As a Social Anthropology post-graduate, Lara’s interest in people and places has evolved into a passion for using video as a tool to impact people’s thoughts and actions. Her drive is to share stories that uplift and inspire. Social media and cell phone videos are a new source of interest and learning, particularly in South Africa as bandwidth has dramatically improved, and she is inspired by the power of short videos. She’s been in the industry for 18 years, increasingly focused on participatory filmmaking, and in particular teaching people how to film on their mobile phones.

Damilola is documentary photographer and filmmaker based in Lagos, Nigeria. He focuses on human-interest stories that create consciousness about social issues. He is interested in how cultures are formed and how they shape our perception of the world. As an advocate of social change, he has worked with notable organizations both locally and internationally, including UNICEF, RCS London and The Commonwealth. He is a member of Africa Photo-Journalism Database, and a fellow at The Royal Commonwealth Society.

Yue is a Chinese documentary filmmaker and photojournalist based between Shanghai and Chongqing, China. Her visual work has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Initium Media and Sixth Tone. Boxing Shadows is her first directed short documentary film. Yue was born and raised in Chongqing, China. After five-year studying Journalism at Iowa State University in United States, Yue decided to move back to China, and to tell stories through her lens.

Alba is based in New York and Medellín. Her film Project for a Collection screened internationally in venues such as Big Sky, Havana Film Festival and won Best Short Documentary at the Guayaquil International Film Festival. She is a producer for CNN’s Great Big Story and Moxie Pictures’ upcoming documentary series about education reform. She was the production coordinator for Academy Award-nominated Cartel Land and the US producer for Doc Society’s Good Pitch Local events. While completing her MFA in Media Arts Production at the State University of New York – Buffalo, she taught courses in film theory and immigration studies.

André is originally a photojournalist turned documentary filmmaker based in Umeå, northern Sweden. He previously worked with NGOs primarily in Burma and Gaza. With a constant focus on empowering people around him, he invites people he follows to co-create the film about them – sometimes by giving them their own camera or through a thorough co-creative directing process. André’s latest film Alone Through Iran – 1144 Miles of Trust has won several awards and the trailer has been viewed more than 30 million times.

Ketevani is in her last year of the Film Study program at Shota Rustaveli Theater and Film Georgia State University. From 2016 to 2018, she worked for Tbilisi International Student Film Festival as an organiser, for CineDOC-Tbilisi on coordination and programming, and as a project assistant for Audio Visual Storytelling Course for emerging documentary filmmakers. She co-founded the platform Tarazo, which aims to organise human right film events. Ketevani is part of the project 16 Women For Change, within the framework of which she created her first film Serving the Homeland. Currently she is working on her next documentary, Lana.

Isobel is a multimedia investigative journalist. She is currently reporting on disinformation and authoritarian technology for Coda Story, a crisis reporting platform. She spent her teenage years making amateur horror films on a webcam, but first picked up a proper camera as a graduate student at Columbia Journalism School. She has since documented the lives of LGBT Russian refugees in Brooklyn, African-American residents of Chicago’s west side, Uighur exiles in Istanbul, and a Colombian soap star in Queens. She worked on production for USA Today’s critically-acclaimed The City podcast, a ten-part audio documentary. Originally from London, she is now based in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Owen is a producer and director, a two time BAFTA Children’s Award winner and RTS North Award winner. His work has ranged from communicating classical music to young people, bringing Romantic poetry to life for a modern audience and creating a new visual format for The Kermode and Mayo Show, to uncovering the gritty underside of Rio’s hip-hop scene, documenting people’s shifting opinions on Brexit and showing the world how a life can be rebuilt after escaping the Grenfell fire. He is based in London, but remains a Liverpudlian, despite the sliding accent.

Angus is a London based director and co-founder of Pal.tv, a London based creative studio and production house specialising in video content. At Pal, Angus and his team come up with new ways to engage audiences and have done so for the likes of Somerset House, Cannes Lions, The International Rescue Committee and Penguin among others. Angus previously worked as a video journalist for a number of UK news organisations, including the Press Association – before setting up Pal. He has a passion for visual storytelling and his work has been published by the Atlantic, The Guardian and AJ+.

Roxy is a British filmmaker of Iranian-Malaysian-Chinese descent. She has been recognised by The Dots as one of their Creative Trailblazers of 2018 and featured twice in Broadcast Magazine as an up and coming director. After a career in television which included the twice Emmy-nominated programme, Gaycation, her directorial debut Little Pyongyang, a short film about North Korean refugees, premiered in competition at CPH: Dox Festival, had its UK Premiere at Sheffield Doc/Fest, and was the winner of best director at Underwire Festival, best documentary at The Smalls, and is currently up for a SIMA award.

