ZANDASHÉ BROWN is happily a New Orleans—based writer/director born and bred in, and inspired by, southern Louisiana. Her work raises a Black femme lens to the tradition of Southern gothic horror. Brown’s directorial debut, Blood Runs Down, was one of five projects selected for the New Orleans Tricentennial Story Incubator Grant in 2018. It has since screened and won awards at dozens of festivals in the U.S. and abroad. Brown’s narrative and documentary work has been supported by Kickstarter, Create Louisiana, the New Orleans Video Access Center and the New Orleans Film Society, where she now serves as Artist Development Coordinator and Programming Manager.

MONICA SORELLE is a Haitian-American filmmaker born and based in Miami. She has produced and worked as a department head on projects for Film Independent, A24, HBO and PBS. Her latest project, T, directed by Keisha Rae Witherspoon, has been selected by Sundance Film Festival, won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at Berlinale and won additional awards at the Miami Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival and BlackStar Film Festival. Sorelle was named a 2019 Cinematic Arts Resident at Oolite Arts and currently is writing and developing her feature film directorial debut, Mountains.

NADIA P. MANZOOR is a Pakistani-British writer, actor and producer. Her autobiographical solo show Burq Off! sold out to international audiences and was featured in the award-winning documentary The Pakistani Four. Her comedy web series Shugs & Fats won a Gotham Award for breakthrough short-form series in 2015 and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and Tacoma in 2016. Shugs & Fats was in development with Amazon Studios in 2019 and is currently partnered with Likely Story and Ilana Glazer as they search for a new home. Manzoor was named one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker magazine in 2016. Her work has led her to be interviewed by Christiane Amanpour, Terry Gross, Deepak Chopra and Marc Lamont Hill, among others. Her TEDx Talk, “The Story of Identity,” is a tip of the hat to where the soul of her work lives.

KHAULA MALIK is an award-winning, Pakistan-born, Virginia-bred filmmaker whose work centers on trauma, womanhood and intersectional identity. Malik got her start acting in award-winning shows for Pakistani television. Her short film How the Air Feels premiered at AFI Docs in 2017 and won the National Board of Review Student Grant Award. That same year, she received the BAFTA NY John Grist Scholarship. She has served on the review committee for the Peabody Awards, the IFP Documentary Lab and the Brooklyn College Student Film Festival. She has been a three-time semifinalist for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and participated in the 2018 Hot Springs Emerging Filmmaker program. She produced the feature film I’ll See You Around and has been featured in The New York Times, Sight & Sound and Brown Girl Magazine, as well as on CUNY TV. Malik received her MFA in Film from the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema.

CRYSTAL KAYIZA was raised in Oklahoma and is now a Brooklyn-based filmmaker. Named one of Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, she is a recipient of the 2017 Jacob Burns Film Center Woman Filmmaker Fellowship and the 2018 Sundance Ignite Fellowship. Her film Edgecombe, which received the 2018 Gold Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival, was an official selection of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired for distribution by the PBS series POV. Her most recent film, See You Next Time, which aired on Starz, was an official selection of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and appeared in The New Yorker Documentary series. Kayiza received a Heartland Emmy® award in 2012 for her film All That Remains, which profiles Boley, Oklahoma, one of the nation’s last all-Black towns.

JALENA KEANE-LEE is a director, cinematographer and producer who explores intergenerational trauma healing through an intersectional lens. Keane-Lee is the co-founder of Breaktide Productions, an all-women-of-color video production company rooted in intersectional solidarity. Breaktide has carried out national video campaigns for brands like Nike and Thinx, and its branded content has won two Cannes Lion awards. In 2019, Breaktide was named on the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts list of 100 changemakers. Keane-Lee produced a short film for Independent Lens and her films have screened at the UN, HIFF, CAAMFest and LAAPFF. She has been supported by NeXt Doc, the Jacob Burns Film Center Creative Culture Fellowship, PIC and Nia Tero.

MARY ANGÉLICA MOLINA is a writer and director who creates dark, funny, queer stories about seemingly unimportant Latinxs in extraordinary circumstances. She is a staff writer on Showtime’s On Becoming a God in Central Florida and recently worked on Disney Freeform’s reboot of Party of Five. She was selected as an AFI Directing Workshop for Women fellow with her half-hour comedy Fernanda. Another half-hour comedy titled Papi was included in the 2019 Sundance Reading Series and was selected for the 2018 Sundance Episodic Lab. Molina is also a 2017 Sundance New Voices Lab fellow and a 2013 Sundance Screenwriters Intensive fellow. Valentina (2017), a short film about a woman with a talking vagina, was licensed by HBO and aired globally. She also wrote, produced and directed Dichos (2018), a comedy web series featuring an impressive selection of female-identified Latinx talents. Molina was born in the Colombian tropics and grew up in Queens, New York.

SUSAN O’BRIEN is a filmmaker and art director based in New York. She began her career as an assistant to Academy Award®—nominated writer and director John Sayles. O’Brien has worked for New York Women in Film & Television, EightVFX NY, aWHITELABELproduct and Merman and is currently represented by Content Muse. She recently participated in the Atlanta Film Society Airport Shorts program by creating a film that will screen at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport for a year. Through her production company, Red Beret Productions LLC, her film and music video work has been featured at the Smithsonian and at film festivals globally, as well as on MTV and online at NYLON, Bust, The Hype Magazine, Booooooom TV and World of Wonder. Her mission is to make films, music videos and social content that provide a platform for womxn-identifying artists and marginalized groups.

GISELLE BYRD is a native of Augusta, Georgia, and is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, where she received her BFA in Performing Arts. She moved to New York upon graduation in 2014, starting her career in casting and as an arts fundraising representative. Byrd currently serves as a talent management assistant at The Katz Company, a full-service personal talent management company representing artists in all areas of the entertainment industry. She hopes to educate others on the journey of Black trans people in America through her art and work behind the table in management. She aims to inspire members of her community to find their voice and showcase the greatness they possess.