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Pilar Garcia-Fernandezsesma is a freelance animator and fine artist who currently resides in New York. She received her BFA in Animation at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2020. As an artist and person, she finds it easier to express her emotions and feelings through visual mediums rather than words, making her work take on a very intimate and emotional quality overall. She enjoys making both 2D animation and stop motion films, and often uses elements of mixed media in her films by combining traditional and digital elements. Her work as a whole ranges from fiction and fantastical to poetic and metaphorical, and often deals with memory and human interaction paired with themes of womanhood, family, and our relationship to the natural world.

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Tiffany Lin is a Taiwanese-American filmmaker born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. A 2020 graduate of USC’s film and television production program, Tiffany has worked extensively across live action, animation, and virtual reality. Her work has been recognized at festivals including NFFTY (2019, 2020), Dances With Films, and more; in addition, a short film she wrote was a semifinalist for the 2020 Student Academy Awards. Through her films, Tiffany aims to present emotionally honest and unconventional perspectives on the experience of growing up.

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Jake Oleson is a New York-based filmmaker raised by two loving designers in New Jersey’s suburbs. Growing up he wrestled to choose between design, photography, music and painting. He found filmmaking as the union of all these interests and his most effective way to move others. Today, audiences describe his work as raw and arresting. He explores often overlooked stories — stories about people whose circumstances test the resilience of the human spirit. Jake has directed campaigns for brands such as Facebook, Airbnb, Gatorade, P&G and Rolling Stone among various others.

Peier “Tracy” Shen is a Chinese writer-director currently based in Los Angeles. Her shorts were selected to GSA BAFTA Student Shortlist and Oscar-qualifying festivals such as Cleveland, Palm Springs ShortFest, LA Shorts, St. Louis, Nashville, Cinequest, and BronzeLens among others. Her short, LIKE FLYING, is part of DEDZA FILMS’ inaugural selection for shorts distribution with KINO LORBER. The short is currently participating in a virtual and in-person theatrical release across the U.S. and Canada, streaming on Kino Now, and a limited edition DVD distribution by Kino Lorber.

Her feature screenplay, A GRADUATION, is selected to participate in the Cine Qua Non Script Revision Lab, sponsored by IMCINE and the Academy. It also advanced to the second round of the Sundance Development Lab 2021. She is also a member of the BAFTA LA Newcomers Program 2021. She graduated with honors from Columbia University, with a double major in English and Film & Media Studies, and recently obtained her MFA in Directing from the AFI Conservatory.

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Lindsay was born at a very young age, and grew up in Los Angeles where she still lives and accumulates parking tickets. She has directed and produced content for Grammy nominated artists and her narrative work has been screened at festivals internationally. She is a pro member of Free the Work, and repped by Anemone Artists . She is also one half of the directing duo SCOUT, a collaboration between herself and Jensen Vinca.

When she isn't on set or working on designs, she is most likely camping, surfing, or hanging out with her rescue dog Nalu.

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Anna Proulx is the Director of Admissions for the American Film Institute Conservatory, a top ranked masters film program. She has an extensive background in both arts and higher education management. Previously, Anna managed the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, creatively supporting and working with international and domestic documentary filmmakers. Anna’s passion lies in finding, developing and supporting future storytellers through education – formerly at Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film and currently at AFI.

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Sarah is a graduate of the Stanford MFA in Documentary Film and Video program, and an alumnus of Emerson College. She has produced and directed several award-winning short documentaries, which have played at film festivals across the United States. After living in Silicon Valley, Sarah became fascinated with virtual reality. She began to explore the storytelling potential of this new medium, developing a project through the Oculus Launch Pad Program. She is also an educator who is experienced teaching various levels from primary grades to university levels and believes in increasing access to media production and fostering diverse voices entering the field. Sarah currently works as the Film Education Manager for Youth and Online Programs at Film Independent.

