Brown, and guide dog, Gamma.
Rahi Hasan
Rahi Hasan (they/them) is a formerly undocumented dancer, multimedia documentary artist, educator, and impact strategist challenging power on all fronts to create space for healing and radical imagination. They immigrated to Queens, New York from Dhaka, Bangladesh before moving to Durham, NC. Rahi was a Firelight Media Impact Producer fellow in 2018. Rahi is the Founder and Executive Director of Shopnotori – Artist-in-Residence Program. They are the Co-founder, and Fundraising and Development Co-lead of the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective. Rahi is one of the founding members of Art Asylum and board member of Migrant Roots Media. As the Strategic Advisor for International Initiatives at Dhaka Doc Lab, Rahi is supporting South Asian filmmakers to get access to the tools they need to speak truth to power.
The multimedia art of Rahi Hasan functions as a continuous experiment with form, relationships, theory, and identity. Their work spans autobiography, collaborative social documentary, experimental video, installation, reflective/theoretical discourse, and text-based approaches. In their work, Rahi experiments with ways to effectively shift the power they hold as a filmmaker over to community, while still offering participants the value of their creative and technical support. For Rahi, “the process is the reason for creation” of their autobiographical and biographical experimental art. When practiced in a state of heightened vulnerability, the rituals of production ignite the possibility of healing, liberation, and the reclamation of power.
Web: https://linktr.ee/mmjdocumentaries
Sahar Driver
Sahar Driver is a documentary impact strategist and educator, field builder, and researcher. Her work has included impact campaign development and partnership cultivation for over two-dozen campaigns both as a freelancer and with Active Voice; developing trainings and curriculum around impact campaign strategy and implementation, including with Doc Society on their Impact Field Guide and their Impact Hi5s; helping to design and launch two new grantmaking programs with Firelight Media for filmmakers of color; and piloting efforts to build community with practitioners working at the intersection of film and faith to strengthen circles of practice across the U.S.. In 2020 she authored the Ford Foundation commissioned report: Beyond Inclusion: The Critical Role of People of Color in the U.S. Documentary Ecosystem and has been designing interventions that deepen the power of people of color working within it.
Amber Espinosa-Jones
Amber Espinosa-Jones is an independent producer and racial equity strategist from Oakland, CA. She currently serves as Manager of the Outreach & Inclusion Department at Sundance Institute where she supports artists from underrepresented communities through intersectional fellowships, community programs, and network building. She has worked with a number of arts organizations looking to support narrative change within the entertainment industry and is currently producing her first feature documentary, Standing Above the Clouds.
Darian Henry
Darian Henry is a filmmaker, digital-media educator, founding member, and co-executive director of the nationally known film and digital media organization Youth FX. She has shot, directed, and produced over 50 short documentary, narrative, and experimental films.
In 2016 Darian co-founded NeXt Doc, a year-long documentary fellowship designed to bring together emerging documentary storytellers between the ages of 20-24 from diverse backgrounds across the country with award-winning documentary filmmakers to learn, share, and build their skills as they move into the next stage of their careers.
As an educator, Darian uses film and digital media as a means to empower and inspire black and brown youth in a wide range of Youth FX programs that arm them with the skills, techniques and access needed to create films based on their own realities and imagination.
Darian is currently working as an associate producer on Ira McKinley and Bhawin Suchak’s feature-length documentary film Outta the Muck which is supported by Sundance Institute and iTVS. She is also co-founder of Rogue FX, a full-service production company powered by alumni of Youth FX. Darian Henry was born in Hanover, Jamaica. She currently lives in New York.
Maori Holmes
Maori is a curator, filmmaker and writer. She founded BlackStar and serves as its CEO and Artistic Director. She has organized programs in film at a myriad of organizations including Anthology Film Archives, Museum of Contemporary Art, The Underground Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. As a director, her works have screened internationally. Her writing has most recently appeared in The Believer, Film Quarterly, Seen, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, How We Fight White Supremacy: A Field Guide to Black Resistance, and the forthcoming Collective Wisdom: Co-Creating Media Within Communities Across Disciplines and Algorithms. Maori received her MFA in Film & Media Arts from Temple University and her BA in History from American University. Maori was a 2019-2020 Soros Equality Fellow and serves as Mediamaker-in-Residence at the Annenberg School for Communication at University of Pennsylvania, Curator-at-Large at Penn Live Arts, and a Creative Executive with Blackbird.
