OUR PANELISTS

Ross McElwee is an American documentary filmmaker whose work blends autobiography, cultural observation, and humor. His breakthrough film Sherman’s March won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. McElwee has made ten feature-length documentaries, which have premiered at such festivals as Berlin, Cannes, and Venice three times.  He has received numerous career honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Pennebaker Award. In 2005, MoMA presented a full retrospective of his work, later shown in Paris, Seoul, Quito, Madrid, and Moscow.

Daniel Christian is a filmmaker, programmer, and writer based in Atlanta, Georgia. His feature documentary POSSUM TOWN premiered at the 2025 New/Next Film Festival and was an official selection at the 2026 Oxford Film Festival. He is a documentary programmer for the Atlanta Film Festival, and he co-curated the 2025 Ethics at the Movies screening series, a partnership between the Emory Center for Ethics and the Atlanta Film Society.  

In 2024, he edited the feature fiction film DO YOU SAY WHAT YOU MEAN? (dir. Win Marks). His 2020 short documentary NATCHEZ played at the First Look Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image and won the jury award for best film at the Stronger than Fiction Film Festival. Daniel worked in a variety of roles — assistant editor, second camera, and more — on the 2021 Oscar-shortlisted documentary PROCESSION (dir. Robert Greene), which premiered at Telluride and is distributed by Netflix. 

He has a master's degree (2019) from the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri, where he also completed his undergraduate degree studying magazine writing (2017). He has written about documentaries for Filmmaker Magazine, Paste, and other outlets.

Saelyx Finna is a dream-centric filmmaker and impact producer based in Akron, Ohio. Her feature debut is UNDER THE DREAM, a work of somatic cinema about the stakes for the future of the mind at night. Saelyx is the former artistic and executive director for Northwest Film Forum, the independent film center in Seattle, and founder of Context Moves, a consultancy specializing in film distribution and impact producing.

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As a filmmaker and researcher, Saelyx has presented on the neuroethics of dream technologies at the Interaction Design Association in Milan, the Dream Engineering Seminar led by neuroscientists from MIT, Casino Display in Luxembourg, ByDesign in Seattle, Grinnell College in Iowa, the Advaya Platform in the UK, and the International Association for the Study of Dreams in the Netherlands. 

Iyabo is the Founder and Co-Executive Director of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, a nonprofit whose mission is to nurture, amplify, and invest in the creative capacity and professional success of BIPOC women and nonbinary people working in the documentary industry, and which serves 5,000+ members globally. She previously held positions in artist development, program management, and funding at the Points North Institute, Topic.com, Kickstarter, Doc Society’s Good Pitch, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Tribeca Film Institute, and Gotham. In 2021, Iyabo was a recipient of DocNYC’s New Leader Award, was named a “Black Visionary'' by the Sundance Film Institute, and a Documentary Film Influencer by IndieWire. 

Iyabo Boyd is also a writer, director, and producer that strives to tell stories from under-explored perspectives, and to reflect the dynamic humanity of women and people of color. Her short ME TIME, a Black feminist comedy about self care and masturbation, played over 25 festivals in 2020 including Blackstar, Rooftop Films, and Miami Shorts Fest, and won 9 awards including Best Director at the Atlanta Comedy Film Festival. Her previous short FOREVER ALLIE, about a gay black man writing letters to his recently deceased cat, played the 2014 Seattle, Atlanta, and Boston LGBT Film Festivals. She's in development on the feature KAYLA & EDDIE EN FRANÇAIS, a collaboration with her dad, about an estranged Black father and daughter reconnecting in Paris. For this project, Iyabo was a fellow in the Sundance Film Festival’s Talent Forum, the Sundance Film Institute’s Screenwriting Intensive, IFP’s No Borders Project Forum, and was awarded a SFFILM Rainin Screenwriting Grant. 

Kitty Hu is a queer, Chinese documentary filmmaker and and Advocacy and Talent Programs Manager at BGDM. They’re also a co-founder of Shoes Off Media, an independent production company centering storytellers with lived experiences both in front of and behind the lens. As the daughter of immigrants, Kitty’s work applies community-centered documentary tactics to amplify character-driven stories that reflect the work of our social movements, looking at topics like labor, housing, culture, migration and climate. As an impact producer and narrative strategist, she has built campaigns and messaging for initiatives relating to climate justice, Asian American communities, and civic engagement. 

She recently directed the Emmy Award-winning L.A. Rebellion: A Cinematic Movement (PBS Artbound) and produced Taste the Nation (Hulu), Wild Hope (PBS), Take Out with Lisa Ling (HBO Max), America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston (PBS). Her personal short documentary, Golden Boy, played in festivals nationally including DOC NYC and LAAPFF. Her independent documentary features have been supported by California Humanities, Kartemquin Films, NeXTDoc, and National Park Service. Kitty has also served as a juror for LA Asian Pacific Film Festival and The Shorenstein Center, and was a mentor for Cinema Next. She also supports impact and advocacy opportunities at Brown Girls Doc Mafia and is a proud member of the Asian American Documentary Network and Global Impact Producers Alliance.

Emily Mkrtichian is an award-winning filmmaker and artist whose work explores alternative archives and visionary futures of the SWANA region across documentary, fiction, and expanded media. Her feature documentary There Was, There Was Notpremiered internationally at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival, where it received the Audience Award and First Special Mention. The film went on to screen at True/False, DOC NYC, SXSW London, and major festivals worldwide, won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Golden Apricot International Film Festival, and was acquired by Watermelon Pictures for theatrical and digital release in North America. Her work has been described as “a fiery, feminist wartime fable” (Hammer to Nail) and “deeply felt and beautifully made” (Atom Egoyan). 

