2023 Directors

PEARL IN THE WINDOW

Nil Unerdem moved from Istanbul to Sunnyvale, CA. at age six. The daughter of immigrants, she studied engineering at Stanford and Columbia, although her favorite classes were about poetry, writing, history, and film. While working many years at Dolby Labs, she took screenwriting classes and a year long filmmaking program, where she made several short films. In 2019 Nil finally left her job to pursue her passion for film. She wrote a romantic comedy, “Song of Selale,” based partially on her life (Quarterfinalist Screencraft Fellowship and Screencraft Comedy, 2021); a horror comedy feature, “Human Stalk,” and a fish out of water half hour sitcom called Dani & Ella. Her short film, “Pearl In The Window,” inspired by her great aunt in Istanbul, was an official selection at the SF Short Film Festival (2022) and won the Audience Award at the WIF SF Bay Area Shorts Showcase.

ŽIVA

Slovenian born visual artist and filmmaker Nataša Prosenc Stearns, earned her BA at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. She moved to Los Angeles on a Fulbright Grant for her MFA at California Institute of the Arts. Her work ranges from single and multi-channel videos, video installations, short and feature films, video objects and print media. Her films explore innovative strategies in storytelling and visual expression. Nataša’s films have been shown in festivals such as SXSW, Brooklyn Film Festival, LA Short Film Festival, Chicago Independent Film Festival, Pacific Film Archives Berkeley, RedCat at Disney Music Hall in Los Angeles, Ibiza Cinefest, Films de femmes Paris, AVIFF Cannes and others. Her artwork has been featured at the Venice Biennale, in Douloun Museum of Art in Shanghai, ARCO Fair in Madrid,and Tel Aviv Museum of Art among others. She is a recipient of the Durffee and Soros Grants. Nataša lives in Los Angeles and in Ljubljana Slovenia.

UNCHARTED WATERS

Molly is a British documentary filmmaker, who moved to Canada during the pandemic and was immediately inspired by the nature and community in British Columbia. She is a self-shooting Assistant Producer in television documentaries – having worked on projects for major broadcasters including the BBC, Channel 4 and Stars. She has been fortunate enough to work on a range of projects across a broad range of topics including laboring mothers, talent, sex workers, critical care in hospitals and operating theaters. Her first short documentary Blue Light explored a homeless shelter for women in Bristol (UK) and was screened at HER International Film Festival in Ireland. The Creative Producer is a local to the area, as were many of the creative contributors.

A GHOST STORY

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BONES OF CROWS

A renowned writer, director and producer Marie’s career has spanned film, TV, radio and live performance. She is a Métis/Dene filmmaker and founder of MCM, a production company specializing in the development, creation and production of innovative media that ignite an Indigenous and intercultural reality. Her multi-award-winning films have screened internationally at Cannes; TIFF; MOMA,; VIFF; American Indian Film Festival, and imagineNATIVE Film Festival. 

Marie’s current slate includes the feature film and five-part drama “Bones of Crows” for CBC, Radio-Canada, and APTN. Her feature debut, “Red Snow,” received several awards including Best Achievement in Film at LA Skins Fest in Los Angeles, Best Director at American Indian Film Festival, and Best Production, Best Director, Best Writer, at Women in Film & TV Festival.

She is a recipient of the WFF Women on Top Award; the WIFTV Spotlight Impact Award, and is a 2019 Telefilm Canada Birks Diamond Tribute to Women in Film recipient.

VALKYRIE

Maeve (pronounced mayv, like wave) graduated from Chapman University with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Animation. She has been drawing since she was younger and came from a family of storytellers and artists. She experimented with cinematography, screenwriting, acting, voice acting and editing, before deciding she wanted to go into animation, with an emphasis in 2nd hand drawn style. Valkyrie is her senior thesis film. She has always been interested in mythology, so creating a senior thesis film based on Norse myths makes sense.

CALL ME DANCER

Director and producer, Leslie Shampaine has been telling stories throughout her professional life. From the ballet stage where she performed throughout the world during a 13-year career, to the television screen where she has produced award-winning programs for PBS, Discovery Channel, A&E, CBS, and Al Jazeera.