Lauren Pabst
Lauren works on grantmaking in support of Nonfiction Multimedia Storytelling and Professional Nonprofit Reporting.
Prior to joining the Foundation in 2012, Lauren worked as Project Manager and Researcher for the Rada Film Group on the 13-year longitudinal documentary American Promise about race, parenting, and education, which received a Special Jury Prize at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast on the PBS series POV in 2014. Previously, Lauren worked with Black Public Media, and Public Policy Productions.
Lauren graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelors of Arts in English from Boston University. She is a member of the steering committee of Nuestro Futuro, an initiative of the Chicago Community Trust.
Anuradha Rana
Anuradha Rana is an independent filmmaker, educator, and program leader based in Chicago. Born and raised in India, her immigrant roots create the lens of a curious interloper at the heart of her films, where everyday characters push conventional boundaries. She is an Associate Professor and Co-Chair of the Documentary Program at DePaul University’s School of Cinematic Arts. Anuradha brings over 15 years of experience as an educator and program director to her position as the Creative Lead for the Diverse Voices in Doc Fellowship organized by Kartemquin Films and Community Film Workshop of Chicago. She is also on the leadership team for the Asian American Doc organization (ADOC) and a member of BGDM. She was named one of Chicago’s 50 Screen Gems in 2017 & 2019, and a DCASE esteemed artist in 2021.
Tracy Rector
Tracy Rector comes to Nia Tero with a passion for amplifying and uplifting Indigenous and BIPOC voices. She brings two decades of experience as a community organizer, educator, filmmaker, film programmer, and arts curator, all infused with her deep roots in plant medicine. For the last 20 years she has directed and produced over 400 films including shorts, features, music videos, and virtual reality projects. Her work has been featured on Independent Lens, ImagineNative, National Geographic, and the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian, as well as at international film festivals including Cannes and Toronto. Tracy sits on the boards of Working Films, The Flaherty, the Mize Foundation, and is the co-founder of Longhouse Media and the founder of Indigenous Showcase.
Marjan Safinia
Marjan Safinia is an Iranian documentary filmmaker whose films examine identity, community, and social justice. Most recently, and together with Grace Lee, she produced and directed AND SHE COULD BE NEXT, a two-part documentary series about women of color transforming American politics from the ground up, which debuted as POV’s first ever series in June 2020 and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Best Documentary. Other work includes SEEDS, the story of ten brave teenagers from the world’s most troubled conflict zones living side-by-side for one life-changing summer, and BUT YOU SPEAK SUCH GOOD ENGLISH a humorous short exploring the first-generation immigrant experience from an insider perspective. Her work has been supported by IDA Enterprise Fund, Ford Foundation, MacArthur and Sundance Institutes, Doc Society, and she is also Sundance Catalyst Fellow. Until 2018, Marjan was the longest-serving President of the Board of Directors of the International Documentary Association (and the first woman of color to lead IDA since its founding in 1982.) She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Chicken & Egg Pictures and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Marjan is one of five co-hosts of the longest-running online documentary community, The D-Word, a founding member of Beyond Inclusion, and a regular juror, programmer, speaker and connector of all things documentary.
Jeanelle Augustin
Film Fellowships and Artist Development Manager, NBCU
Jeanelle Augustin is a Haitian-American film programmer and serves as Film Fellowships and Artist Development Manager at NBCU. Born in New York City, she is interested in the visual and sonic culture of the future – what does creative freedom for artists of color look and sound like? She is excited about the emergent strategies and creative solutions that artists offer to reimagine reality and build a more equitable future. As a film programmer and curator, her work is particularly focussed on artists of color who are evolving cinematic language of nonfiction, designing opportunities to experiment in new mediums, blend genres, and disrupt traditional hierarchies of knowledge and power by increasing collaboration between indie film funders and distributors, arthouse cinemas, galleries, foundations, and contemporary art museums in order to build a new, more vibrant and inclusive field of vision. She is a proud member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and is based in New York City.