Denys is an independent director and cinematographer from Kyiv, Ukraine. He studied documentary filmmaking at The Sergey Bukovsky Film Program in 2016-2017. During that time, Denys became a finalist of the national contest The Guardian Goes to Ukraine as the producer of the project Furious. He took part in making a short film House On The Edge Of The Planet as a student of Digital Filmmaking course at Kyiv Academy of Media Arts. He likes to take part in Medieval reenactments, which is also the topic of his current documentary.

Lesia is a documentary filmmaker and freelance journalist from Kyiv. She graduated from the the National University of Ostroh Academy specializing in Public Relations in 2010 and studied at the The Sergey Bukovsky Film Program in 2016-2017. Lesia currently works in a creative agency communicating healthcare projects, and writes short stories and reportage. She created a series of articles about veteran families in Ukraine and people living in a war zone. The film Strong But Not Steel is her first directorial experience.

Taisiia is a documentary filmmaker and a freelance videomaker. She received an MA in Journalism from Ukrainian Catholic University. During the video academy DocEmotion in Ukraine, she created two short documentary films as a co-director, cameraperson and editor. One of her films was screened at the Docudays UA Festival in 2017, telling the story of two choirs in a single house of culture: one with veterans of Ukrainian Insurgent Army and one with the Red Army. She is currently working on her debut short documentary as a director.

Les is a documentary director and journalist from Ukraine. He graduated from Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism and started Linza Production, where he works as a producer and director creating videos mostly for Ukrainian NGOs. He completed four short documentaries and one short fiction film. His films focus on issues of human perception and communication, social problems in Ukraine and internal reflections. His documentary What’s Wrong With My Home took part in Art Doc Fest, and is about individualization that leads to drug addiction in Ukraine.

Yurii is a self-taught filmmaker, focusing on editing and directing. Though he’s never been to film school, he developed his career by reading, practicing, and following the documentary film culture in Ukraine. In 2013, he made his first short Facing Window, about windows where lights were never turned off. Over the next 5 years, he has gained experience in filmmaking, worked as an editor and DOP on documentary projects. He participated in the Civil Pitch at Docudays UA 2018, with the project Drowsiness, his feature documentary debut. Yurii is developing digital projects around the topic of “human existence in undiscovered spaces” such as dreams or the virtual world.

Elīza is a student of Audiovisual Media BA in Baltic Film School, Estonia. She has made short student films and has recently discovered her passion for documentaries. Before starting her studies, she participated in a year-long voluntary work with children in Northern Ireland with European Voluntary Service through which she became more interested in social themes, especially in the stories of the socially excluded. In her filmmaking work she wants to raise awareness and tell the stories of those whose voices are usually silenced.

Born in Damascus, Qutaiba is an award-winning film editor and director based in Paris. He has edited films in 12 different languages, full length documentaries as well as fiction films. His works are traveling around the globe at festivals like Venice, Berlin, IDFA, Rotterdam, Paris, Nyon, and many others. Among them are Still Recording (2018) dir. Ghiath Ayoub and Saeed Al Batal, Poisonous Roses (2018) dir. Ahmed Fawzi Saleh, Wardé (2016) dir. Qutaiba Barhamji, The Magic Mountain (2015) dir. Andreï Schtakleff, Rough Stage (2015) dir. Toomas Järvet. Qutaiba also works as an editing consultant and trainer for several organisations in Europe and
the Middle East.

Jean has worked with documentary filmmakers for the past 15 years. She worked for ABC News and the network’s leading long form news program, Nightline. At Al Jazeera, she oversaw production and acquisition of documentaries from the Americas for the channel’s flagship program, Witness. In 2012, she helped to establish the Viewfinder program in Latin America, designed to recruit emerging filmmakers from across the region and bring their voices to an international audience. Today, she works with journalists and filmmakers for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, whose work is based in some of the most difficult regions for free expression; including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia and Iran.

Daniel studied film directing at the Film University Babelsberg in Germany, where he realised the feature length documentaries Beyond Wriezen (Grimme Award, 2012) and Transit Havana (2016). Daniel focuses on observational, character-based documentaries about socially relevant topics. He teaches documentary film directing at Film University Babelsberg, and he is part of the selection committee of the DOK Leipzig Film Festival in Germany. He also works as a tutor at pitching workshops (Baltic Sea Docs Riga, Cinedoc Tbilisi, Docudays UA), and gives workshops and masterclasses on documentary filmmaking.

