William Michael Zabka is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Johnny Lawrence in The Karate Kid (1984), The Karate Kid Part II (1986) and the TV series Cobra Kai (2018–present). In 2004, he was nominated for an Academy Award for co–writing and producing the short film Most.
Michael Easton is an American film, television and voice actor, writer, and director. Although the Emmy-nominated actor may be best known for his work on the series Ally McBeal, VR.5,Total Recall 2070, One Life to Live and General Hospital, he is also the author of several critically-acclaimed novels, including the trilogy Soul Stealer, and is an accomplished director whose films have earned multiple independent film awards.
Eugene Jarecki is an American documentary filmmaker. He is best known as a two-time winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, as well as multiple Emmy and Peabody Awards, for his films Why We Fight, Reagan, and The House I Live In.
Lou Taylor Pucci is an American actor who first appeared on film in Rebecca Miller's Personal Velocity: Three Portraits in 2002. Pucci had his breakthrough leading role in Thumbsucker (2005), for which he won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival. Pucci then starred in The Chumscrubber (2005), Fast Food Nation (2006), The Go-Getter (2007), Explicit Ills (2008), and Carriers (2009). Pucci had starring roles in the 2013 Evil Dead remake, as well as The Story of Luke (2013) and Spring (2014).
Amanda Crew is a Canadian actress. Following her film debut in Final Destination 3 (2006), Crew had lead roles in films such as Sex Drive (2008), Charlie St. Cloud, Repeaters, Charlie Zone (2011), Ferocious (2013), Chokeslam (2016), Freaks (2018), and Tone-Deaf (2019). She is known for her lead roles as Carrie Miller on the CTV teen drama series Whistler (2006–2008) and Monica Hall on the HBO comedy series Silicon Valley (2014–2019).
Ondi Doane Timoner is an American filmmaker and the founder and chief executive officer of Interloper Films, a production company located in Pasadena, California.
Debra Granik is an American filmmaker. She is most known for 2004's Down to the Bone, which starred Vera Farmiga, 2010's Winter's Bone, which starred Jennifer Lawrence in her breakout performance and for which Granik was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and 2018's Leave No Trace, a film based on the book My Abandonment by Peter Rock.
Quitting is a 2001 Chinese drama film directed by Zhang Yang, starring and based on the true life story of Jia Hongsheng. Jia, an actor and former drug addict, battled his addiction to marijuana and heroin for five years from 1992 to 1997. All members of the cast, from Jia and Jia's family members right down to the doctors and patients at a mental institute Jia was admitted to, are real people playing themselves. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 4 September 2001 and clinched the NETPAC Award.
The Escapist is a 2008 drama thriller film starring Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Liam Cunningham, Seu Jorge, Dominic Cooper, Steven Mackintosh, Stephen Farrelly and Damian Lewis. It is directed and co-written by Rupert Wyatt, and premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival to considerable acclaim. An Irish-UK co-production, the film was produced by Alan Moloney of Parallel Films and Adrian Sturges of Picture Farm.
Roger Ross Williams is an American director, producer and writer and the first African American director to win an Academy Award (Oscar), with his short film Music by Prudence; this film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film in 2009.
Boy is a 2010 New Zealand comedy-drama film, written and directed by Taika Waititi. The film stars James Rolleston, Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu, and Waititi. It is produced by Cliff Curtis, Ainsley Gardiner and Emanuel Michael and financed by the New Zealand Film Commission. In New Zealand, the film eclipsed previous records for a first week's box office takings for local production. Boy went on to become the highest-grossing New Zealand film at the local box office. The soundtrack to Boy features New Zealand artists such as The Phoenix Foundation, who previously provided music for Waititi's film Eagle vs Shark.
My Brother the Devil is a 2012 British crime drama film written and directed by Sally El Hosaini. It stars James Floyd, Fady Elsayed and Saïd Taghmaoui. It tells the story of two sons of Egyptian immigrants coming of age in east London. It was released in the UK on 9 November 2012 and debuted in US cinemas on 22 March 2013. It was also released in Canada, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a 2014 Persian-language American Western horror film written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour. Promoted as "The first Iranian vampire Western", it stars Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Mozhan Marnò, Marshall Manesh, and Dominic Rains. It was financed in part by a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.
Felix van Groeningen is a Belgian film director and screenwriter. He is known for The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012) and Belgica (2016), with the former being nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards. He made his English-language debut with the biographical drama Beautiful Boy (2018) and was awarded with the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize for The Eight Mountains (2022).
Ten Thousand Saints is a 2015 American drama film written and directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. It is based on the novel of the same name by Eleanor Henderson. The film stars Asa Butterfield as Jude Keffy-Horn, the protagonist of the story.
Sasha Knezev, is a Serbian American filmmaker and author. Knezev has written, produced and directed feature films, short films, commercials, and has authored a book on Eastern European film titled Through the Western Lens, which was published in Europe. Knezev is the son of Serbian immigrants from Šabac, Serbia, a cultural and iconic city in the former Yugoslavia that was a breeding ground for artists, musicians and writers. Knezev's grandfather Milan was a theatrical actor, his father a singer and mother an art and set-designer.
The Lion's Mouth Opens is a 2014 short documentary film. It follows actress and filmmaker Marianna Palka as she pursues testing to learn whether she inherited the genetic mutation that causes Huntington's disease, an incurable neurodegenerative disease.
Beautiful Boyis a 2018 American biographical drama film directed by Felix van Groeningen, in his English-language feature debut. The screenplay, written by Luke Davies and van Groeningen, is based on the memoirs Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff and Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff. The film stars Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney, and Amy Ryan, and deals with a father-son relationship increasingly strained by the latter's drug addiction.
John and the Hole is a 2021 American coming-of-age psychological thriller film directed by Pascual Sisto and written by Nicolás Giacobone. A feature-length adaptation of Giacobone's short story, El Pozo, the film stars Charlie Shotwell, Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Ehle, and Taissa Farmiga. The film revolves around a boy who discovers an unfinished bunker in the neighboring woods of his home.