Mkrtichian’s previous films include the documentary short Motherland (Full Frame; Best Documentary Short, Copenhagen International Film Festival) and the fiction short Transmission (BFI Flare). Her multimedia installation Luys i Luso, created with Tigran Hamasyan, has been exhibited internationally.

Her projects have been supported by Creative Capital, Sundance Institute, Chicken & Egg Pictures, and UnionDocs, among others. She is currently developing Portals, supported by Creative Capital, and is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Arts at the University of Utah.

Sharon Liese is an Emmy Award-winning director who is passionate about telling stories that move people. Her film, THE FLAGMAKERS (NatGeo, Disney+), won the Emmy for Outstanding Short Documentary (2023) and was Oscar shortlisted. Her short documentary, PARKER, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and is distributed through The New Yorker. Her HBO feature documentary, TRANSHOOD, won the Audience Award at AFI. Sharon’s film, THE GNOMIST (CNN Films), won more than 15 awards. Sharon also created and executive produced Pink Collar Crimes (CBS), High School Confidential (WeTV), and many other projects for premium networks and streamers.

Sasha Alpert is a three-time Emmy Award-winning producer with significant experience in both documentaries and unscripted television. Alpert produced AUTISM: THE SEQUEL (HBO), which revisits the subjects of the Oscar shortlisted AUTISM: THE MUSICAL (HBO) which she also produced. Additionally, she produced TRANSHOOD (HBO), which won the Audience Award at the AFI Festival. Prior to that, she produced THEY CALL US MONSTERS (PBS/Netflix), VALENTINE ROAD (HBO), and SHADOW BILLIONAIRE (MSNBC). As an executive at Bunim/Murray Productions, she created and managed two award-winning divisions. She recently founded her own company - Hope Street Projects.

Paul Matyasovsky is a producer with over 15 years of experience in non-fiction storytelling. Paul has produced 20 seasons of National Geographic’s unscripted series Wicked Tuna and its spin-off, Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks, as well as other docu-reality hits like Ghost Hunters, and Stone Cold Takes on America. He also co-produced the 2020 independent documentary, THE HOUSE IN BETWEEN, about unexplained phenomena in a small Mississippi town and consulted on Sharon Liese’s film, PARKER, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023.

Derek is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker who has edited dozens of documentaries ranging from impactful exposés of institutional corruption (including THE INVISIBLE WAR, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary), to celebrated profiles of legendary performing artists (like Emmy Award-winning, THE BEE GEES: HOW CAN YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART). SEIZED is the fifth film that Derek has edited to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

• Jackson Montemayor DP’d Sharon Liese’s film, PARKER, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. He was an additional cinematographer on Sharon’s Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-shortlisted film, THE FLAGMAKERS. His work appears on HBO Max, Disney+, NatGeo, and Peacock. He works commercially for Liquid Death, Sam’s Club, Wendy’s, and Cheerios.

Rachel Lauren Mueller is an award-winning documentary director, journalist and cinematographer from the Colorado mountains and her films focus on themes of power, spirituality and rural life. She is a 2025 Film Independent Fellow and her latest film (currently in post-production) was shortlisted two years in a row for the Whicker Awards/Sheffield DocFest pitch, participated in the DOK Leipzig Co-Pro Market, and will pitch to impact organizations this spring at the Geneva International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights. With her background in anthropology and investigative journalism, Rachel creates films that interrogate power structures while embracing expansive imagination. Her work has been featured in Al Jazeera, The New York Times and PBS and covers topics such as abuse cover-ups in juvenile detention centers, pagan white supremacist take-overs of small towns, and the repurposing of religious rites for queer people. Her work has been awarded by the Dart Center for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, received the Reva and David Logan Prize for Investigative Reporting and was a finalist for a Livingston Award. As an organizer with the Video Consortium, Rachel works to support a thriving nonfiction filmmaking community in the Twin Cities. Supporters of Rachel's films include Just Films | Ford Foundation, Film Independent, International Documentary Association, Rogovy Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, UnionDocs, IF/Then Shorts, among others. She has a Master’s of Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. Rachel lives in Minneapolis where she attempts, in vain, to get her wisteria to bloom.

Nick Berardini is an accomplished writer/director/journalist with experience in fiction and nonfiction film and television, magazine journalism, and podcasts. His directorial debut was a feature length documentary, KILLING THEM SAFELY, produced by Academy Award winner Glen Zipper and Sundance winner James Goncalves. The film premiered in World Competition at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it was bought for North American distribution by IFC/Sundance Selects. KILLING THEM SAFELY received wide critical acclaim, featuring dozens of profiles in prominent publications, including Vanity Fair, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, and the Guardian. Aside from his filmmaking, Nick’s focused on high-impact journalism both as a writer and podcast host, including a podcast for BONE VALLEY producer Lava for Good/iHeart that won the 2025 Signal Award for best documentary and his first feature as a contributing writer for The New Yorker, out in 2026. Nick has a specialty in based on a true story film/television, partnering with HOUSE OF CARDS and MORNING SHOW writer/producer Bill Kennedy for multiple fictionalized projects based on his work. He is a 2009 graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, where he also played four years on the men’s basketball team.

Eric Hynes was recently named Director of Film Curation and Programming at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York. He was previously Senior Curator of Film at Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York, where he led year-round programming as well as the annual First Look Festival, originating the Working on It sidebar for public-facing work-in-progress presentations. As a critic and journalist he’s written for outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Film Comment, Rolling Stone, Slate, New York magazine, Sight & Sound, the Village Voice, and Reverse Shot, where he has been a staff writer since 2003. He’s served on festival juries at Sundance, SXSW, CPH:DOX, Dok Leipzig, DokuFest, Cinema du Reel and many others, and for three years was writer-in-residence at the Sundance Institute Documentary Edit & Story Lab.