Sara Sugarman is a Welsh actress and filmmaker whose work includes Disney's Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004) and Very Annie Mary (2001). She has also appeared in films including Dealers (1989) and Those Glory Glory Days (1983).
James Allan Schamus is an American screenwriter, producer, business executive, film historian, professor, and director. He is a frequent collaborator of Ang Lee, the co-founder of the production company Good Machine, and the co-founder and former CEO of motion picture production, financing, and worldwide distribution company Focus Features, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal. He is currently president of the New York-based production company Symbolic Exchange, and is Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University, where he has taught film history and theory since 1989.
Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski are an American screenwriting duo, best known for writing postmodern biopics with larger-than-life characters. They coined the term "anti-biopic" to describe the genre they invented: Movies about people who don't deserve one.They are uninterested in the traditional "great man" story, focusing instead on obscure strivers in American pop culture.
Heather Rae is an American film and television producer and director. She has worked on documentary and narrative film projects, specializing in those with Native American themes, and is best known for Frozen River, Trudell and Tallulah.
Meng Ong is a Singapore born filmmaker. He began making movies at 16 and graduated from New York University Film School. Miss Wonton is his first feature-length film, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival 2001 in the American spectrum section. He has also been selected as one of the “Directors to Watch” by filmfestivals.com. It also won the prestigious PRIX FIPRESCI International Critics Prize at the Locarno Film Festival and showcased at other festivals like Busan International Film Festival and as the opening night film at the Bite the Mango film festival in UK. The film has been released by United International Pictures in Singapore (2001) and at the Cinema Village in New York City (2002). It has been released on video by Comstar. In 2019, it was selected by Asian Film Archive for Korean Film Archive’s Asian Digitalization Project which awards films of cultural and historical significance.
Suzanne Todd is an American film and television producer, and the owner of the film production company Team Todd.
Colin Fitz Lives!, also known simply as Colin Fitz is a 1997 independent film directed by Robert Bella. Colin Fitz Lives! was shot on 35mm in New York City. The budget was $150,000 and the film was shot in 14 days. It had its World Premiere in Dramatic Competition at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival. The film won awards at several film festivals, including the Austin Film Festival and the Long Island Film Festival. However, it did not receive theatrical distribution, as Bella lacked the funds to finish the film's post-production, pay deferred salaries, and secure music rights for more than a decade after the festival.
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,660 attending in 2016. It takes place each January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. Many films premiering at Sundance have gone on to be nominated and win Oscars such as Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Women Make Movies is a non-profit feminist media arts organization based in New York City. Founded by Ariel Dougherty and Sheila Paige with Dolores Bargowski, WMM was first a feminist production collective that emerged from city-wide Women's Liberation meetings in September 1969. They produced four films by 1973. Dougherty and Paige incorporated the organization in March 1972 as a community based workshop to teach film to everyday women. A distribution service was also begun as an earned income program. In the mid-1970s a membership was created that screened and distributed members' work. In the early 1980s focus shifted to concentrate on distribution of independent films by and about women. WMM also provides production assistance to women filmmakers.
Grabbers is a 2012 monster horror comedy film directed by Jon Wright and written by Kevin Lehane. A co-production of Ireland and the United Kingdom, the film stars Richard Coyle, Ruth Bradley, Bronagh Gallagher and Russell Tovey among an ensemble cast of Irish actors.
Azazel Jacobs is an American film director and screenwriter. He is the son of experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs. His short films include Kirk and Kerry and Message Machine, and his features include the acclaimed Momma's Man,Terri,The Lovers, and French Exit.
Don Hertzfeldt is an American animator, writer, and independent filmmaker. He is a two-time Academy Award nominee who is best known for the animated films It's Such a Beautiful Day, the World of Tomorrow series, and Rejected. In 2014, his work appeared on The Simpsons. Eight of his short films have competed at the Sundance Film Festival, a festival record. He is also the only filmmaker to have won the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize for Short Film twice.
So Yong Kim is a Korean American independent filmmaker. She has made four feature films: In Between Days, Treeless Mountain, For Ellen, and Lovesong. So Yong Kim is a recipient of the New York Foundation’s Video Artist Grant, Puffin Grant, MacDowell Colony Media Fellow for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Sleipnir Nordik Arts Travel Grant. She has exhibited her installations and films/videos in Austin, Chicago, New York, London, Marseilles, Reykjavik, Milwaukee, Gothenburg, Osnabruck, and Tokyo.
Talya Lavie is an Israeli filmmaker best known for her 2014 debut feature, Zero Motivation.
Eliza Hittman is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer from New York City. She has won multiple awards for her film Never Rarely Sometimes Always, which include the New York Film Critics Circle Award and the National Society of Film Critics Award—both for best screenplay.
Jennifer Phang is an American filmmaker, most known for her feature films Advantageous (2015) and Half-Life (2008). Advantageous premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, winning a Special Jury Award for Collaborative Vision, and was based on her award-winning short film of the same name. Half-Life premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and won "Best Film" awards at a number of film festivals including the Gen Art Film Festival, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival as well an "Emerging Director Award" at the Asian American International Film Festival.
Janet Grillo is an American filmmaker.
Scilla Andreen is an American filmmaker, producer, director and costume designer. She is best known as the CEO and co-founder of Indieflix; a global entertainment screening and streaming service based in Seattle, Washington. She founded the IndieFlix Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing mental health, resilience and kindness in schools.
Flee is a 2021 adult animated documentary film directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen. An international co-production with Denmark, France, Norway, and Sweden, it follows the story of a man under the alias Amin Nawabi, who shares his hidden past of fleeing his home country of Afghanistan to Denmark for the first time. Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau serve as executive producers and narrators for the English-language dub version.
Sara Dosa is an American documentary director and producer. Dosa wrote, produced and directed the 2022 documentary film Fire of Love, which was nominated for a BAFTA and an Academy Award. Dosa won the 2023 DGA Award for Outstanding Directing for the film. Her other works have received Emmy and Independent Spirit Award, as well a Peabody win.
