Ali Asgari

Born in Iran, Ali Asgari is a prominent Iranian cinema figure with more than 200 awards to his name. two of his shorts were nominated for Palme d'Or at Festival de Cannes and The Baby was in short film competition of Venice Film Festival 2014. Ali's films are concerned with precarious lives who live at society's margin in his native country Iran. His debut film Disappearance was developed at the Cinefondation Residency of Festival De Cannes and had its world and North American premiere at Venice International Film Festival and Toronto Film Festival 2017. Ali is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Until Tomorrow is his second feature film. -

Paz Encina

Paz Encina was born in Asuncion, Paraguay. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Cinematography from the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her works as Director have been screened at venues such as the Harvard Film Archives, the BAMFA / Berkeley Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archive and the MOMA in New York. She created Silencio Lab In 2016, a platform through which she gives seminars to train young Paraguayan talents. Paz Encina is the first Paraguayan director to be part of the Hollywood Film Academy.

Iuli Gerbase

Iuli Gerbase, a Brazilian filmmaker, studied Cinema and Creative Writing. At 20 years old, she started making films and developed a taste for writing strong dialogues and exploring inner conflicts. She has written and directed six short films, selected for festivals around the world like TIFF and Havana Film Fest. The Pink Cloud, a drama with touches of surrealism and sci­fi, is her first feature film. For her next projects, Iuli is developing her second feature, another sci­fi drama, and a TV series.

Haider Rashid

HAIDER RASHID was born in 1985 of mixed Iraqi and Italian origins. He has directed features TANGLED UP IN BLUE (2010), SILENCE: ALL ROADS LEAD TO MUSIC (2011), IT’S ABOUT TO RAIN (2013) and STREET OPERA (2015), the short film THE DEEP (2013) and NO BORDERS (2016), Italy’s first VR film. His films have won awards at Venice Film Festival, Dubai International Film Festival and the Nastri d’Argento award ceremony.

Flávia Neves

Flávia Neves graduated in Cinema and Literature from the Fluminense Federal University and studied screenwriting and Meisner Technique at the EICTV (Escuela Internacional de Cine e TV), in Cuba. At 16, she directed her first short film, Liberdade, screened at FICA (International Environmental Film Festival). She has also worked as an assistant director and producer on short films and documentaries for cinema and TV, before and during her university studies. In 2019, she directed and scripted the series Amanajé, O Mensageiro do Futuro, aired by TV CULTURA. Fogaréu is her fiction feature debut. Currently, Flávia is developing her second feature film, Tempo do Poder, with the support of Ibermedia. With this project, she participated in a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, in Paris, with a scholarship granted by the Institut Français and by the Paradiso Project.

Azra Deniz Okyay

Born in Istanbul, Azra Deniz Okyay started photography at the age of 12, and became an assistant at 14 of the photographer Dora Gunel. After finishing high school in Lycee Francais Pierre Loti of Istanbul, she moved to Paris to study Cinema at Sorbonne- Nouvelle University where she had her Bachelor’s and Master’s. She worked in Michel Gondry’s Partizan Production company. She returned to Turkey in 2010 and became the first female director at Depo, an advertising production company in Istanbul. She made various shorts and music videos. Her works on Video-Arts were selected in international exhibitions and galleries.

Nicolas Peduzzi

Nicolas Peduzzi is a French actor and director born in 1982 in Paris. He studied theater and cinema in New York, which led him to the stage of an off-Broadway play directed by Susan Batson, which he co-wrote. Then, Nicolas directed several short films and videos. Back in Paris, Nicolas works for Luc Bondy with an appearance in Les fausses confidences or a role in Ivanov played at the Théâtre de l'Odéon. Finally, he directed a first feature documentary Southern Belle which already observed its Texas protagonists. Released in 2018, the film won the Grand Prix of the FID Marseille and then joined the Best of doc selection of the month of documentary 2019.

Wanuri Kahiu

Born in Nairobi, Wanuri is part of the new generation of African storytellers. Her stories and films have received international acclaim. Her films screened in numerous film festivals around the world. To date, Wanuri has written and directed six films. Rafiki is her second feature film. She is the co-founder of AFROBUBBLEGUM, a media company that supports, creates and commissions fun, fierce and frivolous African art.

Cláudia Varejão

Cláudia Varejão was born in Porto and studied at the Creativity and Artistic Creation Program of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in partnership with the German Film und Fernsehakademie Berlin and the São Paulo International Film Acadamy. She also studied Photography at AR.CO in Lisbon. Cláudia is the author of the short film trilogy Weekend, A Cold Day and Morning Light. Ama-san, a portrait of japanese divers, was her feature debut, receiving dozens of awards around the world, followed by In The Darkness of the Theater I Take Off My Shoes and Amor Fati. Wolf and Dog, her latest film scheduled to premiere in 2022. Cláudia's films have been selected by and awarded at the most prestigious film festivals, including Locarno, Rotterdam, Visions du Reel, Cinema du Reel, Karlovy Vary, Art of the Real - Lincoln Center, among many others. Alongside her work as a filmmaker, she develops a career as a photographer and has been invited to give classes and workshops at various Film and Art schools. Her work, whether in cinema or photography, documentary or fiction, lives in close proximity to her characters.