Samara Grace Chadwick
Samara is the Executive Director of The Flaherty. Founded in 1954, The Flaherty brings together an ever-expanding community of filmmakers, scholars, curators, and cinephiles around a shared belief in the transformative, world-building power of independent non-fiction cinema. www.theflaherty.org
Samara is also a programmer, scholar, filmmaker, and mother. She was Senior Programmer at the Points North Institute and Camden International Film Festival (2017-2020), and has programmed for the Goethe Institut (2018-2020), HotDocs (2011-2012), RIDM in Montréal (2015-16), and has organized conferences for Visions du réel (2019), re:publica Berlin (2018), MUTEK – Montreal (2018), and the Berlin Biennale (2012). Her critically acclaimed debut feature, 1999, premiered in 2018 at Visions du réel, and has since played 30+ festivals worldwide, including HotDocs, DokuFest Kosovo, BAFICI, and the Museum of the Moving Image.
Sky Dylan-Robbins
Sky Dylan-Robbins is an award-winning journalist, producer, and the founder and Executive Director of the Video Consortium, a global network that supports, develops, and connects the new generation’s documentary filmmakers and video journalists. Uniting thousands of nonfiction video storytellers from over a hundred cities across the globe, the Video Consortium is working to democratize the industry by facilitating connections and opportunities through community gatherings, valuable resources, supportive mentorship, professional development, and collaborative content creation.
Previously, Sky was a visual journalist at NBC News, where she produced short documentaries about the cultural and spiritual shifts in how we think, connect, and exist in today’s unpredictable world. Before that, she was the Senior Producer of Video at The New Yorker, where she created and commissioned the magazine’s first short films, series, and video supplements for print features. Her feature documentary, On Our Own Island, is a timeless true love story that chronicles the seasons of a relationship from its romantic beginnings through life’s final moments. Forbes Magazine selected Sky as a “30 under 30” in the media industry, and she graduated cum laude from Northwestern University.
Alexandra Hannibal
Alex Hannibal is Senior Director of content development for CNN Films. Hannibal joined CNN in 2016 and is responsible for the development and acquisitions of CNN Films titles. Most recently, she served as executive producer for a short film anthology produced by Scheme Engine and as supervising producer for DREAMLAND: The Burning of Black Wall Street, directed by Salima Karoma. Hannibal’s other recent credits include JOHN LEWIS: Good Trouble, directed by Dawn Porter, SCANDALOUS: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer, directed by Mark Landsman, LINDA RONSTADT: The Sound of My Voice, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, APOLLO 11, directed by Todd Douglas Miller, HALSTON, directed by Frédéric Tcheng, THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS, directed by Tim Wardle; and the Oscar-nominated RBG, directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen.
Sarah Mosses
Sarah Mosses is the Founder & CEO of Together Films. Her career has focussed on strategy & fundraising for social impact entertainment campaigns across the US & UK, working on titles such as the Oscar-Nominated For Sama, Unrest & Roll Red Roll. She has presented her strategies at leading forums including Hot Docs, CPH:Dox, and Sheffield DocFest, and supports around 100 filmmakers per year through various labs and training initiatives. In 2021 she released The 8th and Ahead of The Curve in theatres, supported by the BFI, and opens Through The Night in the UK in November.
Together supports both films and festivals, and Sarah has led the marketing for leading festival brands including DOC NYC and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival (London & NYC). She develops sophisticated data-driven marketing methodologies to increase ticket sales and attendance at festivals and brings senior-level advisory support to each campaign. In 2020/2021 this involved a number of ‘digital platform’ launches advising festivals on launching online, and navigating to hybrid strategies for the future.
