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Originally from Osaka, Japan, Hikari is an award-winning writer, director and producer. Her directorial debut short film “Tsuyako” (Drama, 2011, USC Thesis Film) visited over 100 film festivals worldwide receiving over 50 awards including Director’ s Guild of America Student Award for the Best Female Filmmaker. In 2013, she wrote and directed a live action & animated short film “A Better Tomorrow” (Fantasy Adventure, 2013) for the First Annual Lexus Short Films which was produced by The Weinstein Company.
Her other directing credit include a dance short film “Where We Begin” (Drama, 2015, Tribeca Film Festival), Can & Sulochan (Comedy, 2014, UULA) and Subaru’ s Dramatic Cinema Series - commercials and short films that features Subaru’ s vintage to latest models. With the script of 37 Seconds, she had participated in Sundance Institute/NHK Screenwriting workshop, Film Independent’ s Screen- writing and Directing Lab in 2017. The film was completed in January 2019 and celebrating its world premiere at 2019 Berlin International Film Festival in their Panorama section. The film is also nominated for GWFF Best First Feature Film Award.
Hikari is repreented by talency agency WME and management firm Grandiew.
Kevin Wilson, Jr. is an Oscar Nominated and Student Academy Award Winning Filmmaker based in New York City. His short films have screened at Film Festivals all over the world including the New York Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and HollyShorts Film Festival.
Wilson won the Gold Medal at the 44th Student Academy Awards for his short film, "My Nephew Emmett," a 20 minute short film based on the true story of the 1955 murder of Emmett Till. Months later, "My Nephew Emmett" was nominated for an Oscar for BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM at the 90th Academy Awards. "My Nephew Emmett" also won Wilson a Directors Guild of America Student Film Award and a BAFTA Student Film Award. In February of 2020 Wilson completed production on an Untitled Netflix Original Documentary Series which is scheduled to be released this winter. He received a Master of Fine Arts in Film Production from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and is currently in development for his debut feature film.
Wilson is represented by talent agency UTA.
Malika Zouhali-Worrall is an Emmy award-winning director and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. Her directing credits include CALL ME KUCHU (Berlin International Film Festival, 2012) which screened at more than 200 film festivals and won 20 awards, including the Berlinale’s Teddy Award, and Hot Docs’ Best International Feature Award. CALL ME KUCHU was theatrically released in North America and Europe, broadcast on Netflix and BBC World, and further distributed by the United Nations. Malika’s second film, THANK YOU FOR PLAYING, a collaboration with David Osit and an ITVS/POV co-production, premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, and broadcast in the U.S. on POV, after a theatrical release in 2016. In 2017 the film was awarded the News & Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Arts & Culture Documentary and was also nominated for Outstanding Documentary Editing and Best Documentary.
As the daughter of an Afro-Moroccan mother and a British father, Malika is a graduate of Cambridge University and holds an M.A. in International Affairs from the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po), where she studied with a full scholarship from the Entente Cordiale Scholarship Scheme.
More recently, Malika was the editor on THROUGH THE NIGHT (Tribeca Film Festival, 2020), a film by Loira Limbal about a 24-hour childcare center, which was selected for the 2019 Sundance Edit & Story Lab and was recently selected by The Hollywood Reporter as a Critic’s Pick. Malika also directed the pilot episode for European broadcaster ARTE’s EARN A LIVING (IDFA 2018), a documentary series that examines experiments worldwide in universal basic income. She is currently in development on a hybrid feature-length film, while also finishing a short film commissioned by PBS American Masters, set to premiere in 2020.
Malika's films have been supported by the Sundance Film Institute, San Francisco Film, Catapult Film Fund, Tribeca Film Institute, Film Independent, Firelight Media, the Fledgling Fund, as well as the Chaz & Roger Ebert Directing Fellowship and the Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant. In 2012, Filmmaker Magazine named Malika one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Malika is a 2015 Firelight Lab Fellow, a 2019 Chicken & Egg Awardee, and a 2020 Sundance Institute Momentum Fellow.
Malika is also a filmmaking instructor at UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art in Brooklyn, New York.
Avril Z. Speaks is a producer, director and film educator based in Los Angeles. Her goal is creating unique films and sparking a movement of diverse, honest media that represents the multi-dimensional qualities of people around the world. Avril is committed to supporting storytellers, especially women and people of color, whose films tackle the intersections of race, gender, community, social justice, family, and spirituality.
Avril produced the film Jinn, which premiered in Narrative Competition at SXSW (2018) and won Special Jury Recognition for Writing. Jinn continues to win awards at festivals around the world and gained distribution through MGM/Orion Classics. Since then, Avril has produced several films including Hosea, which will release fall 2020, and the comedy Dotty & Soul, starring Leslie Uggams, Gary Owen and Margot Bingham. Avril was also an Associate Producer on the TNT docu-series “American Race” in 2018 and worked as a Production Manager for Scripted Programming at BET Networks.
Avril has been selected for producing labs with Film Independent, Sundance, IFP, Rotterdam and Cannes, and she is currently a 2020 Sundance Momentum Fellow. As a former film professor at Howard University, Avril recognizes the value of film education. In conjunction with Film Independent, Avril has coordinated international film education programs such as Global Media Makers and the inaugural Hollywood Foreign Press Association Filmmaker Residency. Avril is a contributing writer for DearProducer.com. Avril has also directed feature films, including The Round Table and the award-winning Sophisticated Romance.
