After earning a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy, Patricia Rozema established herself with her internationally celebrated first feature I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, which debuted at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. There, it won the Prix de la Jeunesse, the first of many recognitions including being voted one of Canada’s Top 10 Films. Other highlights: writing and directing the lesbian love story When Night is Falling and Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, as well as co-writing HBO’s Grey Gardens starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange (PEN Screenwriter's Award, an Emmy Nomination, and a Golden Globe nomination). Her film Six Gestures earned her a Grammy nomination and an Emmy. She adapted & directed the apocalyptic thriller Into The Forest with Elliot Page and Evan Rachel Wood. For the small screen, In Treatment, Anne with an E, Mozart in the Jungle and the pilot for Netflix’s hit series Sex/Life. Rozema is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Iram Haq is a Norwegian Pakistani filmmaker. Haq began writing and directing in 2004. Her first short Trofast premiered at the 2004 Venice Film Festival. In 2009, she wrote and directed Skylappjenta, later selected at Sundance Film Festival. Her feature debut I Am Yours (2013) and her second feature What Will People Say (2017) both premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Chaitanya Tamhane is an independent filmmaker based in Mumbai. Tamhane’s debut feature film Court premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2014, where it was awarded the Best Film - Orizzonti and the Lion of the Future award. It went on to win several awards at film festivals worldwide and was India’s official entry for the 2016 Oscars.

In 2016, Tamhane was selected to be mentored by Alfonso Cuarón as part of the Rolex Mentor-Protégé Arts Initiative. His second film, The Disciple, had its World Premiere in 2020 at the Venice Film Festival in competition, where it was awarded the Golden Osella for Best Screenplay and the FIPRESCI award. The film was released as a Netflix Original and was globally acclaimed as one of the best films of the year.

Ann Marie Fleming is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker, writer, and artist. Coming from a peripatetic, multi-racial heritage, her themes often involve family, history, and memory. She has had 16 films premiere at TIFF and won Best Canadian Short twice. Her last feature, Window Horses, was on the TIFF Top Ten List, and You Take Care Now is on the TIFF list of Essential Canadian Cinema.

Director-screenwriter Anne Émond lives and works in Montreal. Since the beginning of her career, all of her films were well received and acclaimed — she has presented seven short films, among them Naissance and Sophie Lavoie. She directed her first feature film, Nuit #1 (2011), followed by Our Loved Ones (2016), Nelly (freely adapted from the life and work of Quebec writer Nelly Arcan, 2016), and her most recent, Young Juliet (2019).

Currently, Émond is working on her next feature film, La Meute.

Nathan Morlando is an award-winning Toronto-based film and television director.

Most recently he executive produced and directed the full final season of the International Emmy Award winning series Cardinal. His most recent film Mean Dreams received its World Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight and made its North American premiere as a Special Presentation at TIFF. His debut feature Citizen Gangster premiered at TIFF as a Special Presentation and won TIFF’s Best Canadian First Feature Award.

Morlando graduated from the Philosophy and Religious Studies program at the University of Toronto.

Albert Shin is an award-winning Korean Canadian filmmaker based out of Toronto. He co-founded the production company Timelapse Pictures along with fellow filmmaker, Igor Drljaca. His work as a writer-director includes In Her Place and Disappearance at Clifton Hill. His work as a producer include The White Fortress, The Stone Speakers, and The Waiting Room.

Jennifer Holness is a happy workaholic. A writer, producer, and director, she is the first Black woman in Canada to win a CSA (Gemini) for best writing. She is also the 2021 Indiescreen Producer of the Year and a 2022 WIFT Creative Excellence Award winner.

Her recent feature doc, Subjects of Desire, has won numerous festival awards and was a 2021 TIFF top 10 film.

Her narrative feature films include Home Again and Love, Sex and Eating the Bones, with the latter winning a Best First Feature award at TIFF.

Luisa Alvarez Restrepo is a Colombian Canadian film executive, cultural programmer, and filmmaker. Her work focuses on representation, inclusion, and access in the industry. She has previously worked for major organizations like TIFF and WarnerMedia with a focus on spotlighting underrepresented talent. She is currently at ACTRA Toronto as Manager: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging.