Her work ranges from documentaries to cultural and educational programming and includes 8 years as part of the production team for the Emmy award-winning Kennedy Center Honors where she worked on over 30 biographical films of the Honorees. Selected credits include the PBS programs One World: India, Avoiding Armageddon, and Closer To Truth; Who Betrayed Anne Frank (Discovery Channel) – winner of a Telly, a Cine Golden Eagle, and a Gold Remi at the Houston WorldFest; DC Cupcakes (TLC); Smithsonian Networks series’ Seriously Amazing Objects; and Fireworks, with George Plimpton (A&E), which was nominated for an Emmy and an ACE.

GUMBO COALITION / HARLAN COUNTY, USA

Barbara Kopple is a nine-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker, who produced and directed “Harlan County, USA” and “American Dream,” both winners of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In 1991, “Harlan County, USA” was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and designated an American Film Classic. Her films include titles too numerous to list, with several garnering Emmy nominations/awards, and covering a plethora of topics of national and international interest. 

Barbara has received the Human Rights Watch Film Festival Irene Diamond Award; Los Angeles Film Critics Award; National Society of Film Critics Award; the White House Project’s EPIC Award; the International Documentary Association Career Achievement Award; the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize and many more. 

She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences; the Director’s Guild of America; New York Women in Film and Television’s Honorary Board; the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and actively participates in organizations that address social issues and support independent filmmaking.

NUBECITA

Katalin Egely graduated in Animation in 2013 from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, Hungary. Besides short films, credits and animated scenes for movies, my focus is primarily on making music videos. Music videos are especially inspiring to me, versus  \k on animated documentary films because with animation it’s possible to express the more subjective parts of a narrative.

MisTik

Jules Koostachin was born in Moose Factory, Ontario, and raised by her Cree speaking grandparents in Moosonee, and her mother, in Ottawa. Jules is a band member of Attawapiskat First Nation, the Ancestral lands of the MoshKeKo AsKi InNiNeWak, and resides in Vancouver.  Jules completed a masters at Ryerson University in Documentary Media (2010), where she was one of six women selected for the Women in the Directors Chair program. She completed herPhD in GRSJ at University of British Columbia.

Her television series AskiBOYZ (2016) is airing on Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in Cree and English. She released “OshKiKiShiKaw: A New Day,” (2019); award winning “KaYaMenTa: Sharing Truths about Menopause” (2020), and just completed a feature drama, “Broken Angel.”  “Unearthing Secrets, Gathering Truths,” was published with Kegedonce Press (2018). Jules is the voice of Layla (Mom) on the new PBS Kids/CBC Kids animated series “Molly of Denali.”

THE OUTING

Joanne Mitchell trained as an actress and has had a full and varied career in TV, film, theatre and radio. Recently her love of film and stories, especially within the horror genre, have lead her to focus on writing and producing. So far three genre feature films that she has co-produced and written have all had international distribution (Before Dawn, Bait, Attack Of The Adult Babies). This has taken her a step further into a new found love for directing. Last year she made her directorial debut with her short film “Sybil,“ which has played at international festivals all around the world. It can now be seen on Gunpowder and Sky’s platform, ALTER. She was also nominated In 2017 as Screen International and Frightfest’s rising star of the genre.

JUNG & RESTLESS

Joanna Priestley has directed, animated, and produced 32 films, including the abstract animated feature North of Blue, and the iOS app Clam Bake. Her work maintains a high level of porosity between serious exploration of boundaries and intuitive whimsy, and is dedicated to experimentation in technique, theme, and content. Priestley has had retrospectives at the British Film Institute (London), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw, Poland) and American Cinematheque (Los Angeles) among others.  She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Film Institute and MacDowell Colony. Priestley was founding president of ASIFA Northwest. She is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and annually juries the Oscars, Student Academy Awards, and the Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. Priestley lives next to the forest in Portland, Oregon with her husband, director/production designer Paul Harrod. 

