Rex Shannon, a remarkably famous writer-director, is the recipient of many dazzling accolades, including achieving the title of Rival in World of Warcraft Season Three 2v2 arena, mage-tanking Gruul’s Lair as a 12-year-old, consistently reaching high Platinum playing top lane in League of Legends, obtaining several nukes in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 while boasting a K/D of 2.07, earning a lichess.org peak ELO of 1900 (classical), and making 5m+ low-level F2P pking with range/2h in Runescape (now OSRS).

Tanner D. Masseth is a Chicago-based filmmaker, animator, and VFX artist. His practice emphasizes the experimental application of combining virtual environments, 3D modeling, and animation with live-action footage. He has a number of awards for his internationally-screened short films, including winning best avant garde short for Portrait 001: Security Guard (2023) at Drunken Film Fest Oakland and the Chicago Award for Sing Our Song When the World Ends (2024) at Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Tanner has co-directed and co-produced two internet-based omnibus feature films involving dozens of contributors from all over the world. Coin Celleil (2023), a remake of Chris Marker's Sans Soleil premiered at Sara's Gallery in New York City in September 2023. Man with a Movie Camera (2025) had its world premiere as the opening night film at the 35th Onion City Experimental Film Festival. Masseth's first feature-length solo animated project, Lodgers of Euclid, is currently in production. He is a board member of the Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Zaire Love [azairelovejunt] is an award-winning filmmaker, music maker, writer, and educator whose mission is to honor, amplify, and immortalize the stories and voices of the Black South focusing most of her work in Memphis, TN, and Mississippi. While Zaire’s work extends beyond the Black South, bringing honor to it, its people, its traditions, and its cultures in the past, present, and future is her life’s work.

Zaire has been awarded honors at multiple film festivals, made history by being the first filmmaker to ever win Best Hometowner Documentary Short and Best Hometowner Narrative Short at the Indie Memphis in the same year [2023], created work for PBS, and granted the If/Then and HULU grant to produce her award-winning short documentary, SLICE, which is now streaming on The New Yorker.

Love is a graduate of Spelman College [BA], Houston Baptist University [M. Ed], and the University of Mississippi [MFA].

Stephen graduated from the University of Santo Tomas in 2012 with a BS in Nursing before deciding to take up a career in film-
making instead. He is an alumnus of the NAFF Fantastic Film School 2023 and has lived and worked in Manila as a freelance production sound-recordist, sound-designer and sometimes writer for various films and commercials.

He also serves as a part time instructor for the film and media program of both the Ateneo De Manila University and CIIT College of Arts and Technology, where he teaches story development and editing. Currently, he has delved into directing his own projects with his latest short HITO being selected to compete in various international film festivals such as the Berlinale, Fantasia, Sitges and many more.

Emma D. Miller is a Gotham Award and Cinema Eye–nominated director and producer, and the founder of Marcona Media. Her projects have been supported by Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, Impact Partners, and Anonymous Content, among others, and have screened at festivals including Venice, Toronto, SXSW, and CPH:DOX. She is the director of the short documentary THE SCHOOL OF CANINE MASSAGE (SXSW 2024), a Vimeo Staff Pick. She is the producer of Elizabeth Lo's MISTRESS DISPELLER (Oscilloscope Laboratories), winner of 20 festival awards, as well as Iliana Sosa's WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND (ARRAY Releasing/Netflix), a New York Times "Critic's Pick." Emma is also the co-producer of LOVE+WAR (National Geographic Documentary Films / Disney+). Other credits include Showtime's COUPLES THERAPY, the Oscar-nominated short KNIFE SKILLS (The New Yorker), and the Oscar-shortlisted, Sundance award-winning feature UNREST (Independent Lens/Netflix). Emma is a 2023 Sundance Producers Fellow and 2024 JFI Filmmaker in Residence, and was named one of DOC NYC's "40 Under 40" and one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film." She is currently directing her feature debut, FATHER FIGURES.