Sarah launched the Digital Perspectives webinar series in early 2020 that brought together creatives & technologists aiming to navigate to digital streaming opportunities. This was followed by the Digital Power series in partnership with the Center for Media & Social Impact, supported by the Perspective Fund.
Together will be expanding into international sales & distribution in 2022, with an expanded team across the US & UK. In addition, the company has opened a non-profit sister company to further its social impact objectives.
Asadullah Muhammad
Asad Muhammad, VP of Impact & Engagement Strategy at American Documentary | POV leads on the community engagement, education, and public station relations work necessary to extend the impact of films beyond their broadcast date. POV is American television’s longest-running showcase for independent nonfiction films. Asad leads the POV Engage team whose charge is to partner with community-based organizations, educators, librarians and engaged community members to spark conversation about the issues presented in films and digital productions. Asad brings over fifteen years of experience in education and community development with a primary focus on the advancement of court-involved, queer-identified and incarcerated youth. Prior to joining POV, Asad worked for United Way for Southeastern Michigan as a Pathway Coach supporting school leaders, teachers, and counselors in reimagining educational structures and building project-based learning experiences for students as an engagement strategy resulting in higher graduation rates. In 2014, he completed the Public Leaders Fellowship with Leadership for Educational Equity. Asad started his teaching career as an elementary school teacher in Atlanta, and transitioned into school turnaround work building new schools from the ground up in the cities of Detroit, Atlanta, New Orleans and Brooklyn. Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation named him one of Detroit’s 2018 Angelic Troublemakers for his radical parenting, education and social justice work.
Poh Si Teng
Poh Si Teng is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist and the director of IDA Funds and Enterprise Program. She is the producer of St. Louis Superman, which was nominated for an Academy Award in the short documentary category, and won a Critics’ Choice Award. In 2020, she was one of DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 Filmmakers to Watch.
Prior to joining IDA she oversaw the US, Canada and Latin America as documentary commissioner and senior producer for Al Jazeera English’s flagship documentary strand, Witness.
Throughout her career, Poh has sought out and collaborated with filmmakers from a variety of racial, ethnic, socio-economic and religious backgrounds across a range of nationalities.
Poh was previously a staff journalist for The New York Times, where she was nominated for a national Emmy Award for Outstanding Interview, and received both a Society of Professional Journalists’ Deadline Award and a NPPA award.
Before joining the Times, she was an independent filmmaker and journalist based in India for several years. Poh is originally from Penang, Malaysia.
Chloe Walters-Wallace
Chloe Walters-Wallace is a Jamaican creative with a passion for curation, travel, dancehall, and installation art. Currently, she is the Director of Regional Initiatives at Firelight Media, where she oversees the Groundwork Regional Lab and the new HOMEGROWN documentary shorts slate, supporting filmmakers of color in the South, Midwest & US Territories. In 2021 she helmed Firelight’s new digital series, HINDSIGHT, which chronicles the cultural shifts and pivotal conversations from the perspective of diverse communities in the American South and Puerto Rico during the unprecedented experience of 2020. This year she also guest-curated the 21′-22′ season for South Arts’ Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers, and launched The Caribbean Film Academy 2.0 at Third Horizon with co-creator Themba Bhebe. Previously, Chloe led the New Orleans Film Society’s Emerging Voices program and launched the Southern Producers Lab. She has worked for the Tribeca Film Institute, Clinica Estetico, Article 19 Films, as well as production companies in New York, London, New Orleans, & Jamaica.
Chloe is a 2021 JustFilms Rockwood Fellow, a 2015 Ortique Institute Fellow, and a 2007 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. She lives between New York and New Orleans and is on the board of Third Horizon.
Tabs Breese
Tabs Breese is a documentary producer. She began her career working for companies including Pulse Films and Concordia Studio. Her slate includes Isabel Castro’s Mija, Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan’s Naked Gardens and Zara Meerza’s short The Twins. Tabs is a Refinery29 x Google News Fellow, an IDFAcademy Producer School Alumna, a Sundance Grantee and an NBCU Original Voices Fellow.
