USA

Edivan Guajajara is from the Zutiwa village, located in Arariboia Indigenous Land (Maranhão, Brazil) and one of the creators of the communication network Mídia Índia. As an activist & filmmaker, he creates photography and documentaries centering indigenous peoples’ perspectives, showcasing their struggle of land protection and defense of Mother Earth. As a designer and video editor, he uses his gift to create art pieces that give visibility to the ongoing fight of the Brazilian indigenous peoples, a people who have resisted for 521 years. “Film has given us the opportunity to show our culture and our resistance. Today we have our own way of communicating and spreading our works so that people can know our true history and strengthen our struggle. My greatest inspiration as an indigenous is showing our reality and telling that we are also capable of being what we want to be, and showing to the world how much we indigenous peoples are important to the survival of our planet.

One Forest was formed with the mission to help people reconnect to themselves and to nature. Comprised of filmmakers Chelsea Greene (she/her) and Rob Grobman (he/him), One Forest is dedicated to creating impactful and heartfelt films and media. They view the art of storytelling as a sacred work, which endows their stories with a deep reverence for the earth and the characters they feature. They have recently produced two award winning short documentaries, BORNEO’S VANISHING TRIBES and GORILLA GIRL. Their commitment to authentic, integral and informative stories paired with their youth, ambition and drive as individuals, make this unique duo and their work exceptional, relevant and inspiring. One Forest lives and works in the mountains of Southern Oregon.

Alina Simone is a Ukrainian-born journalist and filmmaker whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Guardian Long Read, among many others. Her articles have been featured on best-of lists in The Atlantic, NPR and Rolling Stone, and have been optioned for film by major studios. She is the author of an essay collection and a novel, and has taught writing at Yale University. Simone is the recipient of the Andrew Berends Film Fellowship, an NYSCA/NYFA Film Fellowship and the Mountainfilm Emerging Filmmaker Fellowship. Black Snow (2024) is her first documentary feature film.

Xinyan Yu is an award-winning video journalist and filmmaker based in Washington DC. In 2018, she launched the North America video team for Hong Kong’s flagship newspaper South China Morning Post in New York, and later joined the BBC's Washington DC bureau in 2020 as a senior video journalist. Now working as an independent filmmaker, she has directed and produced for the BBC, CNBC, PBS NOVA and Channel News Asia. Xinyan is a Firelight Media Documentary Lab fellow, a Brown Girls Doc Mafia Sustainable Artist fellow and an alumnus of the Yaddo Residency.

Emily Kassie is an Emmy and Peabody-nominated investigative journalist and filmmaker. She covers geopolitical conflict, humanitarian crises, and the stories of people caught in the crossfire for The New York Times, Netflix, PBS Frontline, and The Guardian, amongst others. Her recent directing credits include, Undocumented in the Pandemic (2020), Anatomy of Hate (2020), and The End of Oil Explained (2021). Her work has been honored with multiple Edward R. Murrow, Deadline, Overseas Press Club, World Press Photo, Peabody Future of Media, National Press Photographer, and National Magazine awards.