Jennifer Reeder constructs personal fiction films about relationships, trauma and coping. Her award-winning narratives are innovative and borrow from a range of forms including after school specials, amateur music videos and magical realism. These films have shown consistently around the world, including the Sundance Film Festival, The Berlin Film Festival, The Tribeca Film Festival, The Rotterdam Film Festival, The London Film Festival, SXSW, The Venice Biennale and The Whitney Biennial. Her awards include several that have qualified her films for Oscar nomination.

James Choi is a prolific, award-winning filmmaker with over a decade of film industry experience in Los Angeles having worked in representation, production and digital media.

He has a long history of collaborating and supporting young directors on their debut feature films. He has produced two award-winning feature films from first-time directors that premiered at South by Southwest - "Made in China" and "Saint Frances" - which were distributed by IFC Films and Oscilloscope Laboratories, respectively. Both of these films were the debut features of their respective directors. Saint Frances was nominated for two Gotham Awards and the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards in 2021.

James has also been involved in helping students produce their first feature films through Indie Studio, which he founded in 2017. Indie Studio is an initiative that provides financing and support to students at DePaul who are interested in directing and producing independent feature films. "Waiting for the Light to Change," the latest feature film to come out of Indie Studio, won the Grand Jury Award for Best Feature at Slamdance in 2023. James has become an integral part of the independent film community by being committed to mentoring and collaborating with emerging filmmakers.

James is frequently featured as one of Newcity's Film 50 - the leaders of Chicago's film culture. Having been in the forefront of the independent film movement in the last decade, James has also directed numerous films that have screened widely all around the world, winning awards and receiving distribution.

His most recent film as a producer, "Rounding,” made its World Premiere at Tribeca Film Festival in 2022 and will be released in 2023.

Mr. Choi is based out of Chicago and teaches film at DePaul University’s School of Cinematic Arts.

Tayana Brumaire is a graduate of Brooklyn College with a B.A. in Film Production and TV/Radio. Tayana got her start and interest in filmmaking during her senior year of high school when she participated in Reel Works' Teen Filmmaking Spring documentary lab and Master Narrative Lab in 2015. She worked on her first documentary, Girl in Progress, and her first Narrative short, Memories of Us. Tayana has conceptualized and produced several original works, with Kinky as her most recent project. Kinky has screened at The Collective’s Black Short Film Festival, an annual event sponsored by NYU, The National Film Festival for Talented Youth, and Black Femme Supremacy Film Festival sponsored by Ava Duvernay's Array, and Halifax Black Film Festival. Tayana was one of the Top 10 Winners for Campus Movie Fests’ Disney Women in Film Category and participated in Disney's Women in a Film roundtable discussion for Kinky. Kinky visualizes a coming-of-age narrative that reflects the experiences of black women past and present, an account of history that describes the choice to conform or rewrite society's standards of beauty and popular perceptions. Tayana plans to further develop her film style by exploring different aspects of the cinematic landscape and creating thought-provoking black experiences.

Jessica Mendel is a Production Supervisor in the animation industry. Prior to joining her current studio, Jessica was at Bento Box Entertainment where she worked on several shows including Wolfboy and the Everything Factory, Hoops, and Paradise PD while she concurrently earned a certificate in Project Management through Cornell University. Previous to Bento, Jess served as the Education Program Coordinator at the Atlanta Film Society. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Animation and Visual Effects from Point Park University.

Kasi Gaarenstroom (She/They) is a Public Engagement Producer at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, WA. There, she oversees the film programming and acts as coordinator for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Film Festival. Through their watchalong series at MoPOP with themes like “So Bad, It’s Good” and “The Keanuverse” she aspires to spread the joy and community that film brings to folks all over. She has recently been on the screening team for local film festivals like the Seattle Queer Film Festival, TRANSlations and most recently Make Believe Seattle; She is currently the submissions assistant for Fantastic Fest and hopes to continue her work to be a better member in the Seattle and overall film community.

Kylie Murphy (she/her) is an NYC-based filmmaker with a focus in comedy. She graduated from NYU Tisch Film & TV, where her short Green won the Canon Filmmaker Award for Best Undergraduate Film at the Fusion Film Festival. Her work has been featured on The AV Club, No Film School, The Black List, and Omeleto. She approaches film with a DIY spirit, often writing, directing, producing, editing, and shooting her projects. Her films have played at NFFTY '18 (Mad Lib Pixie Dream Girl), '19 (Green), '20 (Advertocil), and '21 (Everything Is As It Should Be), picking up a couple of audience awards along the way.