Yael Bridge
Yael Bridge is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker. Her feature, The Big Scary “S” Word, traces the history and resurgence of socialism in the US and premiered at Hot Docs 2020. Prior to that she produced Left on Purpose, winner of the Audience Award at DOC NYC, and Saving Capitalism, which was nominated for an Emmy. She resides in Oakland, where she spends her time thinking about restructuring systems of power.
Isabel Castro
Isabel Castro is a Mexican-American filmmaker; she directed the Emmy-nominated short USA v Scott (Tribeca 2020, The New Yorker); Emmy-nominated Darlin (Tribeca 2019, NYT OpDocs); and the Emmy-nominated Netflix docu-series Pandemic. Her directorial debut, Crossing Over, (Univison/Participant Media) won a 2015 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary. Castro has worked at The New York Times, The Marshall Project, on the series VICE on HBO, and as a producer at VICE News Tonight on HBO. She is currently working on Mija, her feature debut.
Aisling Chin-Yee
Aisling Chin-Yee is a producer, writer and director based in Montreal and Los Angeles. In 2021, New Yorker Magazine hailed her latest work, No Ordinary Man, as “a genre unto itself,” and the film premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, AFI and DOCNYC. Her feature directorial debut, The Rest of Us, also premiered at TIFF. Alongside filmmaking, Aisling is a change-maker for diverse representation on- and off-screen. She co-founded the #AfterMeToo movement, which brings to light the issue of sexual misconduct in the entertainment industry.
Maya Cueva
Maya is a Latina award-winning director and producer. She is a Netflix Nonfiction Director and Producer fellow and won a student Emmy in 2015. Her recent short documentary Ale Libre was acquired by The New Yorker and her first feature documentary film, On The Divide, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2021 and will be on POV in Spring 2022.
Lauren DeFilippo
Lauren DeFilippo is a Brooklyn based filmmaker and partner at Insignia Films where she recently produced Ailey (Sundance 2021.) The feature documentary was released in theaters nationwide by NEON and will be broadcast on PBS in 2022. Lauren’s directorial debut Red Heaven (SXSW 2020) will be released by Utopia Films in Fall 2021.
Zackary Drucker
Zackary Drucker is an independent artist, filmmaker, and cultural producer. She has performed and exhibited her work internationally in museums, galleries and film festivals. Drucker is an Emmy-nominated producer for the docuseries This Is Me, and was a producer on the Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning Amazon show Transparent. The Lady and The Dale, her directorial debut for television, premiered on HBO in early 2021.
Leah Galant
Leah Galant is a Jewish director and Fulbright Scholar based in New York whose storytelling focuses on unexpected narratives. Leah’s directorial debut On The Divide premiered at the Tribeca 2021 Film Festival and will broadcast on POV PBS in Spring 2022. She was a Sundance Ignite and Jacob Burns Fellow, where she created Death Metal Grandma (New York Times Op-Doc).
Èlia Gasull Balada
Èlia Gasull Balada is a NAACP Image Award-nominated filmmaker who works in documentary and fiction. As an editor and writer, her documentary credits include the Emmy and Peabody nominee The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the Emmy and Grammy nominee The King. She also edited the feature narrative Son of Monarchs, winner of the Alfred P Sloan Prize at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Originally from Barcelona, Spain, she has been based in Brooklyn, New York for the past decade.
Lauren Haber
Lauren Haber is a Brooklyn-based, Emmy-winning producer and mom of two whose experience spans documentary and scripted, features and series. She is currently Head of Development at Impact Partners. Her recent credits include the Independent Spirit and Peabody-winning series Immigration Nation (Netflix), Ry Russo Young’s Nuclear Family (HBO), and French visual artist JR’s latest documentary Paper & Glue (MSNBC).
Karim Hajj
Karim Hajj is an Emmy-winning producer and director of photography. He also serves as head of business affairs for Midnight Films, a New York-based film production company.