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Born in St. Louis, MO, Mia developed a love for storytelling for written and visual media. Her passion for writing led to her self-publishing her first novel at sixteen. She later went on to write for Elon University’s academic journal Perspectives on Undergraduate Research and Mentoring (PURM). She currently works as a Communications Specialist at PlayStation, where she has won two company awards and contributed on several PlayStation game titles including Days Gone, Knack II, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, MLB The Show, Death Stranding, and The Last of Us Part II.

Outside of Mia’s position at PlayStation, she has written, directed, and produced several short films and music videos that have screened at 15+ festivals and accumulated accolades including Best Music Video at the DC Black Film Festival and Toronto Short Film Festival, and the Platinum Award at Mindfield Film Festival LA.

She currently runs an online writers summit, which she created with friends and colleagues during the COVID-19 shutdown. As of today, Mia has led more than twenty virtual writer summits with industry professionals from the United States, Canada, and Germany. She resides in San Diego, CA.

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Jocelyn R.C. is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and dog mom. She is also, coincidentally, one of the three original co-founders of NFFTY. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, formally trained in film production and photography, her career has zig-zagged through multiple cities, industries, and work lifestyles over the past ten years. From Los Angeles' film industry to San Francisco's tech culture to New York City's advertising world, she eventually returned to a blend of things in Seattle. She has art directed content for brands like Gap, LG, and T-Mobile, as well as shown her work at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (Los Angeles, 2011), Warehouse Gallery (Brooklyn NY, 2013), and most recently the Northwest Film Forum (Seattle, 2021). As wonky and unexpected as this journey is, one guiding constant for Jocelyn has been a relentless enjoyment of working in the visual space.

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Kaitlin is a Filmmaker, 3D Artist, and Digital Media Producer based in Raleigh, North Carolina. She discovered her passion for film while pursuing her degree in Biology at UNC-Chapel Hill. After graduating, Kaitlin dedicated herself to filmmaking, screening her work at film festivals across the country, and working behind the scenes at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival for four years. She currently works in Marketing at a software company in Cary, NC, producing videos and other media. Kaitlin continues to develop her creative projects, especially her 3D animation debut: a short film set in Ancient Egypt.

Title: Head of Creator Success, Seed&Spark

Meghan Ross is a writer, producer, director, comedian, and activist based in Austin. Her latest shorts premiered on The New Yorker and made their Best of 2020 list: If You Ever Hurt My Daughter, I Swear to God I’ll Let Her Navigate Her Own Emotional Growth featuring narration by Jon Hamm, which was nominated for The Webby Awards in 2021, and Finally a Female Presidential Candidate Likable Enough For Men featuring narration by Rachel Bloom. Her writing has appeared in Reductress, IFC, Slackjaw, VICE's Broadly, TV Without Pity, The Toast, and other defunct but beloved sites. She previously worked for VICELAND and SundanceTV, and is currently the Head of Creator Success at Seed&Spark.

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Alex Rose brings her passions for music, culture, and community to her work at the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture and Office of Economic Development. As Creative Economy Advocate, Alex connects young people to creative careers, supports the Seattle Music Commission, and brings creative entrepreneurs together to network and access resources. Additionally, through this role she has been a lead team member for Film Career Day, co-produced in partnership with NFFTY. With a background in digital marketing (including roles at SIFF and the YMCA of Greater Seattle), Alex is drawn to the magic that happens at the intersection of creativity and technology. She is also a singer and bandleader (The Pazific), thrift store hawk, and mom.

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Eric Glatt helped increase attention on the topic of intern wage theft when he sued Fox Searchlight Pictures in 2011. He was active with the Occupy working group Intern Labor Rights, which promoted greater awareness of the existence and absence of legal rights of interns, including as to workplace discrimination and harassment. Intern Labor Rights also connected similar grass-roots efforts all over the world. Eric is now an attorney living in Alaska.

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Carlos Mark Vera is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Pay Our Interns. Originally from Colombia, Carlos was raised in California but moved to Washington, D.C. to attend American University. While at AU, Carlos was an unpaid intern at the White House, the European Parliament, and the House of Representatives. He knows firsthand the struggles of trying to survive while interning for free. Under his leadership, Pay Our Interns successfully convinced Congress to pass more than $48 million in funding for interns and has helped nonprofits, companies, and presidential campaigns create their internship programs.