Based in LA, London and Taiwan. As the CEO of MA Studios, Amy has outstanding co-production experience filming in different cities all over the world with many famous filmmakers, for example directors Huang Jianxin, Han Sanping, and Sylvia Chang Ai-chia. Has collaborated with many film commissions around the world, she is good at integrating resources and incentive applying. In 2020, short film “Taipei Suicide Story” produced by Amy is selected in Cannes Film Festival Cinéfondation award.
Aside from production expertise, Amy is also a rising director with her first feature film “The Greater Good” completed in 2020, directed and written by her. It will be releasing on streaming platform in 2021. Recent years, she has been focusing on developing feature films and TV series by her own production company and working on passing her experience to the new generation by teaching producing classes in School of Visual Art, New York and in the Monomyth program in Taiwan.
Che Grayson is a Brooklyn based filmmaker, comic book writer and TED speaker. She received her MFA in screenwriting/directing from New York University’s Film and TV program. Her most recent project, the pilot of the sci-fi/fantasy series Magic Hour, starring Indya Moore was selected for the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival and won the Artistic Achievement award at Outfest Los Angeles. As a comic book writer Che has worked for Image, Oni Press and DC comics among others. Most recently she wrote for a Netflix animated series and works as a story consultant for Blue Sky Studios.
Nadav Kurtz is a director whose work has shown at such festivals as Sundance, True/False, Sheffield, and been showcased by The Criterion Channel, PBS’ POV, the NYTimes Op-Docs, Vimeo Staff Picks and Sundance Doc Club. His directorial debut, Paraíso, about high-rise window washers in Chicago, won Best Documentary Short at a number of international festivals (Tribeca, Chicago, Seattle, Melbourne, AFI-Silverdocs) as well as being short-listed for an Academy Award and nominated for a Cinema Eye award.
Born in Israel to a Jewish mother and a Japanese father, Nadav grew up in England and Switzerland before moving to the United States. He graduated with honors from the University of Chicago with a degree in English Literature. He worked for many years as an editor on documentaries, fiction films and branded work before transitioning to directing. He has worked as a director on a number of campaigns related to immigration and cross-cultural identity, including an award-winning series of thirty-five short documentaries celebrating immigration for the City of Chicago as well as branded short films about the artists Ana Roldán and Rubén Ortiz Torres and is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective. He is currently in production on his first feature documentary about an incarcerated former film producer and his son, examining the toll lengthy sentences have on families through the lens of the father and son’s creative collaboration on a screenplay. It is being produced by Academy Award-nominated producer Diane Quon and Executive Produced by Jeremiah Zagar and Jeremy Yaches and Abby Davis. A short film being made in conjunction with the feature is supported by the Sundance Institute and the Marshall Project.
Marion Hill is a New Orleans based Vietnamese-Franco-British director devoted to narratives of queer femininity. Her direction of the camera serves to study and worship femme power across cultures and to authentically center queer & POC identity and sensuality through short film, music video, video activism, and most recently her first narrative feature.
"Ma Belle, My Beauty" was first developed through the New Orleans Film Society's Emerging Voices program. Marion went on to receive funding and mentorship from the Sundance Institute via the Launch Grant Fund in 2019, and is now in post production, further supported by IFP's 2020 Narrative Labs. The film is a queer love story set in southern France that explores multi-cultural rootlessness, co-dependence and polyamory.
Her shorts have screened at festivals including Frameline, Sidewalk, Outfest Fusion, and the New Orleans Film Festival. Alongside her narrative work, she serves as the Assistant Video Director of WWOZ, New Orleans' award-winning community jazz station.
Photo credit: Irvin Rivera for The Wrap.
Raed Alsemari is a filmmaker from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His short film Dunya’s Day premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Jury Award for International Fiction. It’s since toured over 30 film festivals, including Palm Springs ShortFest, San Francisco Int’l Film Festival, Cairo and Durban International Film Festivals.
Alsemari completed his MFA in Filmmaking at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Before that, he obtained his BA in History and Literature at Harvard University. In 2019, he was chosen by Screen International magazine as one of five actors/directors featured in their annual “Arab Stars of Tomorrow.”
Phyllis Tam is a female Chinese American director with a deep understanding of both US and Chinese film industry and culture. She got her BFA in film production at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in China, and an MFA in filmmaking at New York Film Academy. She started as an artist studying experimental art, illustration, and graphic photography. These experiences shaped a unique aesthetic for her films.
She has directed over ten short films in the past three years. One of her works, “Wish Upon the Moon” (2016), was exhibited in the Eight Art Academies Exhibition in China. After the exhibition, the film was selected into different festivals. It was later bought by 56.com, one of the biggest video sharing websites in China, and played on the Beijing subway for over 90 million people. “Fantasy of Alice” (2018) won the Best Romantic Comedy of the Year award of the 6th Top Short Film Festival and official selection of Los Angeles Women's International Doc Fest. "Fragile Moon" (2020) was recently selected as a finalist of the Student Academy Award, and also selected by LA Short Film Festival and Holly Short Film Festival.