Emily Harrold
Emily Harrold is a documentary filmmaker from Orangeburg, South Carolina. Her films have screened at festivals including the Tribeca Film Festival, the Melbourne International Film Festival, DOC NYC and the Telluride Film Festival. She is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is a member of Film Fatales and a co-leader of the documentary chapter of the film collective Filmshop.
Chelsea Hernandez
Chelsea Hernandez is an Emmy-nominated Mexican-American filmmaker based in Texas. Chelsea’s directing, editing, and producing work spans 10 years in television and film including on docu-series for PBS, El Rey Network, and CBS All-Access. Chelsea co-directed/produced the award-winning short documentary, An Uncertain Future (2018 SXSW Texas Short Jury Winner, Field of Vision, Firelight Media).
CJ Hunt
CJ Hunt is a comedian and filmmaker living in NYC. He has worked as field producer on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Rundown with Robin Thede. A regular host of The Moth, CJ is also the director of The Neutral Ground, a documentary on monuments, memory, and how to break up with the confederacy.
Rebeca Huntt
Rebeca Huntt is a writer/director born in New York City. Her first feature film, Beba (2021) made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival to critical acclaim. Her short films have screened at numerous festivals, including the Athena Film Festival, BlackStar, TIDE and Art of Brooklyn. She participated in the 2019 IFP Documentary Lab and the 56th annual New York Film Festival’s Artist Academy. Rebeca has worked as an archival producer for various documentaries produced by Hulu, Fader and PBS.
Daniel Hymanson
Daniel Hymanson’s first feature So Late So Soon screened at True/False, DOC NYC, and BAFICI before distribution by Oscilloscope Pictures. Organizations including Kartemquin, IFP, Illinois Arts Council, and Sundance have supported his work. Daniel also associate-produced Western (Sundance) and The Last Season (Independent Spirit nominee). He was one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2020.
Jeffrey Johnson
Jeffrey Johnson is a New York-based cinematographer with recent work including A Thousand Cuts (Sundance 2020) and the Emmy-nominated Born to Be (NYFF57). Johnson’s camera work has taken him around the world to show engaging perspectives of some of the most challenging stories. His projects appear on HBO, PBS, A&E, Netflix, The New York Times, Field of Vision, and The Atlantic.
Morgan Elise Johnson
Morgan is an independent filmmaker and publisher based in Chicago. Most recently, she produced Unapologetic (2020), a documentary that chronicles two abolitionist leaders of the Movement for Black Lives in Chicago. Her current venture as co-creator of The TRiiBE (thetriibe.com), a digital publication and production company in Chicago, earned her a spot on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list.
Lance Kramer
Lance is a Washington, DC-based filmmaker and co-founder of Meridian Hill Pictures with his brother Brandon Kramer. Lance produced City of Trees (Full Frame), the Webby Award-winning series The Messy Truth, and The First Step (Tribeca). Lance was selected to the 2017 Impact Partners Producers Fellowship, 2018 Sundance Creative Producers Summit, and served as a DPA committee chair from 2017-2020.
Catherine Lee
Economist-turned-filmmaker Catherine Lee was fortunate to receive scholarships to Yale and Harvard and dedicated her studies, and ensuing decade’s profession across 18 countries, to global injustices. Witnessing storytelling’s power, she left the UN to attempt directing film. Her debut documentary, 9at38, premiered at Tribeca and streams on The Atlantic. She has produced award-winning TV and continues documenting those who risk all.
Julia Liu
Julia C Liu is a Providence, Rhode Island-based director, cinematographer and artist, interested in exploring stories that center BIPOC voices. Her passion for visual storytelling started through her comics, evolving into filmmaking as a way to bring her illustrations to life. Liu is a member of the International Cinematographers Guild, Local 600 and a graduate of Brown University.
Sura Mallouh
Sura Mallouh is Palestinian-Canadian documentary filmmaker. She is an NBCU Academy and NBC News Studios Original Voices Fellow and a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program Grantee. Her documentaries have been featured on CBC GEM, CBC Short Docs, CBC Arts, Upworthy and have been viewed globally. Sura’s documentaries focus on contextualizing underrepresented stories with an investigative thread throughout.
