Leonard Retel Helmrich was born in the Netherlands in 1959. He graduated from the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in 1986. Leonard shoots as well as directs all his own films and is best known for a philosophy and approach he calls “Single Shot Cinema” which involves long takes with a camera orbiting the subjects. Above all in his films it is the framing and movement of the camera that captures and leads the emotions of the audience. 

Mohammed Ali Naqvi (Mo) is an internationally celebrated filmmaker, whose work has won over forty prestigious awards and honors, including a Special Emmy, two Amnesty International Human Rights Awards, and a Grand Prix from the United Nations Association Festival. He has been nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, a Cinema Eye Honor, and the UNESCO-FELLINI Prize. He is also an alumnus of top festivals including Toronto, Sundance, Tribeca, Berlin, and Busan, and an American Film Institute and National Endowment of the Arts Fellow.

Sadaf Foroughi is an Iranian-born, Montreal-based filmmaker. She began her artistic career in 2003 by creating and producing short films, documentaries and video art. In 2005, she was selected to participate in the Berlinale Talent Campus as a writer/director. Foroughi graduated with an MA in Film Studies from the University of Provence, and obtained a degree in film production from the New York Film Academy. 

Chris is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and the founder of Little Ease Films. He has spent the last nine years making his first feature documentary A Cambodian Spring, which won the Special Jury Prize for International Feature Documentary at Hot Docs 2017 and Best Documentary at the Brooklyn Film Festival 2017. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian newspaper and in 2014 produced an award-winning undercover investigation into slavery in the Thai fishing industry. His work has taken him as far afield as South Sudan, Burma, the Philippines, Laos and Thailand. He is currently developing an animated feature film about slavery in the Thai fishing industry, and a Virtual Reality computer game about slavery and migration.

Born in 1942, Raymond Depardon has directed twenty feature-length films and more than fifty books of his photography have been published. Depardon’s oeuvre is regularly the subject of major exhibtitions and film retrospectives, from Paris to Bogota.

Daniel McCabe is a New York based photographer and director. His work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, BBC, Al Jazeera and CNN among others. This Is Congo is Daniel’s first feature-length documentary. 

Courtney C. Radsch, PhD, is advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists. She serves as chief spokesperson on global press freedom issues for the organization and oversees CPJ’s engagement with the United Nations, the Internet Governance Forum, and other multilateral institutions as well as CPJ’s campaigns on behalf of journalists killed and imprisoned for their work. As a veteran journalist, researcher, and free expression advocate, she frequently writes and speaks about the intersection of media, technology, and human rights. Her book Cyberactivism and Citizen Journalism in Egypt: Digital Dissidence and Political Changewas published in 2016.

Prior to joining CPJ, Radsch worked for UNESCO, edited the flagship publication "World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development," and managed the Global Freedom of Expression Campaign at Freedom House. She has worked as a journalist in the United States and Middle East with Al-Arabiya, the Daily Star, and The New York Times. Radsch holds a PhD in international relations from American University. She speaks Arabic, French, and Spanish.

Dennis Flores is a Nuyorican multimedia artist, activist and educator born and raised in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. He is the co-founder of El Grito de Sunset Park, a grassroots community-based organization that advocates around issues of discriminatory policing and housing rights. Dennis is also the lead organizer of the Sunset Park Puerto Rican Day Parade, which, entering it's third year, has created a celebration of Puerto Rican culture safe from police harassment. 

As a teaching artist for over ten years, educating city youth on multimedia art and documentary filmmaking, Dennis' work often focuses on youth empowerment, Afro-Diaspora cultural traditions as well as racial and social justice. In the mid-1990s, influenced by The Young Lords Party, he and the street organization he belonged to – deemed a "gang" by law enforcement officials – began organizing around social justice issues. He and others began to organize with families of victims of the police amid the political unrest of the Rudy Giuliani era in New York City.

One of the pioneers of the modern day copwatch movement in New York, Dennis began to organize patrols of everyday people to film and document police misconduct beginning in 1999. The use of video to not only expose police brutality, but to help exonerate those who were arrested and criminally charged, laid the foundation for the growing police accountability movement seen across the country today. Today, Dennis is a frequent speaker, commentator and well-regarded community advocate. 

Jennifer MacArthur produced the critically acclaimed, feature documentary Whose Streets?, which premiered opening night of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Magnolia Pictures acquired the film for North American distribution and releases the film in movie theaters on August 11.

In 2008, MacArthur founded her strategy firm Borderline Media. Borderline’s strategy work includes Almost Sunrise (POV, 2017), Southern Rites (HBO, 2015), Out in the Night (LOGO/POV, 2015), and the Emmy-nominated films Gideon’s Army (HBO, 2013) and Traces of the Trade (POV, 2008). She also advised on America Divided (EPIX, 2016), American Promise (POV, 2014), and Oscar-nominated Dirty Wars (IFC, 2013).

Together with producer Brenda Coughlin (Dirty Wars, CitizenFour, Risk), she established the peer support network Impact Producers Group and launched Impact Socials, a networking event for creative change-makers. MacArthur’s commitment to field-building also has taken her to Melbourne, Guadalajara, and Amsterdam for keynotes addressing the intersections of documentary with neoliberalism, big data, white privilege, social movements, and low-fi transmedia. 

MacArthur is a 2016 Sundance Creative Producing Summit Fellow, a 2016 Opportunity Agenda Creative Change Leader, a 2015 Rockwood JustFilms Fellow and a 2015 NAMAC Creative Lab Leader. Recently, she joined the Industry Advisory Board for the Camden International Film Festival/Points North Institute.

Jackie Zammuto leads WITNESS’ programmatic work in the United States, focusing on the use of video for advocacy and evidentiary purposes in the thematic areas of police accountability, immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights and beyond. She has over five years of experience training and collaborating with grassroots activists, educators and organizers on issues related to forced evictions, militarized policing, gender-based violence, climate justice, and more.

Jackie also coordinates the development and distribution of WITNESS’ training resources and online platforms, overseeing the production of materials like the Forced Evictions Advocacy Toolkit and the Video as Evidence Field Guide.

Before coming to WITNESS she spent five years as a Producer and Project Manager for the award-winning Free State Studios. She holds a B.S. in Broadcast Production Journalism and Women’s Studies from the University of Colorado. Additionally, she has collaborated on several feature-length documentaries and independent video projects.