USA

The Territory

Alex Pritz is a director and cinematographer whose work focuses on humanity’s relationship with the natural world. His process relies on a participatory filmmaking model, in which everyone is encouraged to pick up a camera. The Territory is his first feature film.

All That Breathes

Shaunak Sen is a filmmaker and film scholar based in New Delhi, India. Cities of Sleep (2016), his first feature-length documentary, was shown at major international film festivals (including DOK Leipzig, DMZ Docs and the Taiwan International Documentary Festival), and won six international awards. Shaunak received the IDFA Bertha Fund (2019), the Sundance Documentary Grant (2019), the Catapult Film Fund (2020), the Charles Wallace Grant, the Sarai CSDS Digital Media Fellowship (2014), and the Films Division of India Fellowship (2013). He was also a visiting scholar at Cambridge University (2018), and has published academic articles in Bioscope, Widescreen and other journals.

Riotsville, U.S.A.

Sierra Pettengill’s films have played at Sundance, Locarno, True/False, on PBS, CNN, Netflix, and in festivals around the world. She produced the Oscar-nominated Cutie and the Boxer, and in 2018 was a Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Fellow. Pettengill is an archivist for many artists, including Jim Jarmusch and Adam Pendleton. She is also a board member of Screen Slate.

Fragments of Paradise

Infinity According to Florian

Oleksiy Radynski (Ukraine, 1984) is a filmmaker and writer based in Kyiv. After studying film theory, he took part in several film education experiments, including the Home Workspace Program (Askhal Alwan, Beirut), and Labor in a Single Shot, by Harun Farocki and Antje Ehmann. His award-winning short films have been screened at Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Docudays IFF, DOK Leipzig, Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), e-flux (New York), S A V V Y Contemporary (Berlin), and International Studio & Curatorial Program (New York). Infinity According to Florian is his first feature-length film.

Retrograde

The Killing of a Journalist

Matt Sarnecki is a journalist, producer, and film director at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. He earned a BA in political science and history at Columbia University. He spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Romania before moving to Prague, Czech Republic, where he held a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts. In 2011 he moved to San Francisco, and earned a master’s degree in journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2013 he has lived in Bucharest, Romania. His documentary Killing Pavel, about the murder of investigative journalist Pavel Sheremet, won the Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal in 2017, and the DIG Award (Italy) in 2018.

The Conductor

Bernadette Wegenstein is an Austrian-born linguist, author and critically acclaimed documentary filmmaker living in Baltimore. Her work brings together feminist thought and an interest in human-centric storytelling. She holds a PhD in linguistics and is currently a professor of media studies at John Hopkins University. She’s directed four documentaries, including The Conductor, See You Soon Again, and The Good Breast.

Mindent bele!

Debbie Lum San Franciscóban élő díjnyertes filmkészítő, aki filmjein keresztül mellőzött történeteket kíván bemutatni, például azt, hogy milyen ázsiai amerikainak lenni. Első, egész estés dokumentumfilmje, a Seeking Asian Female, az SXSW filmfesztiválon került bemutatásra, a PBS műsorszolgáltató Independent Lens című műsorában sugározták, és számos díjat nyert el. A film közönségkedvenccé vált, és adásba kerülésével egyidőben Lum ötrészes rövid videósorozatot indított etnikai hovatartozásról és társkeresésről. Korábban dolgozott dokumentumfilmes vágóként, valamint számos rövid vígjátékot írt és rendezett. A San Francisco Egyetem mozgókép szakán MA, a Brown Egyetemen vallástudományból BA fokozatot szerzett.

Selected filmography:

2012 - Seeking Asian Female

2005 - Chinese Beauty (fiction short)

Try Harder!

Debbie Lum is an award-winning San Francisco-based filmmaker whose projects give voice to the Asian American experience and other unsung stories. Seeking Asian Female, her feature-length directing debut premiered at SXSW, aired on PBS' Independent Lens and won numerous awards. The film was a “fan favorite” on PBS and alongside its broadcast premiere, Lum launched a 5-part short video series about race and dating. Previously she worked as a documentary editor; and she has also written and directed several short comedies. She has an M.F.A in Cinema from San Francisco State University, and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Brown University.