Beata Parkanová is a screenwriter and director who started her career as an author of both novels and children’s books. She graduated from FAMU (the Czech Film Academy) in 2015. Her first feature film was Chvilky (2018), which screened in the East of the West competition at the 2018 edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Word is her second feature.

Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Carmen Jaquier studied graphic design before making her first short film, Eat Me! and entering the Cantonal School of Art in Lausanne (ECAL). Her graduation film The Girls’ Grave received the Pardino d’argento at the Locarno Film Festival (2011). She then explored image and editing within the Aamen collective. Her films The River Under the Tongue and Wonderland (a collective feature film) were selected at the Locarno Film Festival in 2015. She also worked as director of photography on a few movies from artist Nagi Gianni, and on A Bright Light – Karen And The Process by Emmanuelle Antille, presented at the Festival Visions du réel (2018). Thunder is her first feature film.

Born in Mollet del Vallès (Barcelona) in 1980, Neus Ballús studied filmmaking and Creative Documentary at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). Her first feature-length film, La plaga (2013), premiered at the 63rd Berlinale Forum, was nominated for the European Film Awards (“European Discovery”), the LUX Prize Awards, the Goya Prizes, and has received more than 20 international prizes, including 4 Premis Gaudí and the prestigious and historical 57th Premi Sant Jordi to the Best Spanish First Film. Strongly interested in the boundaries between documentary and fiction filmmaking, she has specialized in scriptwriting, editing, and working with nonprofessional actors. After Staff Only (2019), The Odd-Job Men is her second fiction film.

Jakub ‘Kuba’ Michalczuk, born in 1986, fell in love with movies at his first job: he was a clerk in a a VHS rental store. That is also where his love for genre cinema began. He studied graphics and animation, and then moved on to editing. He worked for years as an editor, then VFX supervisor, and he finally became the CEO of a post-production company. Since 2010, he has been directing commercials. He has made more than 300 and is one of the top names in the Polish market. A desire to build real characters and stories that would move audiences followed naturally. Determined to enter the world of cinema, he has made his debut film, The In-Laws.

After having cut his teeth in the theatre as an assistant director, Fabien Gorgeart directed six short films between 2007 and 2016, all selected and awarded at numerous festivals and then broadcast on television, in France and abroad. In 2013, he won the Jury Prize at Clermont-Ferrand with Le Sens de l’orientation. In 2017, he directed his first feature film, Diane Has the Right Shape, in which Clotilde Hesme played the main role and which won the Jury Prize at the myfrenchfilmfestival. The Family is his second feature film.

Yorgos Goussis was born in 1986 in Athens and studied graphic design. He is one of the most well-known Greek comic-book artists, with many best-selling graphic novels, and many awards. In 2019, he made his debut as a film director with Arm Wrestler, a short documentary portrait that won the Greek Film Academy’s Best Greek Short Documentary award in 2020. His debut feature, Magnetic Fields, captured five Hellenic Academy Awards earlier this year: Best Film, Best First-Time Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress in a Leading Role (for Elena Topalidou), and Best Original Score.

Bogdan George Apetri is a Romanian filmmaker born in 1976 in Piatra Neamt. In 2010, he directed Periferic (Outbound). The film screened and won awards at prestigious festivals (Locarno, Toronto, Warsaw, Rotterdam, New Directors/New Films, Thessaloniki, Viennale). In 2019, he directed Neidentificat (Unidentified), which won the Special Jury Prize at the Warsaw International Film Festival. Miracol (Miracle) is his third feature film. As a producer working in the USA, Bogdan has produced many films that have won awards at the Sundance Film Festival, were selected for Cannes and other major festivals, and were distributed around the world. He teaches directing at Columbia University in New York.

Clara Roquet (born 1988) started her career co-writing the multiply awarded 10,000 KM (2014), alongside director Carlos Marques-Marcet. Soon thereafter, she started her first writing-directing venture, the short film El Adiós (2015), an EFA nominee that premiered at the Toronto IFF and became a BAFTA student award-winner. Since then, Clara has become a renowned screenwriter in Spain and Latin America, co‑writing films such as Petra by Jaime Rosales (Cannes Directors’ Fortnight 2018), También esto pasará by Daniel Burman, The Days to Come by Carlos Marques – Marcet (Rotterdam International Film Festival 2019), and The Red Virgin by Paula Ortiz, among others. She has grown as a director, as can be seen in her second multiple award-winning short Good Girls (2017). Moreover, in 2018 Clara directed two chapters of Tijuana, a series produced by Story House for Netflix. Libertad is her first feature film.

Flávia Neves graduated in Cinema and Literature from the Fluminense Federal University and studied screenwriting and Meisner Technique at the EICTV (Escuela Internacional de Cine e TV), in Cuba. At 16, she directed her first short film, Liberdade, which screened at FICA (International Environmental Film Festival). She has also worked as an assistant director and producer on short films and documentaries for cinema and TV, before and during her university studies. In 2019, she directed and scripted the series Amanajé, O Mensageiro do Futuro, aired by TV CULTURA. Fogaréu is her fiction feature debut. Currently, Flávia is developing her second feature film, Tempo do Poder, with the support of Ibermedia.

Juan Pablo González (b. 1984, Atotonilco el Alto, México) is a Mexican director whose work spans fiction and nonfiction. His debut short film The Solitude of Memory (2014) had its world premiere at the Morelia International Film Festival and its international premiere at IDFA. It received the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Short at Slamdance in 2015. His follow-up, the scripted La espera (2016), premiered at SXSW and won the Grand Jury Prize at the New Orleans Film Festival. In 2017, Juan Pablo’s experimental short, Las Nubes, premiered at the Festival de Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano en la Habana, then went on to play at Rotterdam (IFFR), True/False, and Lincoln Center in New York, and it received the Grand Jury Prize at Festival dei Popoli. His mid-length debut, Caballerango premiered at IDFA in 2018 and played at Ambulante, FICUNAM, BAM Cinema Fest, DokuFest, Guadalajara (FICG), and True/False, among many others. Dos Estaciones (2022) is his feature length debut. Juan Pablo’s body of work is largely set in his hometown of Atotonilco el Alto, and he was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2015. He has been a fellow of the prestigious Fund for Culture and Arts (FONCA) in Mexico and was awarded the 2021 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise. Juan Pablo is the co-director of the film directing program at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).