Lisa Haller has worked in film-festival programming and strategy for more than 10 years. She is currently the Senior Short Film Programmer at the Whistler Film Festival. Previously, she worked on the Toronto International Film Festival programming team as the Canadian film manager, as well as a programmer for TIFF, TIFF Kids, and Canada’s Top Ten. Haller holds a BA (Hons) in Film Studies and History from Queen’s University, and a master’s degree in Communication and Culture at York University and Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson). She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia with her husband and rambunctious twin toddlers.

Sally Lee is the Executive Director of the Canadian Independent Screen Fund for BPOC Creators, as well as a Board member at the CONTACT Photography Festival and Wavelength Music. Formerly the executive director of the Reel Asian Film Festival and artists’ rights group CARFAC Ontario, she has also held staff, board, and advisory positions at TIFF, Soulpepper Theatre, LIFT, Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, Images Festival, Coalition of Canadian Independent Media Arts Distributors (VUCAVU.com), Workman Arts, Toronto Arts Council Visual and Media Arts Committee, and Access Copyright.

Thyrone Tommy is an award-winning filmmaker and alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre’s Directors Lab and TIFF Talent Lab. Thyrone’s films have been celebrated internationally at over 30 festivals, including his short Mariner, which premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, won the Lindalee Tracey Award, and was named one of TIFF Canada's Top Ten shorts of the year before premiering online as a Vimeo Staff Pick. Learn to Swim, his debut feature, premiered at TIFF 2021 and was chosen as one of Canada’s Top Ten Films of the year.

Ida Yoshinaga, an assistant professor of science-fiction film at the Georgia Institute of Technology, teaches cultural screenwriting; science-fiction film and TV; and the transmedia cinematic work of Indigenous directors, scripters, and producers. Raised on Maui, the sansei feminist helps produce Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander films and serves as secretary of NETPAC/USA. MIT Press will publish her co-edited collection of thinkpieces, Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction, in December 2022.

Diana Ashimova is a festivals programmer, NETPAC member, film producer, artistic director of BASTAU IFF. Born in 1984 in Kazakhstan, she graduated inn 2006 from Ablai Khan Kazakh University of International Relations and World Languages. In 2009, she took filmmaking at the New York Film Academy in LA. In 2019, she graduated from Turan University with an MA degree in filmmaking. Ashimova has worked as a program director and program consultant for many international film festivals in Kazakhstan and abroad. In 2019, she founded A Team, a film production company to support young filmmakers in Central Asia produce and promote their films to the international film festivals. The company produced several films that were in the official selection of many major film festivals and wonseveral awards.

For more than four decades, Andrea Crozzoli has been the director of Cinemazero and the editor of CinemazeroNotizie. In 1982, he co-founded Le giornate del cinema muto (Pordenone Silent Film Festival). He has been a member of the SNCCI (National Film Critics Union) since 1986, and collaborates as a film critic for the daily Il Piccolo of Trieste. For five years he was the artistic director of Ambiente-Incontri (Environmental Film Festival). He has edited various monographs, including 8 1/2 Fellini’s Journey. In 2019, Appunti Corsari published a collection of his writings.

Andrew Kendall is the Head of the Department of Language and Cultural Studies at the University of Guyana. His teaching is primarily in contemporary literature and film studies in the areas of postcolonial thought, gender, and sexuality. He is also a film and cultural critic with specific interest in political cinema and representations of loneliness and isolation in 21st century film.

Márcio Sallem has been a Brazilian film critic since 2010 and is also a film teacher, creator, and editor of Cinema com Critica. He is affiliated with the Online Film Critics Society and Critics’ Choice Association, and is a member of the 24th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival’s FIPRESCI Jury and the 39th and 44th São Paulo International Film Festival’s Juries.

Marriska Fernandes is a Toronto-based entertainment reporter and film and TV critic with more than a decade of experience in the industry. She’s the host of Telefilm’s Maple Popcorn podcast and contributes to the Toronto Star, EverythingZoomer.com, Exclaim.ca, Complex.ca, SHARP, and Elle Canada. She’s a Tomatometer-approved critic and a member of the Critics Choice Association and the Toronto Film Critics Association.

Born in Finland, Max Borg currently resides in Switzerland. Borg writes about film, television, festivals, and streaming in print and online publications in Switzerland, Italy, and the United States, and also works as a translator for the Locarno Film Festival and the Berlinale. He has served on critics juries in Venice, Zurich, Gothenburg, and at Visions du Réel.