Gus Green Van Sant Jr. is an American film director, producer, photographer and musician. He has earned acclaim as both an independent and mainstream filmmaker. His films typically deal with themes of marginalized subcultures, in particular homosexuality; Van Sant is considered one of the most prominent auteurs of the New Queer Cinema movement.
Denis Villeneuve is a French Canadian filmmaker. He is a four-time recipient of the Canadian Screen Award for Best Direction, winning for Maelström in 2001, Polytechnique in 2009, Incendies in 2010 and Enemy in 2013. The first three of these films also won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Motion Picture, while the latter was awarded the prize for best Canadian film of the year by the Toronto Film Critics Association.
Eric Cameron Stoltz is an American actor, director and producer. He played the role of Rocky Dennis in the biographical drama film Mask, which earned him the nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture, and has appeared in a wide variety of films from mainstream including Some Kind of Wonderful to independent films such as Pulp Fiction, Killing Zoe, and Kicking and Screaming. He was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for his performance in Pulp Fiction. In 2010, he portrayed Daniel Graystone in the science fiction television series Caprica, and became a regular director on the television series Glee.
Fort McCoy is a United States Army installation on 60,000 acres (24,000 ha) between Sparta and Tomah, Wisconsin, in Monroe County. In 1909, there were two separate camps named Camp Emory Upton and Camp Robinson; in 1926, these camps were joined together to form Camp McCoy. Since its creation in 1909, the post has been used primarily as a military training center. A part of Fort McCoy is also used by the Wisconsin State Patrol as a training facility.
Kate Rooney Mara is an American actress. She is known for work in television, playing reporter Zoe Barnes in the Netflix political drama House of Cards, computer analyst Shari Rothenberg in the Fox thriller series 24 (2006), wronged mistress Hayden McClaine in the FX miniseries American Horror Story: Murder House (2011), Patty Bowes in the first season of the FX drag ball culture drama series Pose (2018) and Claire Wilson, a teacher who begins an illicit relationship with an underage student, in the FX on Hulu miniseries A Teacher (2020), for the last of which she received an Independent Spirit nomination for Best New Scripted Series as an executive producer.
Charles Peckham Day is an American actor, writer and producer. He is best known for playing Charlie Kelly on the sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005–present), for which he was nominated for a Critics' Choice Television Award and a Satellite Award in 2011. In 2020, he co-created the Apple TV+ comedy series Mythic Quest alongside Rob McElhenney and Megan Ganz. In film, he is known for his role as Dale in the films Horrible Bosses (2011) and its 2014 sequel, as well as for his roles in Monsters University (2013), Pacific Rim (2013), The Lego Movie (2014), Fist Fight (2017), Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019). From 2018 to 2019, Day was the executive producer on the Fox comedy The Cool Kids.
Gavin O'Connor is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, playwright, and actor. He is best known for directing the films Miracle, Warrior, The Accountant, and The Way Back.
George Andrew J. MacKay is a British actor. He began his career as a child actor in Peter Pan (2003). He had starring roles in the British war drama Private Peaceful (2012), the romantic film How I Live Now (2013), For Those in Peril (2013), for which he won a BAFTA Scotland Award and was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award, and Marrowbone (2017). He garnered recognition for his leading role in 1917 (2019) which received critical acclaim and numerous awards.
Jeffrey McDonald Chandor, better known as J. C. Chandor, is an American film director, producer and screenwriter, best known for writing and directing the films Margin Call (2011), All Is Lost (2013), A Most Violent Year (2014), Triple Frontier (2019) and Kraven the Hunter (2023).
Alexander Yefymovych Rodnyansky is a Ukrainian film director, film producer, television executive and businessman. As a media-manager Rodnyansky founded the first Ukrainian independent television network 1+1 and ran Russian CTC Media, which under his management became the first Russian media company to publicly trade on NASDAQ.
Cosmopolis is a 2012 Canadian drama-thriller film written, produced, and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Robert Pattinson in the lead with Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, Juliette Binoche, Jay Baruchel and Kevin Durand. It is based on the novel of the same name by Don DeLillo. On 25 May 2012, the film premiered in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, drawing mixed early critical reactions. The film was released in Canada on 8 June 2012, and began a limited release in the United States on 17 August 2012 by eOne Films. It is Cronenberg's first foray back into script writing since 1999's eXistenZ.
Divergent is a 2014 American dystopian science fiction action film directed by Neil Burger, based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Veronica Roth. The film is the first installment in The Divergent Series and was produced by Lucy Fisher, Pouya Shahbazian, and Douglas Wick, with a screenplay by Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor. It stars Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ashley Judd, Jai Courtney, Ray Stevenson, Zoë Kravitz, Miles Teller, Tony Goldwyn, Ansel Elgort, and Maggie Q. The story takes place in a dystopian and post-apocalyptic Chicago where people are divided into distinct factions based on human virtues. Beatrice Prior is warned that she is Divergent and thus will never fit into any one of the factions. She soon learns that a sinister plot is brewing in the seemingly perfect society.
The San Diego International Film Festival(SDIFF) is an independent film festival in San Diego, California produced by the non-profit San Diego Film Foundation. It is held annually in the autumn across two "villages" in the Gaslamp Quarter and La Jolla.
The Citizen is a 2013 American drama independent film directed by Sam Kadi, written by Sam Kadi, Samir Younis, Jazmen Darnell Brown, and starring Khaled El Nabawy, Agnes Bruckner, Rizwan Manji, William Atherton, and Cary Elwes. The Citizen was filmed in New York City, Detroit Masonic Temple in Detroit Michigan, and the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Michigan. The film premiered on September 20, 2012, at the Boston Film Festival.
Sicario is a 2015 American action thriller film directed by Denis Villeneuve, written by Taylor Sheridan and starring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, and Josh Brolin. The film follows a principled FBI agent who is enlisted by a government task force to bring down the leader of a powerful and brutal Mexican drug cartel. Sicario was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. It began a limited release in the United States on September 18, 2015, followed by a nationwide release on October 2, 2015.
Desires of the Heart is a 2013 English independent film directed by James Kicklighter and co-directed in India with Rajesh Rathi. It stars Hollywood actors Val Lauren, Alicia Minshew alongside Bollywood actors Harsh Mayar, Gulshan Grover and Ankit Bhardwaj. The film began production in 2012 in Savannah, Georgia, United States. and was later shot in Bikaner, Rajasthan, India.
Andrea Lodovichetti is an Italian film director and screenwriter.
Elle is a 2016 thriller film directed by Paul Verhoeven from a screenplay by David Birke, based on the novel Oh... by Philippe Djian. Djian's novel was released in 2012 and received the Prix Interallié. The film stars Isabelle Huppert as a businesswoman who is raped in her home by a masked assailant and decides not to report it due to her past experience with police.
Florence Pugh is an English actress. Born in Oxford, she made her acting debut in 2014 in the drama film The Falling. Pugh gained recognition in 2016 for her leading role as a violent young bride in the independent drama Lady Macbeth, winning a British Independent Film Award. After starring in the 2018 films King Lear and Outlaw King, she drew praise for her leading role in the 2018 miniseries The Little Drummer Girl. Pugh was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award that same year.