Carlos’ efforts on Capitol Hill led him to be named a Forbes 30 Under 30 Honoree, Echoing Green Fellow, Camelback Ventures Fellow, a Top 20 Changemaker by NBC Latino, and an Aspen Ideas Fellow. He has been featured in the Washing Post, NPR’s All Things Considered, the New York Times, CNN, and the Atlantic. He has also written for the Washington Post, Teen Vogue, USA Today, and NBC Latino. Carlos proudly served in the Army Reserve as a mechanic for 8 years.

Director and Director of Photography for ON THE DIVIDE

Director and Sound Recordist for ON THE DIVIDE

Andrew Hutcheson is a producer of films of all shapes and sizes with over 10 years of experience. In 2015, Andrew co-founded the decorated production company Voyager, where he’s produced dozens of independent and commissioned films with a focus on developing and supporting emerging directors. Most recently, he was a producer on God’s Time for Topic Studios (in post-production), an associate producer on Shithouse starring Dylan Gelula + EP’d by Jay Duplass (2020 SXSW Grand Jury Winner), the EP of Soft (2020 SXSW Official Selection), post-producer of HBO’s Traffic Stop (2018 Oscar nominee - Best Documentary Short), and EP of Dean Goes Surfing (2018 Vimeo Best of the Year). He’s also produced award-winning campaigns for clients like Champion, Spotify, Facebook, Taco Bell and Mercedes-Benz. A graduate of Emerson College with a BA in Visual Media Arts, Andrew now lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his partner and two cats.

Charles Frank is a director and founding partner of Voyager, a production company built to prove that small, intimate, empathetic documentaries could change people’s minds, one viewer at a time. His work has reached millions of people online, been featured in The Atlantic, Huffington Post, and Short of the Week, and received numerous Vimeo Staff Picks. His debut feature doc, “Somewhere With No Bridges,” is a film set on Martha’s Vineyard exploring masculinity and the mystical power of the ocean. Heralded as “a celebration of life like you’ve never seen,” the film won the Audience Award at Salem Film Festival 2020 and will be available to audiences everywhere soon. In the age of Instagram, influencers, and content creators, Charles’ empathetic and heart-filled portraits of real people feel more prescient than ever. The connective tissue between all of his work is his very real desire to connect audiences to the subjects onscreen, but also to one another.

Leo David Hyde is a filmmaker and youth activist from Aotearoa, New Zealand. He has worked on a variety of media campaigns, and in journalism and film production for NGOs.

He recently completed work on a 12 part documentary series for Public Services International, examining the struggles of workers across the world. He is a co-founder of Collective Bievre - an art-activism group and film production association. He has participated in workshops and pitching forums around the world, including at Visions Du Reel, Beldocs and Docs In Thessaloniki. His first feature - Call Me Intern - (co-directed with Nathalie Berger) won Best New Zealand Documentary at Doc Edge 2019, qualifying for Oscar consideration along with Best Editing and the Doxa Film Festival's Nigel Moore Award for Youth Programming.

After having moved around her whole life, growing up in the Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil and Switzerland, Nathalie Berger completed her Bachelor’s degree in 2014 in Political Science and Economics. In March 2019, she completed her first feature documentary film CALL ME INTERN, about millennials striking back against unpaid internships. Together with Leo Hyde, she co-directed, did the cinematography and editing. It won Best New Zealand Documentary Film and Best New Zealand Editing, as well as the Nigel Moore Youth Award at DOXA. It has been shown at the Vision du Réel Media Library, Doc Edge Film Festival, NYTTF, DOXA, Verzio Human Rights Film Festival, Guangzhou Film Festival, and FIFDH. Since 2018, she is doing a Master of Arts in Film with a focus in Documentary Filmmaking.