Joris Lachaise

Joris Lachaise's approach to filmmaking is based on the transition between his studies in philosophy to cinema. In 2005, he worked with Jean-Pierre Krief on Chronicle of a Trial Foretold, a film about the trial of Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi Special Tribunal. In 2009, he co-directed with Thomas Roussillon Like a bird in a fishbowl, the chronicle of a common struggle of asylum, gypsies, and homeless people seekers in Angers. In 2011, he directed Convention: Black Wall / White Holes, a film about the 50th anniversary of Mali's independence that won the FIFAI prize and was selected for the États généraux du documentaire in Lussas, France. In 2014, his film, Ce qu'il reste de la folie, was made in a psychiatric hospital in Senegal and won the Grand Prix at the FID Marseille festival before being selected for numerous festivals around the world. The film was released in French theaters in June 2016.

Caye Casas

Caye Casas has directed and written two successful short films, NOTHING C.O. (2014) and RIP (2017), which won more than 200 awards around the world, selections in more than 500 festivals, and a nomination to Gaudí Awards of Catalan cinema. All these awards allowed him to make his first feature film KILLING GOD (2017); which premiered at the best genre festival in the world, the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival, achieving something that no one had achieved before in the 50 years of the event, winning the grand prize of the public with his feature film and the award for the best short film with RIP in the same year. That was the beginning of the film's successful tour of festivals, achieving more than 30 awards and being nominated for the Méliès d'Argent for best European fantastic and horror film or being considered the best independent Spanish film of 2018. Now, the independent filmmaker Caye Casas returns with his cruelest and most powerful story,THE COFFEE TABLE (2022), a film in which he claims that whoever sees it will not be able to forget it.

Umut Subaşı

Umut Subaşı was born in Ankara in 1990. He studied Film Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir. His award-winning short films include I DON’T BELIEVE IN YOU BUT THEN THERE IS GRAVITY (Best Short Film at Istanbul Film Festival and at the SIYAD Turkish Film Critics Association Awards). Umut’s debut feature ALMOST ENTIRELY A SLIGHT DISASTER had its world premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2023.

María Gisèle Royo & Julia de Castro

Filmmakers Royo and De Castro founded a a feminine, non-exclusive project that understands the need for a structural change considered from a collaborative experience. They approach this challenge through a tribute to the Spanish cult film, Corridas de Alegría (1982). As its director, Gonzalo García Pelayo, expressed, a road movie about “friendship and love failure.” They review these two themes forty years later, immersed in the era of dating apps, eternal youth, and economic insecurity. The context is conformed by a vital period both of us shared: the last years of fertility in a historic moment for the self-sufficient woman. María Gisèle Royo’s Filmography ON THE GO, feature film, 2023 LA INVISIBLE, documentary short film, 2021 NISE, UN VIAJE EN LA NAO D’AMORES, documentary short film, 2021 EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE FUTURE, documentary short film, 2022 EDUCATION WITHOUT BORDERS, documentary short film, 2019 María Gisèle Royo’s Biography She has been awarded an Student Academy Award, an Emmy College Student Award and the Premio Fundación Buesa y Extremadocs. María has participated in several international film festivals like Seville European Film Festival, CamerImage, One World Romania and Huesca Film Festival. Julia de Castro’s Filmography ON THE GO, feature film, 2023 Julia de Castro’s Biography Founder of DE LA PURÍSSIMA, a stage project that toured the world for a decade until its theatrical death directed by Julia herself with 70 musicians and for which she was nominated as best actress for the prestigious Valle Inclán Awards. She has released two albums and written a book on prostitution, La Retorica Delle Puttane, published by the editorial La Fábrica. Since September 2021 she collaborates on Radio 3 with her own section inside the program "Que parezca un accidente" where she talks about classic cars and cinema.

Ali Kalthami

Ali Kalthami is the creative director and co-founder of Telfaz11, a company that rose to prominence creating and producing humorous YouTube clips. Working in-house and with partners, Telfaz11 shed light on Saudi artistic and creative talents. Their output encourages viewers to rethink and question important subjects through comedy and drama. Kalthami has an exceptional ability to capture ideas from popular culture, then reformatting these thoughts into entertaining sketches, to arrive at a cutting commentary. Filmography: Sadeya Sabt Sultan – Short Film (2017) Becoming Omnibus Feature, Gathering with the Cosmos (2020)

Liu Yaonan

Born in Kunming in 1987, LIU Yaonan is a Chinese screenwriter, director and artist. He first graduated in Cinema from Beijing Normal University. He made his debut in the industry behind the scenes as a set photographer, making-of director and assistant to various directors on feature film shootings such as Cold War (Pawel Pawlikovski, 2018) or Seek McCartney (Wang Chao, 2015). In 2013, he entered the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Bourges in France to continue his studies in contemporary arts and cinema. After having graduated in France in 2016, he returned to Cina to his first feature film The Great Phuket. The screenplay was awarded the Special Jury Award of 2017 for Outstanding Young Director Film Project by the China Film Foundation Wu Tianming Youth Film Summit. In 2021, he returned to France for a one-year master course in graphic design and then back to China where he shot The Great Phuket with the help of his family and friends and the support of some French cinema technicians. In 2023, The Great Phuket was also granted the postproduction fund of Ile-de-France with the support of the French CNC. LIU Yaonan now lives and work in Kunming.

Hernán Rosselli