Isidore Bethel edits, directs, and produces films that focus on geographic displacement, aging, unconventional intimacy, and art-making’s therapeutic potential. One of Filmmaker’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” and DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40,” he directed Liam (Paris LGBTQ+ FF) and Acts of Love (Hot Docs). Isidore has edited and produced a dozen films, including Of Men and War (Cannes), What We Leave Behind (SXSW), Hummingbirds (Berlinale), and “Some Kind of Intimacy” (Sundance London). A graduate of Harvard, the École Normale Supérieure, and SAIC, he has taught at La Fémis, UT Austin, and Parsons Paris.

Kamila Kuc is a Polish-born filmmaker, based between London and Seattle. Set within the realm of social choreography, her work considers complex ways to relate to one another through embodied, care and trust-building practices that foster collaboration and co-creation. She is the Founder and Director of Dark Spring Studio, a London-based production company dedicated to the creation and distribution of artist moving image works that are committed to social change. Her previous film, Her Plot of Blue Sky (2023) had its European premiere at the 27th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival and it is the winner of the 2024 British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Practice Research award in Short Film category and the winner of the Jean Rouch Award at the 2024 Society for Visual Anthropology Film & Media Festival, Tampa, Florida. Her films have screened at many festivals and galleries worldwide: the Edinburgh International Film Festival, CROSSROADS, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives New York; Studio Gallery, Warsaw; Whitechapel Gallery, BFI, ICA, London, National Gallery, Washington, DC. She is also the author and editor of numerous books and articles on experimental media, including Visions of Avant-Garde Film (Indiana University Press). Recently, her work has been extensively reviewed by a leading documentary film scholar, Dara Waldron in the 10th edition of Found Footage Magazine (October 2024).

Shayna is co-owner and co-programmer of The Beacon Cinema in Columbia City.

Leonardo Pirondi (b. São Paulo, Brazil; 1999) is a filmmaker and artist who lives and works between Los Angeles, Porto and São Paulo. His films build and inhabit alternative worlds that move between reality and fiction; his filmmaking practice challenges traditional narrative structures that emerge from the fabulation of sociopolitical resonances within culture, history, technology, image-making, and orality. His films have been exhibited in various festivals worldwide, including the Toronto International Film Festival, the Tiger Short Competition in Rotterdam, the New York Film Festival, Viennale, Mar del Plata, BFI London, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Guanajuato, Ambulante, Media City and many others.

His work has been presented in art centers such as CCCB, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and REDCAT. He has had solo exhibitions at Galeria Mola (Portugal) and Spectacle Theater (New York). Some of his 35mm films live in the UCLA Film & Television Archive collection; some digital ones exist in the Cinematheque of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro and The Film-Makers' Cooperative in New York City. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in film from the California Institute of the Arts and is a Sundance Institute Fellow. His work has been supported by Portugal's Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual, the Allan Sekula Social Documentary Fund, San Diego Underground Arts, and the Tim Disney Prize for Excellence in the Storytelling Arts. His debut feature-length film Fractais Tropicais, produced by Bam Bam Cinema, is currently in post-production.

Philip Thompson is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker, listed as one of Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2023, and a Sundance x Adobe Ignite and NYFF Artists Academy Fellow in 2024. His work investigates popular media’s influence on culture and the one-sided “looking” relationship between audiences and image subjects. He is the co-founder and co-programmer of the Ithaca Experimental Film Festival, and his last film “Living Reality” won the Audience Award for Experimental Visions at NFFTY 2024.

Aileen Ye is an award-winning filmmaker and visual artist from Dublin. Her work combines multiple mediums, exploring contemporary subcultures, movement practices, and diasporic histories. Her films have screened at BAFTA and BIFA-qualifying festivals like BFI London Film Festival and Aesthetica, as well as spaces including the BFI, Barbican, NOWNESS, and LUX. She holds an MSc in Sociology from Erasmus University Rotterdam, specialising in decolonial aesthetics and autoethnographic cinema.