Matt Timblin is the director of security at Human Rights Watch, overseeing security, related risk and crisis management across the organization’s global work footprint. He has travelled extensively and spent over two decades, in various roles, operating in some of the world’s highest risk and most challenging environments. After a 12-year career in the British Army, Matt spent over five years in the Middle East and Central Asia as a security and risk contractor and consultant for various organizations. Prior to his current position he worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as a permanent adviser to news crews, documentaries and independent production companies filming in insecure areas worldwide. In this role he helped in the progression of many of the organization’s current security related policies and processes to support and enable news coverage and filmmaking in hostile and high risk environments. During his time at the BBC he worked with journalists on the ground at major world events including the Arab Spring, the Syrian conflict, the protests in Cairo and Gezi Park as well as working on documentaries in Mexico, Colombia, Afghanistan and Yemen amongst others. 

James Brabazon is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. Based in the United Kingdom, he has travelled to over 70 countries, investigating, filming, and directing in the world’s most hostile environments. He is the author of the international bestseller My Friend the Mercenary, a memoir recounting his experiences of the Liberian civil war and the Equatorial Guinea coup plot. He is currently the commissioning editor for the Foreign Film Fund, Channel 4 News. James first gained an international profile as the only journalist to film the Liberian LURD rebel group fighting to overthrow President Charles Taylor. James’s work has often involved filming close-quarter combat, for which he was awarded the IDA Courage Under Fire Award 2004 and the Rory Peck Trust Sony International Impact Award 2003.

Kim Longinotto is a British documentary filmmaker, well known for making films that highlight the plight of female victims of oppression or discrimination. Longinotto studied camera and directing at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, England, where she tutors occasionally. While studying, she made a documentary about her boarding school that was shown at the London Film Festival. She continues to be a prolific documentary filmmaker. 

Charif Kiwan is the spokesperson for the anonymous filmmaking collective known publicly as Abounaddara, who formed in 2010 and began posting short films weekly on Fridays in April 2011—one month after the start of large-scale demonstrations throughout Syria. The collective’s first post included a manifesto titled Que faire? (What to do?), which addressed the need to represent the reality on the ground in Syria while respecting human dignity. What was initially a close group of self-taught filmmakers in Damascus grew into a larger collective of anonymous and voluntary filmmakers that incorporates many voices and perspectives, telling the stories of Syrians living amid the social turmoil that has since become an ongoing civil war. Collectively sharing files online or smuggling flash drives with traveling friends, Abounaddara posts one video each week, working in what they call “emergency cinema” to highlight the urgency of the moment, the need to bear witness, and the importance of producing images that counter state television broadcasts. 

Giles Duley was born in 1971 in London. After 10 years as an editorial photographer in the fashion and music industries in the United States and Europe, Duley now focuses on humanitarian projects, working with several respected charities to highlight lesser-known stories that deserve public attention and action. Although documenting challenging and sometimes horrific situations, Duley captures the strength of those who fight rather than succumb to adversity. In 2011, while on patrol in Afghanistan with the United States Army’s 75th Cavalry Regiment, Duley stepped on an improvised explosive device (IED). He lost both legs and an arm. Despite his injuries, Duley is again working as a photographer. His work has been exhibited and published worldwide in many respected publications, including Vogue, GQ, Esquire, Rolling Stone, the Sunday Times, the Observer, and the New Statesman. 

Nadim Houry is deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division and director of the Beirut office. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Houry served as deputy counsel for the Volcker Commission, where he spent more than a year conducting fact-finding missions in the Middle East as part of the United Nations' corruption inquiry into the Oil-for-Food Programme. He is fluent in Arabic and French.

Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, Zalmaï left the country after the Soviet invasion in 1979. He travelled to Lausanne, Switzerland, where he became a Swiss citizen. Following his passion for photography, Zalmaï pursued combined studies at the School of Photography of Lausanne and the Professional Photography Training Center of Yverdon. In 1989, he began to work as a freelance photographer, traveling the world and eventually returning to Afghanistan, where he continues to document the plight of the Afghan people. His work has been published in the New York Times Magazine, Time, the New Yorker, Harper's, and Newsweek. He has also worked for a number of nongovernmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations Office On Drugs and Crime, and UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. 

Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch's Emergencies Director and an expert in humanitarian crises, is responsible for coordinating the organization's response to major wars and other human rights crises. A Belgian-born Stanford Law School graduate specializing in the laws of war, Bouckaert is a veteran of fact-finding missions to areas that include Lebanon, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Macedonia, Indonesia, Uganda, and Sierra Leone. 

Born in Ankara in 1978, Deniz Gamze Ergüven had a very cosmopolitan upbringing, between France, Turkey and the United States. A compulsive cinephile, she studied directing in Paris, after a BA in literature and an MA in African History at Johannesburg. Her graduation film, Bir Damla Su (Une goutte d'eau), screened at the Cannes Festival Cinefondation and won a Leopards of Tomorrow award at the Locarno Festival. Opening with a shot of a veiled woman blowing a bubble with chewing gum, the 19-minute short tells the story of a young Turkish woman (played by Deniz herself) rebelling against the patriarchal attitudes and authoritarianism of the men in her community. The story of an emancipation, Mustang is a powerful, female take on contemporary Turkey. Deniz Gamze Ergüven shot it around Inebolu in northern Turkey, 600 kilometers from Istanbul.

Nanfu Wang is an independent filmmaker based in New York City. Wang was born in a remote farming village in Jiangxi Province, China. After losing her father at the age of 12, Wang was forced to forgo formal education and take whatever work she could to support her family. Unable to afford high school, she studied at a vocational school until she secured work as a teacher at a primary school at the age of 16, teaching herself English during her spare time. Hooligan Sparrow is Wang’s feature debut. Wang is a recipient of the Sundance Documentary Fund and Bertha Britdoc Journalism Fund, and a Sundance and IFP supported filmmaker.