Maya is a Latina award-winning director and producer with a background in documentary, radio, and audio producing. She is a Netflix Nonfiction Director and Producer fellow and her work has been featured on The New Yorker, NPR's “All Things Considered,” “Latino USA,” The Atlantic, Teen Vogue, and National Geographic. She received a student Emmy for her short film THE PROVIDER and her feature film, ON THE DIVIDE, premiered in the documentary competition at Tribeca Film Festival in 2021. Her most recent short documentary ALE LIBRE was acquired by The New Yorker and was selected to screen at several Oscar qualifying festivals, including Big Sky Documentary Festival, Hot Docs, Aspen Film Festival, and SFFILM. Maya’s feature documentary ON THE DIVIDE will be broadcast on POV PBS in Spring 2022.

Featured in Above the Line: ON THE DIVIDE

Leah Galant is a Jewish filmmaker and Fulbright Scholar currently based in Berlin whose storytelling focuses on unexpected narratives often through the lens of womxn. While at Ithaca College in 2015 she was named one of Variety’s "110 Students to Watch in Film and Media” for her work on THE PROVIDER that follows a traveling abortion doctor in Texas (SXSW 2016, Student Emmy Award) and BEYOND THE WALL about a formerly incarcerated individuals re-entry process. She was a Sundance Ignite and Jacob Burns Fellow where she created DEATH METAL GRANDMA (SXSW 2018) about a 97 year old Holocaust survivor named Inge Ginsberg who sings death metal which won “Best Documentary” at the American Pavilion at Cannes Film Festival, and is a NY Times Op Doc. Leah is a member of Meerkat Media worker-cooperative film production company in Sunset Park NY. Leah's directorial debut ON THE DIVIDE premiered at the Tribeca 2021 Film Festival and will broadcast on POV PBS in the Spring of 2022.

Featured in Above the Line: ON THE DIVIDE

As Director of Programs, Media Arts Lab at Jacob Burns Film Center, Sean leads the growth, overall strategic vision, and wildly talented staff of the education program and Creative Culture–an artist support program for emerging and established filmmakers guided by a philosophy of inclusion and collaboration. Sean's work in media literacy has received support from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities as well invitations to share work with the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities through Turnaround Arts. Since 2016, Creative Culture’s fellowship program has produced short films steadily selected at film festivals like Sundance, Berlinale, SXSW with acquisitions by Criterion, Fox Searchlight, POV, and other reputable outlets. In support of feature films, Creative Culture’s residency program is curated in partnership with sister organizations like Black Public Media, Chicken & Egg Pictures, and Sundance Institute.

Featured in Above the Line: ON THE DIVIDE

Featured in Above the Line: TAHARA

Jess Zeidman is a writer & comedian living in Brooklyn, NY who is trying her best. She graduated from Northwestern University in 2018, where she earned her BFA in Film with a concentration in Screenwriting & Playwriting. Her first feature TAHARA, which she wrote and co-produced, premiered at Slamdance in 2020 and went on to play at Outfest, Newfest, TIFF NextWave and more. She has written for the satirical websites Reductress, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Above Average. Balancing carefully on the Millenial/Gen Z cusp, Jess strives to tell funny, dark, inclusive stories that highlight the talents of her friends & collaborators and get everyone paid.

Featured in Above the Line: TAHARA

Olivia Peace is an award winning interdisciplinary artist and worldbuilder from Detroit, Michigan living in Los Angeles. Their artistic style has been referred to lovingly as “a hat on a hat… but like in a good way, you know?” They are heavily informed by the dreamspace, B-movies, and a family history of bipolar disorder. They believe that style helps to facilitate agency in people and so they set out to create work that’s ~replete~ with style. Olivia’s work has been supported by Sundance, TIFF, Outfest, Slamdance, Adobe and the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative to name a few. You can catch their debut feature, TAHARA, in theaters soon via Film Movement. They believe that in order to discuss the turmoil of what’s going on outward, one must look inward. And so their work looks inward, often in some mashup form of animation and always with subtitles.

Featured in Above the Line: TAHARA