Marilyn Ness is a two-time Emmy Award-winning documentary producer. She produced Katy Chevigny and Ross Kauffman's feature documentary E-TEAM and Johanna Hamilton's feature documentary 1971, both premiering in 2014. She is currently a partner at Big Mouth Productions and produces and directs feature length documentaries as well as short films for non-profits. 

Katy Chevigny is an award-winning filmmaker and a co-founder of Big Mouth Productions and Arts Engine. Chevigny’s films have been shown theatrically, on HBO, Cinemax, POV, Independent Lens, NBC, Arte/ZDF, Britain’s Channel 4, and others and have played at film festivals around the world, including Sundance, Tribeca, Full Frame, SXSW, IDFA, Sheffield and Berlin.

Born in Tehran in 1976 and currently living between Berlin and Iran, Ayat Najafi first studied scenography. In 1995, he set up a company for student theater at the University of Tehran, participating in several workshops led by some masters of Iranian theater. In 2005, he participated in the Berlinale Talent Campus with his short film Move It (2004). Lady Tehran, his second theatrical production in Germany with an international team, premiered in Berlin in 2009, followed by Pakistan [Does not] exist. In 2008, he made his first feature  documentary,  Football Under Cover. 

Andreas M. Dalsgaard graduated from the National Film School of Denmark as a fiction film director in 2009. In 2012 Dalsgaard finished the documentary/fiction hybrid called “Traveling with Mr. T” (co-directed by Simon Lereng Wilmont – premiered at CPH:DOX in November 2012) which is also produced by Signe Byrge Sørensen for Final Cut for Real. In 2013 Andreas M. Dalsgaard started ELK Film, a production collective. Most recently Andreas M. Dalsgaard finished “Life is Sacred”, produced by Anne Köhncke and Signe Byrge Sørensen, Final Cut for Real.

Camilla Nielsson holds a master's degree in Anthropology & Media Studies, New York University 2000. She has worked as an independant filmmaker since 2000. Producer/director of "The Children of Darfur" (2006). Director of "Mumbai Disconnected" (2009). "Democrats" will be Nielsson's featurelength debute.

Hajooj Kuka is a filmmaker from Sudan, currently based between Nairobi, Kenya and Nuba Mountains, Sudan. He is the creative director of 3ayin.com, a website that works with local reporters aimed at bringing the news of the war through short documentaries, to the Sudanese people. Hajooj is a regular contributor to nubareports.org. His previous work includes the 2009 documentary, Darfur’s Skeleton (52 min), which explores the conflict in Sudan’s troubled region since 2003. 

Jasmila Žbanić (b. 1974) is a Bosnian film director, and a graduate from the Sarajevo Film Academy. Her 2006 film Grbavica won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale. Her other films For Those Who Can Tell No Tales (2013) and Love Island (2014) have been screened at Toronto Film Festival and Locarno. Žbanić was President of the jury at Sarajevo Film Festival in 2006, and her latest film, Quo Vadis, Aida? premiered at the Venice film festival earlier this year.

Alba Sotorra Clua is an independent filmmaker and producer, the founder of the Barcelonabased production company Alba Sotorra S.L. Alba has worked in Syria, Afghanistan, Korea, Bosnia, Cuba, the US, Guatemala, England, Iran, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, and Qatar, and has lived long periods in the Middle East. Her films have premiered at such international festivals as HotDocs, Shanghai International Film Festival, Karlovy Vary, and Seminci. Her projects include the documentary feature film Game Over (2015), which received the VIII Gaudí Award from the Catalan Film Academy and Comandante Arian (2018), nominated for the Gaudí Awards for Best Documentary in 2019.

Jennifer Redfearn is an Academy Award nominated director. She directed and produced SUN COME UP, about a small island community losing their land to rising seas. SUN COME UP was nominated for an Academy Award in 2011, screened in theaters across the U.S. and aired on HBO. TOCANDO LA LUZ (TOUCH THE LIGHT) was co-produced with ITVS and aired on PBS in 2016. It premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Festival where it won the Charles E. Guggenheim Award. Jennifer worked on the 2016 SXSW audience award winner LANDFILL HARMONIC as a field director and consulting producer. She has produced television documentaries for PBS, the BBC, National Geographic, CNN, and Discovery. Jennifer currently serves as the Director of the Documentary Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.