Angelo Madsen Minax
Angelo Madsen Minax is a multi-disciplinary artist whose works have shown at BAM CinemaFest, KurzFilm Hamburg, the Leslie-Lohman Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the European Media Art Festival, and others. His new film North By Current (2021), premiered at Berlinale and the Tribeca Film Festival, and will screen on PBS as part of season 34 of POV in late 2021. Madsen is an Associate Professor of Time-Based Media at the University of Vermont.
Ali Moss
Ali Moss is an Emmy Award-nominated documentary producer. In 2012, she co-founded The Public Good Projects, whose mission is to leverage the power of the media to make complex problems easier to understand. She EP’d Sleepless in America (National Geographic); served as an executive at Discovery, where she co-produced Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman; produced the Emmy-nominated documentary Not Done: Women Remaking America (PBS) and produced Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn (HBO/Tribeca). Most recently, she produced Fauci (Telluride 2021/Disney+.)
Habiba Nosheen
Habiba Nosheen is a Peabody and three-time Emmy award-winning investigative journalist and filmmaker. Her work includes Outlawed in Pakistan (Sundance, ITVS, FRONTLINE) and The Devil’s Advocate (ITVS). She is the creator and host of an upcoming investigative podcast series with Gimlet Media and Spotify. She is also in development for her next documentary with the National Film Board of Canada.
Ashley O'Shay
Ashley O’Shay is a director-DP based in Chicago, IL, whose work focuses on illuminating marginalized voices. In 2020, she premiered her debut feature, Unapologetic, a deep look into the Movement for Black Lives in Chicago, told through the experiences of two young, Black queer women. The film premiered at the 2020 BlackStar Film Festival and was shortlisted for the International Documentary Association Awards.
Hannah Olson
Hannah directed and produced HBO’s Baby God (SXSW 2020) and The Last Cruise (SXSW 2021). Prior to making her own films, Hannah worked as a producer on PBS’s American Experience and Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. She created the story concept for the 2019 Netflix series Who Killed Malcolm X?. Hannah is from Minnesota and is based in New York.
Nneka Onuorah
Nneka Onuorah is an acclaimed filmmaker, producer and activist of Nigerian-American descent whose projects focus on championing empathy and social justice. Her work includes HBO’s Legends of the Underground; GLAAD Award-nominated The Same Difference; Unt. Big Grrls with Lizzo for Amazon; The G Word with Higher Ground for Netflix; and commercials/campaigns for Cadillac and Fivr.
Richard Peete
Richard Peete is a New York-based filmmaker, producer and founder of Neighborhood Watch. He has produced films including Blue Ruin (Cannes 2013), See Know Evil (DOC NYC 2018), The Six Sides of Katharine Hepburn and Fashion At War: Crafting The Nazi Brand. His directorial debut Karen Dalton: In My Own Time (DOC NYC 2020, Greenwich Entertainment), is a New York Times Critic’s Pick. He is also currently in production on a documentary series for Netflix and Isaiah Saxon’s debut feature The Legend of Ochi.
Sian-Pierre Regis
Sian- Pierre Regis is a filmmaker who directed, produced and self-distributed his debut feature documentary DUTY FREE. Called a “tender love poem from son to mother” by CBS News, the film was released in 30 theaters over Mother’s Day 2021 and fast-became a press magnet garnering coverage from CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, MSNBC, The Tamron Hall Show, AARP; the film was also a #1 Apple News story through the weekend. It will have its debut broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens on November 22 at 10pET.
Prior to filmmaking, Regis was a journalist and on-camera contributor to CNN, HLN, and MTV and founded Swagger, an online lifestyle magazine for millennials with over 1.5 million fans. He is a Firelight Media fellow and Film Independent Documentary Lab Fellow.
