Ryan Wehner is the Founder and Creative Director of LA based Animation Studio Digital Twigs. He is a visual artist focused on design-driven storytelling. He is most proud of his continued partnerships with filmmakers and non-profits telling stories that are important to the human race and to making the world a better place. He has worked with a broad range of film and commercial clients including Disney, FOX, MTV, and NBC, and has worked as lead motion designer to create the worlds within movies like Transformers & Guardians of the Galaxy.

Mariana Blanco is an editor, cinematographer, and filmmaker. She has worked on dozens of projects on a broad range of subject matter from music, to sports, to geopolitical issues and war. Most recently she worked on “Shake the Dust,” “The Barkley Marathons,” and ESPN’s 9 for IX shorts. 

Jonathan’s films as a director and/or producer have been supported by BBC, PBS, NHK Japan, Ford Foundation, and Sundance Institute. Personally or through his company Changeworx, he has worked on documentary features that follow people from five continents for multiple years. Jonathan's latest directing project, Follow the Leader, was featured on C-Span, CNN and Fox; released by PBS stations and Cinedigm; and was the only documentary to premiere during both the 2012 Republican and Democratic national conventions. His first feature, Sunny Intervals and Showers (Director, Producer, Editor, Camera, 2003), screened at Sheffield Doc/Fest, Chicago and One World; aired as part of the BBC Storyville documentary strand; and was nominated for Grierson (British Documentary) and Mental Health Media Awards. Jonathan was a Fulbright Scholar at the UK’s National Film & TV School (NFTS) in 1999. He has been based in Brooklyn since 2008.

Rothna Begum is the women’s rights researcher for the Middle East and North Africa region. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Rothna worked for Amnesty International where she acquired five and a half years’ knowledge and experience of researching human rights in the Middle East and North Africa region. She gained expertise on the Gulf primarily specializing in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Qatar, and Oman, but has also spent some time working on Iran, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. She researched and campaigned on a whole host of human rights issues in such countries including on freedom of expression, association and assembly, counter-terrorism, women’s rights, refugees, migrants and asylum seekers, corporal punishment and the death penalty. Rothna holds a LLB in Law and a LLM in Legal Theory from the London School Economics and Political Science. She speaks Bengali, Hindi, Urdu and Arabic.

Gini Reticker is the Oscar Nominated and Emmy Winning Producer and Director of Pray the Devil Goes Back to Hell, Asylum, and the celebrated PBS Television Series, Women, War & Peace. She is the Executive Producer of The Trials of Spring, and directed the feature documentary layer of the series.

Jonas Carpignano spent his childhood between Rome and New York City and attended Wesleyan University. His work has been shown in prestigious film festivals including Cannes, Venice, and the New York Film Festival. His two short films A Chjàna (2011) and A Ciambra (2014) has been honored with the Controcampo Award at the 68th Venice Film Festival, The Discovery Prize at the 53rd Semaine De La Critique at Cannes, a Nastro D'Argento special mention and the Grand Jury Prize at the Miami International Film Festival. 

Jean's documentaries have been exhibited internationally in festivals, museums and on television. She Produced, Directed and Edited, SEX IN AN EPIDEMIC which premiered on Showtime Networks. This powerful documentary tells the heroic story of how the safer sex movement was born and how HIV prevention movements continue today. She created OFFERINGS, an interactive video altar that was featured in art exhibitions such as: Make Art/Stop AIDS, Fowler Museum, UCLA and NOT ALONE, Durban Art Gallery, Durban, South Africa, and subsequently touring throughout South Africa. Jean is a professor of Media Arts and Director of the Television Center at LIU Post.

Sophia Luvarà received her MSc with merit in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Turin, where she also studied for a PhD in Cancer Research, but in 2007 she discontinued her studies and moved to London to follow her passion for documentary filmmaking. In 2008 she attended the Documentary Filmmaking course at the London Film Academy and subsequently directed a number of independent documentaries,

Hany Abu-Assad is one of the world's most distinctive filmmakers. The two-time Academy Award nominated director - Paradise Now (2006) and Omar (2013) - has won countless other awards including the Berlinale Blue Angel, Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes, and the Special Jury Prize in Cannes' Un Certain Regard.

Dalibor Matanić was born in 1975 in Zagreb. He graduated in film and TV directing from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. His film debut was “The Cashier Wants to Go to the Seaside” in 2000 and it achieved huge festival and cinema success, followed by the equally successful “Fine Dead Girls”, which was awarded the Big Golden Arena from the jury, the audience award and the critics’ award in Pula. He then directed six more feature films, two of which premiered internationally at the Cannes International Film Festival. His latest feature film "The High Sun" was awarded with Jury Prize in the official competition program "Un Certain Regard" of the 68th Cannes Film Festival.