Federica Foglia is a transnational visual artist and filmmaker and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at York University (Toronto). She is interested in issues of migration, displacement, women of the diaspora and finding a visual language to represent these experiences. Her practice revolves around tactile filmmaking, recycled cinema, archives, ecofeminism, and materialist cinema. She works within the domestic space to remediate found-footage movies, via a sculptural approach she intervenes directly on the celluloid body. Her works have been exhibited and won awards in several international art galleries and festivals, including Macau Art Garden, Images Festival, Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Ann Arbor Film Festival, International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Alicante, Bilbao Arte Foundation, Toronto International Film Festival, Antimatter [Media Art], Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Crossroads San Francisco, Festival du Nouveau Cinema Montreal.

Shirin Mori (they) is a San Francisco writer/director who enjoys channeling their nightmares into films, but would prefer not to live in a nightmare universe. Their short non-binary horror, Navel Gazer, won the Mrs. Festival Director's Award at Bizarroland and Best Thriller/Suspense Short Film at Another Hole in the Head, and was nominated for best screenplay by New Filmmakers Los Angeles. Shirin currently makes horror and documentaries, and is adapting Navel Gazer as a feature.

Jin Woo is a South Korean animation artist and VJ whose hand-drawn works have been showcased at Annecy, Ottawa, Animafest Zagreb, Supertoon, and other major festivals. Since 2014, she has worked and observed life across Asia and Europe, blending personal observation
with cultural narratives to explore human relationships and study bodies. Her award-winning films, including Illusion, Garisani, and SAN, have received honors such as ANIFILM Best Music Video, Supertoon Best Music Video, and the PIAFF Audience Award, captivating audiences worldwide.

Asuka Lin is a Japanese-Taiwanese writer/director known for their short films ‘Into the Emerald Sea’ (Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival, Athens International Video + Film Festival), and ‘A.I. Mama’ (London Short Film Festival, PST Art @ Hammer Museum). Their directorial work travels from anarchic cyberpunk to meditative folktales, united by themes of yearning and conflicting realities informed by current socio-ecological phases. They earned their BFA at the California Institute of the Arts in film/video, and is currently based in Chicago.

Lori Felker is an artist/filmmaker, teacher, and programmer. Her films study the ineloquent, frustrating, chaotic qualities of human interaction. She eschews any particular style or genre in favor of letting content and concerns guide the form. She loves every facet of filmmaking and has worked as cinematographer, editor, and/or actor for various artists and directors and has programmed for the Chicago Underground Film Festival and Slamdance.

Her award-winning short films and one feature documentary have screened internationally, and she is the recipient of a Fulbright, a 2025 Creative Capital Award and a Wexner Center for the Arts Film/Video Residency. She is an Assistant Professor at DePaul University and is currently in production on her first fiction feature film Patient (based on the short film of the same name, which was named Best US Narrative at the 2024 DFFO).

Cassie Shao is an animation director and animator currently based in Los Angeles. She works
across various fields, including film and television, music videos, experiential installations, and advertisements. Her filmography includes This is a Story Without a Plan, which won awards at
Fantoche, Ann Arbor Film Festival and Drunken Film Fest Oakland, and There Were Four of Us,
which won awards at China Independent Animation Film Forum and NFFTY.

Her animated works screened at film festivals worldwide, including Annecy, Slamdance, Animafest Zagreb,
SXSW, Dok Leipzig, Vienna Shorts, PÖFF Shorts, and ZINEBI.

Dave Paige is a filmmaker living in Los Angeles. His most recent short "Deep Tish" recently concluded its festival run and is available as a Vimeo Staff Pick and on Directors Notes; his prior short "Cuxball" is available on Short Of The Week and NoBudge.

Dave directs for TV as well, including Season 3 of Netflix's "Magic For Humans" and the TBS pilot "What The Hell Is Going On?? with Vic Berger," which he co-created with Vic Berger and Tim Heidecker. Recipient of the 2023 Independent Spirit Award for "Best New Non-Scripted Series", he is an Executive Producer on the HBO series "The Rehearsal," was a Supervising Producer on Comedy Central's "Nathan For You" and plays drums.