HOLDING MOSES

Rivkah Beth Medow is a Sundance X WIF Independent Fellow whose credits include the short documentary “Holding Moses” and feature documentaries “Ahead Of The Curve”; “Hummingbirds”; “Jeannette”; and “Sons of a Gun.” She has directed and produced multi-part documentary projects for non-profits including The Pachamama Alliance, and Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Rivkah believes in making projects inclusively and building Engagement Campaigns around these projects, to amplify their work in the world. As a Board Director for The Kenneth Rainin Foundation, she’s helped award over 10 million dollars to fiction films including “Miss Juneteenth,” “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” and “Fruitvale Station.” In 2021 she co-founded Frankly Speaking Films with Jen Rainin to tell mesmerizing stories about strong queer women and non-binary people.

BRIDE STONE

Duishenkulova Guzel was born in 1980 in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. Graduated from ISU. K. Tynystanova, Faculty of Economics. From October 2014 to October 2016 she studied at the Studio of the famous director Temir Birnazarov. In 2020, she entered the KGUKI named after M. B. Beishenaliyeva.

MOUTON NOIR

Déborah François was born in Liège, Belgium, in1987. Passionate about acting, she auditioned for the Dardenne brothers’ L’Enfant, while still a teenager. She was chosen to play Sonia alongside Olivier Gourmet and Jérémie Renier. The film won the Palme d’Or; François’ performance received praise. In 2006, played the role of a manipulator against Catherine Frot in La Tourneuse de pages. She was in L’été Indien by Alain Raoust and became one of the Femmes de l’ombre of Jean-Paul Salomé, alongside Julie Depardieu and Sophie Marceau. In 2008, Déborah was awarded the César for Meilleur Espoir Féminin for the accuracy of her interpretation in Le Premier jour du reste de ta vie. Since then, she has been seen in the Argentinian film London Night, and in Dominik Moll’s Le Moine where she plays opposite Vincent Cassel.

A LITTLE VACATION

Eva Tavares is a Canadian singer, dancer, actor, director, and coach. She is a graduate of the UBC Opera Program, the LAMDA Shakespeare Short Course and the Banff/Citadel Theatre Professional Training Program. Tavares has worked primarily in live performance, but was recently the romantic lead in the Movie of the Week “Just a Dash,” and plays principal and supporting characters in numerous MOWs, and TV shows such as, Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, Turner & Hooch, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Film directing projects can be seen in The World Monologue Games and Run n’ Gun Festival 2021. Upcoming direction projects include the documentary of Fringe favorite, “Hysteria.” When she’s not performing or directing, Tavares works as a coach and mentor across North America and the UK. She runs Behind the Mask Masterclass, alongside Jennifer Andersen, guiding participants to their most authentic selves within their musical storytelling.

LOVE,  BARBARA

Brydie O’Connor’s award-winning work spans documentary and narrative fields, with a focus on women-driven and queer stories. Much of her work is inspired by archival histories. Brydie has directed short documentaries “Love, Barbara (2021)” which won the Grand Jury Prize for Short Documentary at Academy-Award-qualifying Outfest, and Friends of Dorothy (2020), which premiered in New York at DOC NYC. In 2021, Brydie was selected for The Future of Film is Female Award, and received a NYSCA grant sponsored by Women Make Movies, as well as a Brooklyn Arts Council grant. In 2019-2020, she workshopped her forthcoming film in the Female Filmmakers Berlin Directing Lab. She was recently selected as a semi-finalist for the NewFest x Netflix New Voices Filmmaker Fellowship. Brydie’s producing credits include THE LESBIAN BAR PROJECT with Executive Producer Lea DeLaria, WOMONTOWN for PBS Kansas City, and various projects on Left/Right TV’s roster. She is a graduate of The George Washington University.

SUGAR PEOPLE

Suzana Dinevski was born in Canada, but grew up in Skopje, North Macedonia. Inspired by the old, John Wayne western movies she loved to watch with her father, at twelve years of age she became fascinated with filmmaking. Suzana has a degree in film studies (BFA) from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada; a Master’s degree in film and video production (MFA) from York University in Toronto, Canada, and is a Berlinale Talent (2007) and IDFAcademy Alumni (2022). Suzana has written, produced and directed several award-winning films and formed her own production company SUZI KJU in 2013 in Skopje.

TELL IT LIKE A WOMAN

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TELL IT LIKE A WOMAN

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TELL IT LIKE A WOMAN

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