Rodrigo Reyes
Born in Mexico City, director Rodrigo Reyes makes films deeply grounded in his identity as an immigrant artist. His work has received the support of The Mexican Film Institute (IMCINE), Sundance and Tribeca Institutes, and the Firelight Media’s William Greaves Fund. He is the Co-Director of the BAVC Media Mediamaker Fellowship program and a proud recipient of the prestigious Sundance Spotlight on Storytellers Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Creative Capital Award and the Rainin Fellowship.
Sharon Shattuck
Sharon Shattuck is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker and podcast host. Picture A Scientist was an official selection of the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival and broadcast on PBS’s NOVA. Her feature doc, From This Day Forward, was a New York Times Critic’s Pick and aired on PBS’s POV. She’s the co-creator of the New York Times Op-Docs science series, Animated Life, and the co-host of the podcast Conviction: American Panic from Gimlet Media/Spotify.
Nevo Shinaar
Nevo Shinaar is a producer based in Chicago. His award-winning films have been shortlisted and nominated at the Academy Awards, played at film festivals including Sundance, SXSW and Palm Springs, acquired by Disney+, HBO Max, POV, NYT and Criterion Channel, and supported by Tribeca Film Institute and Sundance Institute. Nevo also serves as the Head of Development for Mitten Media.
Mike Shum
Mike Shum is the son of Hong Kong immigrants and was born and raised in Denver, CO. He specializes in cinematography and journalism. His work includes directing, and producing observational documentaries for Al Jazeera’s Witness series. He is a frequent contributor to PBS Frontline with films Predator on the Reservation and American Voices: A Nation in Turmoil. In 2017, his team received the Tribeca Audience Award for Hondros, a feature documentary that follows the life and work of photojournalist, Chris Hondros.
Iliana Sosa
Austin-based filmmaker Iliana Sosa is the co-director of the documentary short An Uncertain Future (SXSW 2018, Jury Award for Best Texas Short). She was a Berlinale Talents participant and a Sundance Institute Development Fellow with her first feature documentary, What We Leave Behind. She has also received support from the Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, the True/False Catapult Retreat, IFP Documentary Lab, and the Jacob Burns Residency. She was recently named a Women at Sundance Adobe Fellow, and one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2020.
Samantha Stark
Samantha Stark directed Framing Britney Spears and Controlling Britney Spears as part of The New York Times Presents on FX and Hulu. Before that, she worked as a director/producer on The New York Times series The Weekly and shot and edited short documentaries and video series as a staff video journalist for the Times.
Cai Thomas
Cai Thomas grew up in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood and is deeply interested in stories rooted in place about Black youth and elders. Her most recent films include Queenie, which follows a Black lesbian elder in Brooklyn, and Change The Name, which follows Black youth organizing on the west side of Chicago.
Sweta Vohra
Sweta Vohra (she/her) is a New York City-based journalist, filmmaker, and producer at Multitude Films. Prior to joining Multitude, she was a producer/director on The New York Times series The Weekly, on FX and Hulu, and produced/directed more than a dozen films for Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines. She is currently in post-production for a BBC Studios feature documentary. Sweta has received the National Association of Black Journalists Excellence Award, the Radio Television Digital News Association Kaleidoscope Award, and three News and Documentary Emmy nominations for her work.
Elizabeth Woodward
Producer Elizabeth Woodward is the founder of Willa Productions. Her recent films include On The Divide (Tribeca 2021, POV), You Resemble Me (Venice 2021), and Netflix’s The Great Hack (Sundance 2019, Academy Award shortlist, Emmy nominee, BAFTA nominee, IDA nominee, Cinema Eye winner). Her films have been supported by Sundance Institute, Tribeca Institute, Chicken and Egg, Film Independent, Impact Partners, Field of Vision, Level Forward, Perspective Fund, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She was selected for Berlinale Talents and the Impact Partners Producers Fellowship.
Matt Yoka
Matt Yoka started out making TV with Vice Media (Vice Does America, Epicly Later’d, Huang’s World, and HBO’s A World in Disarray), while also directing music videos for record labels like Drag City and Sub Pop, collaborating often with Ty Segall. His first feature documentary, Whirlybird, premiered at Sundance and was released theatrically in 2021.