Bedatri D. Choudhury is The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Arts and Entertainment Editor. Before this, she worked extensively with documentary films, particularly in the areas of program management and commissioning. She was most recently the Managing Editor of Documentary magazine, and is a programmer with DOCNYC, True False, and SFFILM. An alumna of the NYFF Critics Academy, Sundance and SXSW Press Inclusion Initiatives, the National Critics’ Institute, and Berlinale Talents, she can often be heard on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour.

James M. Johnston produced and directed Second Unit for the films The Green Knight, The Old Man and The Gun, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, and the upcoming Mother Mary from A24. He also directed Second Unit for Disney’s Peter Pan & Wendy and Netflix’s Last Letter From Your Lover. He has directed multiple short films that have played to acclaim at festivals around the world, including the award-winning Melville, which IndieWire called one of the best American short films of 2015. Up next is his feature debut, Strawweight.

A veteran of the independent film scene, Ryan Krivoshey founded the award-winning distribution company Grasshopper Film in 2015, hailed as “one of the most artistically daring of distributors” (The New Yorker). With its adventurous slate, Grasshopper has built a reputation for introducing audiences to provocative documentaries and bold works from both emerging and celebrated filmmakers. In 2025, Ryan co-founded Correspondent, where he serves as President, a production company committed to developing artistic, cinematic, and boundary-pushing films.

Vera Brunner-Sung makes films exploring the intersections of identity and place. Her work has been presented at festivals, museums, and galleries internationally, including Sundance, the Torino Film Festival, CPH:DOX, Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, MoMA PS1, San Francisco International Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Images, and the San Diego Asian Film Festival. Her first feature, Bella Vista, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2014 (Bright Future); her award-winning sophomore feature Bitterroot premiered in the US Narrative Competition at the 2024 Tribeca Festival. She is on the faculty in the Department of Radio/Televison/Film at Northwestern University.

Ashton Campbell is an Emmy award winning documentary director. He’s been in the industry for over 25 years and loves telling stories visually. So much so that he is now the Festival Director of the Oak Cliff Film Festival in additon to being a Partner at the historic Texas Theatre. His passion for improving the film and media community in Dallas has led him to become the Treasurer of the Dallas Producers Association and he occasionally teaches a documentary class at the Mediatech Institute. Recently, he joined the advisory committee for Screen Dallas.

Kelsey Taylor left her rural Washington to attend Loyola Marymount University, earning a degree in Film Production and minors in Film Studies and Music. Kelsey’s career began as a cinematographer and camera assistant before transitioning into directing. Her breakthrough sci-fi short, Alien: Specimin, was created through an initiative with 20th Century. Kelsey’s debut feature, To Kill a Wolf, is a modern reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood told through the lens of sexual grooming. The film premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival and was theatrically released 2025. Kelsey is a DGA member, and 2024 Film Independent Fellow.

Eric Dawson is Manager of the Knox County Public Library’s Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection. Previously, he served as head of the Library’s A/V archive, TAMIS. He is a writer and archival filmmaker whose films include Electric Appalachia and Suttree.

Eleni Palis is an Assistant Professor of English and Cinema Studies at the University of Tennessee. She is the author of the book Classical Projections: The Practice and Politics of Film Quotation (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Amanda Thornton works at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but her passion has always been movies. She previously managed film festivals nationwide for Regal and has volunteered at Nashville and Knoxville Film Festivals.