The Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival is an annual independent film festival held each March in San Jose, California and Redwood City, California. The international festival combines the cinematic arts with Silicon Valley’s innovation. It is produced by Cinequest, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization that is also responsible for Picture The Possibilities and the distribution label Cinequest Mavericks Studio LLC. Cinequest awards the annual Maverick Spirit Awards. In addition to over 130 world or U.S. premieres from over 30 countries, the festival hosts writer's events including screenwriting competitions, a shorts program, technology and artistic forums and workshops, student programs, and a silent film accompanied on the theatre organ. Founded in 1990 as the Cinequest Film Festival, the festival was rebranded in 2017 as the Cinequest Film & VR Festival and expanded beyond downtown San Jose to Redwood City. It took its present name in 2019.
Stephanie Caroline March Benton is an American actress and activist. She is known for playing Alexandra Cabot in the NBC crime drama series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2000–2018) and its spinoff media. She is also recognized for her activism towards abuse victims, education, and women's rights.
Ewen Bremner is a Scottish actor. His roles have included Julien in Julien Donkey-Boy and Daniel "Spud" Murphy in Trainspotting and its 2017 sequel T2 Trainspotting.
Jesse Plemons is an American actor. He began his career as a child actor and achieved a breakthrough with his role as Landry Clarke in the NBC drama series Friday Night Lights (2006–2011). He subsequently portrayed Todd Alquist in season 5 of the AMC crime drama series Breaking Bad (2012–2013) and its sequel film El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019). For his role as Ed Blumquist in season 2 of the FX anthology series Fargo (2015), he received his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination and won a Critics' Choice Television Award. He received a second Emmy nomination for his performance in "USS Callister", an episode of the Netflix anthology series Black Mirror (2017).
Gerran Howell is a Welsh actor, best known for playing the titular character in Young Dracula, a CBBC television series that initially aired in 2006.
Roadside Attractions, LLC is an American production company and film distributor based in Los Angeles, California, founded on July 27, 2000, by Howard Cohen and Eric d'Arbeloff. Lionsgate bought a portion of Roadside in 2007, and has majorly served as the arthouse division for the studio since then.
Mike Manning is an American actor, producer, reality television personality and activist. Manning gained fame as a cast member on the MTV series The Real World: D.C. in 2009 at 22 years old. Before subsequently embarking on an acting career, he appeared in a number of films and television programs, such as the 2014 Disney Channel original movie Cloud 9, in which he played Nick Swift, Hawaii Five-0, Love Is All You Need? (2016), Teen Wolf, The Call, Son of the South and Days of Our Lives. As a producer, his work includes the documentary Kidnapped for Christ, and The Bay, which won the 2020 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Digital Daytime Drama Series. He won the 2021 Daytime Emmy Award Outstanding Performance By a Supporting Actor in a Daytime Fiction Program for his performance as Caleb McKinnon.
Olivia Kate Cooke is a British actress. In television, she has starred as Emma Decody in the thriller Bates Motel (2013–2017), Becky Sharp in the period drama Vanity Fair (2018), a spy in the thriller Slow Horses (2022), and Alicent Hightower in the fantasy drama House of the Dragon (2022–present).
Ronald "RJ" Cyler II is an American actor. He is best known for his roles in the films Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015), Power Rangers (2017), The Harder They Fall (2021), and Emergency (2022) as well as the Showtime series I'm Dying Up Here (2017–2018) and Scream: Resurrection (2019).
Jacob Tremblay is a Canadian actor. He is the recipient of various accolades, including a Canadian Screen Award, a Critics' Choice Movie Award, and nominations for a SAG Award and three Saturn Awards.
Evgeny Mikhailovich Afineevsky is an Israeli-American film director, producer and cinematographer. He has an Academy Award nomination and Emmy nominations for his documentary Winter on Fire. Afineevsky resides in the United States.
White Boy Rick is a 2018 American crime drama film directed by Yann Demange and written by Andy Weiss, Logan Miller, and Noah Miller. The film stars Matthew McConaughey, Richie Merritt in his film debut, Bel Powley, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brian Tyree Henry, Rory Cochrane, RJ Cyler, Jonathan Majors, Eddie Marsan, Bruce Dern, and Piper Laurie in her final film role. The film is loosely based on the story of Richard Wershe Jr., who in the 1980s became the youngest FBI informant ever at the age of 14.
Jermaine Lateef Rivers is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Shatter on Fox/Marvel's television series The Gifted. He is also notable for his role as Officer Carter in the Lifetime Channel television series Devious Maids. He also made appearances in Tyler Perry's If Loving You is Wrong (2016) and The Haves and Have Nots (2018).
Sierra Burgess Is a Loser is a 2018 American teen comedy-drama film directed by Ian Samuels from a screenplay by Lindsey Beer. The film is a modern retelling of the 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, and stars Shannon Purser, Kristine Froseth, RJ Cyler, and Noah Centineo. The film was released on September 7, 2018, by Netflix.
The Harder They Fall is a 2021 American Western film directed by Jeymes Samuel, who co-wrote the screenplay with Boaz Yakin. The film stars Jonathan Majors, Idris Elba, Zazie Beetz, Regina King, Delroy Lindo, Lakeith Stanfield, RJ Cyler, Danielle Deadwyler, Edi Gathegi, and Deon Cole. It is one of few Westerns whose principal cast members are all Black. Its characters are based on real cowboys, lawmen, and outlaws of the nineteenth-century American West.
Surrounded is a 2023 American Western drama film directed by Anthony Mandler and written by Andrew Pagana and Justin Thomas. It stars Letitia Wright, Jamie Bell, Jeffrey Donovan, Brett Gelman, and features Michael K. Williams in his final appearance.
R#J is a 2021 American experimental romantic drama film written by Rickie Castaneda, Oleksii Sobolev and Carey Williams, who is also the director. The film stars David Zayas, María Gabriela de Faría, Diego Tinoco and RJ Cyler. The film is a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare's romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet, told through text messages, photos and videos on mobile phones and social media posts.
Emergency is a 2022 American thriller comedy-drama film directed by Carey Williams and written by K.D. Dávila, based on their 2018 short film of the same name. It stars RJ Cyler, Donald Elise Watkins, and Sebastian Chacon as three college students who must weigh the pros and cons of calling the police when faced with an unexpected situation.
The Book of Clarence is a 2023 American biblical comedy-drama film written and directed by Jeymes Samuel, and produced by Samuel, Jay-Z, James Lassiter, and Tendo Nagenda. The film stars LaKeith Stanfield, Omar Sy, RJ Cyler, Anna Diop, David Oyelowo, Micheal Ward, Alfre Woodard, Teyana Taylor, Caleb McLaughlin, Eric Kofi-Abrefa, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, James McAvoy, and Benedict Cumberbatch. It follows a struggling down-on-his-luck man named Clarence living in A.D. 33 Jerusalem who looks to capitalize on the rise of Jesus Christ, by claiming to be a new Messiah sent by God, in an attempt to free himself of debt and start a life of glory for himself.
Valley of Exile is a Canadian-Lebanese drama film, directed by Anna Fahr and released in 2023. The film centres on Rima and Nour, two sisters from Syria who are living in a refugee camp in Lebanon after fleeing their homes during the Syrian civil war.