Andrew is Commissioning Editor at AJ Shorts, Al Jazeera English’s digital short documentary studio. He has been with the team since 2016. AJ Shorts produce short, sharp and intimate character driven stories from around the globe. Andrew works with reporters to find poignant personal stories and tell them in a way that rises above other content. As part of AJ Shorts, he prioritises emerging talent by giving opportunities to first time filmmakers, as well as collaborating with those who are more established. AJ Shorts was awarded ‘Video Team of the Year’ at last year’s Drum Online Media Awards.

Sergei is a Prague based media professional focused on TV-series and documentary acquisition, production and distribution. He graduated from Baltic Film and Media School (Tallinn, Estonia) with a bachelor of Crossmedia production. For the last 15 years, Sergei has been involved in audio-visual production across print, online and video. He worked for Estonian Public Broadcasting as acquisition executive for feature films, animation and documentaries for ETV+ (channel in Russian). Since 2017 Sergei has been working for Current Time TV (Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty) as an acquisition and commissioning manager.

Laurence has worked at the Guardian for over 10 years. He was initially an in-house video producer, working across a wide-range of international news stories, documentaries, interactives and investigations. He has won multiple awards for his work – including Firestorm, Fast Ice and Building the Bomb – and has filmed in places such as Antarctica, the Arctic, West and East Africa, the Middle East, Australia, and all across the United States. Laurence is currently a Special Projects Editor and oversees many of the Guardian’s in-house documentaries and multimedia projects – such as The Trap, The Tower Next Door and Beyond the Blade.

Anna is the Story/Culture Editor at Hromadske. She dreamed about being a cinematographer since she was a kid; but she married a cinematographer and got three kids instead. Anna’s now trying to turn television into cinema. She feels lucky to have met Hromadske, as short docs are their favorite. Hromadske is a story-centric platform, hunting for protagonists and their huge little dramas. Anna believes there is only a slight difference between real life and the movies. Same rules of three-act drama, same suspense. Especially in Ukraine, where it’s like living in a dramatic action movie since Maidan in 2014. The big challenge is to stay empathetic and don’t lose the human touch.

Erica fell in love with filmmaking at the age of eight when she first discovered her dad’s hi-8 camcorder. She is now a film producer and director, and manages the Lush Film Fund, which champions films with a conscience and ethical backbone. She dreams of a future world of filmmaking where everyone has the same opportunities and is passionate about providing a space in film for others to share their stories without restraint.

Alex is Head of Video at VICE UK, managing the documentary films and series across the network. Prior to this, he was Head of Music, managing VICE’s music channel Noisey from launch. VICE and Noisey UK have won a series of awards for its groundbreaking content. Before VICE, Alex spent nine years at MTV, a tenure that included winning an NME Award for Gonzo with Zane Lowe, and running the rock and indie channel MTV2. As a director, Alex has made a number of documentaries including Hip Hop in the Holy Land hosted by Mike Skinner, the controversial feature The Redemption of the Devil, and films about the likes of Liam Gallagher, Skepta and seminal clubnight Bugged Out.

Roman is co-founder and executive producer of Zaborona. He focuses on issues of migration, post-soviet reforms, human rights, and gender inequality. He has contributed to PBS Newshour, AP, Bloomberg and Vice in Ukraine, Russia, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Turkey. Roman reported from both sides of the conflict in the East of Ukraine during an active phase of the war, filmed as a cameraman and producer some of the dispatches Russian Roulette on Vice News. In 2018, he produced the Peabody and NPC award-winning Inside Putin’s Russia series for PBS Newshour. In 2018 he launched Zaborona media project with prominent Ukrainian (and former Russian) journalist Kateryna Serhatskova.

Anastasia is Senior Video Producer of Zaborona. She focuses on issues of war between Russia and Ukraine, internal migration, human rights, LGBTQ, and far-right movements. She has contributed for Hromadske TV as video content producer till 2018. She has made the film Donetsk Spring about pro-Ukrainian protesters and their resistance to “Russian spring” in Donetsk during the beginning of the war in the East of Ukraine. In Zaborona, she is one of the directors of the art-doc serial Light it up! about Ukrainian changemakers in local communities. She also contributed to Current Time TV, BBC, Reuters, RFE/RL, UNHCR, Thompson Foundation.

Horia El Hadad is an observational documentary filmmaker and producer for Al Jazeera’s flagship documentary strand, Witness. Horia has produced and directed ‘East End Undertakers‘, ‘Undocumented and Under Attack‘, ‘When Time Stopped at Sea’, ‘Paris: Voice of the Suburbs’ and ‘A Marrakech Tale’.  Horia is committed to producing multi-layered, non-judgmental and impact-driven films that explore global issues through personal narratives.