Gaylen Ross is an American director, writer, producer and actress, best known for playing Francine Parker in the 1978 horror film Dawn of the Dead and also noted for directing the 2008 documentary Killing Kasztner.
René Balcer is a Canadian-American television writer, director, producer, and showrunner, as well as a photographer and documentary film-maker.
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. Ai grew up in the far northwest of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights. He investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of "tofu-dreg schools" in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In April 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport for "economic crimes," and detained for 81 days without charge. Ai Weiwei emerged as a vital instigator in Chinese cultural development, an architect of Chinese modernism, and one of the nation's most vocal political commentators.
Jaka Bizilj is a German writer, promoter, and film producer. He is also the founder and chairman of the Cinema for Peace Foundation.
Zuoxiao Zuzhou, is a Chinese musician and artist.
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is a 2012 documentary film about Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, directed by American filmmaker Alison Klayman.
The International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) is one of the most important international events dedicated to cinema and human rights, held annually in Geneva. A ten-days long event is based on the concept ‘A film, A subject, A debate’, following the screenings with discussion in presence of filmmakers and specialists.
Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case is a 2013 documentary film about Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, directed by Danish filmmaker Andreas Johnsen. The film won Best 2014 Documentary in Danish Film Critics Association's 67th Bodil Awards, played in the official selection of 2014 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto and International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.
Ethan Cohen is an American collector and art dealer based in New York City who specialises in contemporary Chinese art and contemporary African art. He was one of the first western dealers to sell work by contemporary Japanese and Chinese artists including Ushio Shinohara and Ai Weiwei. He has been called "one of the most influential art dealers in the world". Forbes praised his gallery as an "exemplar in the field", putting on "resplendent, probing shows".
Julie Goldman is an American film producer and executive producer. She founded Motto Pictures in 2009. She is an Oscar-nominated and Emmy Award-winning producer and executive producer of documentary feature films and series.
The 74th annual Venice International Film Festival was held from 30 August to 9 September 2017.
Hooligan Sparrow is a 2016 documentary film about Ye Haiyan and other Chinese activists written and produced by Nanfu Wang.
Human Flow is a 2017 German documentary film co-produced and directed by Ai Weiwei about the current global refugee crisis. In the film the viewer is taken to over 20 countries to understand both the scale and the personal impact of this massive human migration. It was shot using various technologies, including drones, cameras and iPhones. Human Flow was screened in the main competition section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival.
Alison Klayman is an American filmmaker and journalist best known for her award-winning 2012 documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.
Nanfu Wang is a Chinese-born American filmmaker. Her debut film Hooligan Sparrow premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2017. Her second film, I Am Another You, premiered at SXSW Film Festival in 2017 and won two special jury awards, and her third film, One Child Nation, won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Feature at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Wang is the recipient of a 2021 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking, from the Vilcek Foundation.
Ximei is a 2019 American documentary directed by Andy Cohen, co-directed by Gaylen Ross and produced by Ai Weiwei. In a gritty, vérité style, the film follows the harrowing crusades of a peasant woman named Liu Ximei. She fights for the survival of fellow AIDS victims who contracted AIDS in the 1990s when Chinese health officials encouraged millions of poor farmers to sell their blood for a pittance under catastrophic health conditions.
Bonni Cohen is an American documentary film producer and director. She is the co-founder of Actual Films and has produced and directed an array of award-winning films. Most recently, she produced the Oscar-nominated film Lead Me Home, which premiered at the 2021 Telluride Film Festival and is a Netflix Original. She also recently co-directed Athlete A, which won an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Documentary and received four nominations from the Critics’ Choice Awards. She is the co-founder of Actual Films, the production company of the documentaries An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, Audrie & Daisy, 3.5 Minutes, The Island President, Lost Boys of Sudan and The Rape of Europa. Cohen is the co-founder of the Catapult Film Fund.
Jon Shenk is an Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary film director and director of photography, known for his films Lead Me HomeAthlete A, An Inconvenient Sequel, Audrie & Daisy,The Island President, Lost Boys of Sudan. He is the co-founder, with his wife Bonni Cohen, of Actual Films, a documentary film company based in San Francisco, CA. He co-directed and photographed Lead Me Home which premiered in 2021 at the Telluride Film Festival, was acquired by Netflix, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2022.
Little Death is a 2024 American comedy-drama film, directed by Jack Begert in his directorial debut, from a screenplay by Begert and Dani Goffstein. It stars David Schwimmer, Gaby Hoffmann, Karl Glusman, Dominic Fike, Talia Ryder, Jena Malone and Sante Bentivoglio. Darren Aronofsky serves as a producer under his Protozoa Pictures banner.
