Richard E. Grant is a Swaziland-born English actor and presenter. He made his film debut as Withnail in the comedy Withnail and I (1987). Grant received critical acclaim for his role as Jack Hock in Marielle Heller's drama film Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), winning various awards including the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male. He also received Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor.
Anne Jacqueline Hathaway is an American actress. Her accolades include an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Her films have grossed over $6.8 billion worldwide, and she appeared on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list in 2009. She was among the world's highest-paid actresses in 2015.
Jennifer Westfeldt is an American actress, screenwriter, and producer. She is best known for co-writing, co-producing, and starring in the 2002 indie film Kissing Jessica Stein, for which she received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Screenplay. She is also known for writing, producing, starring in, and making her directorial debut in the indie film, Friends with Kids (2012).
Timothy John Bevan, is a New Zealand-British film producer, the co-chairman of the production company Working Title Films. Bevan and Fellner are the most successful British producers of their era. Through 2017, the films he has co-produced have grossed a total of almost $7 billion worldwide. As of 2017, films by Working Title Films have won 12 Academy Awards and 39 British Academy Film Awards.
Carey Hannah Mulligan is an English actress. She has received various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and a Tony Award. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2025 New Year Honours for services to drama.
Nicole Holofcener is an American film and television director and screenwriter. She has directed seven feature films, including Walking and Talking, Friends with Money and Enough Said, as well as various television series. Along with Jeff Whitty, Holofcener received a 2019 Academy Award nomination for Adapted Screenplay, a BAFTA nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, and won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the film Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018).
R. J. Cutler is an American filmmaker, documentarian, television producer and theater director.
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) is an eleven-day film festival held in Santa Barbara, California in February annually, since 1986. The festival screens over 200 feature films and shorts from different countries and regions. SBIFF also includes celebrity tributes, industry panels and education programs.
This Is That Productions was one of the leading independent feature film production companies. Established in 2002, and based in New York City, the company was founded and fully owned by Ted Hope, Anne Carey, Anthony Bregman, and Diana Victor. The four partners previously worked together at the groundbreaking Good Machine, which Ted Hope co-founded in 1991.
Clement Virgo is a Canadian film and television writer, producer and director who runs the production company, Conquering Lion Pictures, with producer Damon D'Oliveira. Virgo is best known for co-writing and directing an adaptation of the novel by Canadian writer Lawrence Hill, The Book of Negroes (2015), a six-part miniseries that aired on CBC Television in Canada and BET in the United States.
Ted Hope is an American independent film producer based in New York City. He is best known for co-founding the production/sales company Good Machine, where he produced the first films of such filmmakers as Ang Lee, Nicole Holofcener, Todd Field, Michel Gondry, Moisés Kaufman, and Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. Hope then co-founded This is That with several associates from Good Machine. He later worked at the San Francisco Film Society and Amazon Studios.
John Saul Adrian Battsek is a British film producer of documentary films. In 2020, Battsek co-founded production company Ventureland with producers Kerstin Emhoff, Ali Brown, and director Paul Hunter.
Bill Guttentag is an American dramatic and documentary film writer-producer-director. His films have premiered at the Sundance, Cannes, Telluride and Tribeca film festivals, and he has won two Academy Awards.
Marielle Stiles Heller is an American director, screenwriter and actress. She is best known for directing the films The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015), Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), as well as acting in The Queen's Gambit (2020).
Michael Riley is an English film producer. He is CEO of Bristol and London-based production company Sterling Pictures.
Amy Nauiokas is an American financial services executive and entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of Anthemis Group, an asset manager focused on financial services companies, and the founder of Archer Gray, a media production company. She previously worked at Cantor Fitzgerald and Barclays Stockbrokers.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a 2015 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Marielle Heller, based on the hybrid novel of the same name by Phoebe Gloeckner. It stars Bel Powley as a 15-year-old girl who becomes sexually active by starting a relationship with her mother's boyfriend. It also stars Kristen Wiig, Alexander Skarsgård, Christopher Meloni, Quinn Nagle, and Austin Lyon. It premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and had a limited release on August 7, 2015, by Sony Pictures Classics.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a 2018 American biographical drama film directed by Marielle Heller, with a screenplay by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty based on the 2008 confessional memoir of the same name by Lee Israel. Melissa McCarthy stars as Israel, and the story follows her attempts to revitalize her failing writing career by forging letters from deceased authors and playwrights. The film also features Richard E. Grant, Dolly Wells, Jane Curtin, Anna Deavere Smith, Stephen Spinella, and Ben Falcone in supporting roles. Israel took the title from an apologetic line in a letter in which she posed as Dorothy Parker.
Michael Lesslie is a British playwright, screenwriter and producer.
Rintu Thomas is an Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker and director-producer from India.
