Steffi Niederzoll was born in Nuremberg in 1981. She studied audiovisual media arts at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) and the Escuela de Cine y Television in Cuba (EICTV) from 2001-2007. Her short films have successfully screened at numerous renowned national and international film festivals such as the Berlinale.

In addition to her film work, she is also involved in interdisciplinary artistic works. She was a member of the core group of the collective ‘1000 Gestalten’, which caused a worldwide sensation with its performance during the G20 summit in Hamburg. Her collective works have been presented at the Brecht Festival, the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde and Vejle, Denmark, among others. Seven Winters in Tehran is her first feature-length documentary.

Born in 1980, Houman Seyedi is a prolific director, scriptwriter, editor, and actor in Iranian cinema and theatre. He’s a well-known movie actor in the Iranian film and TV industries and has acted in 44 feature and TV films and series, including Asghar Farhadi’s Fireworks Wednesday. He runs one of the most prestigious film schools in Iran and teaches film acting; he has introduced many young actors to Iranian cinema. He made his feature directing debut with Africa, in 2011, and has received numerous national and international awards for his films.

Selected Filmography: All My Personal Belongings, Moved (short, 09), Asghar Peykan, His Wife and A Little More Unconventional Life (short, 10), Africa (11), 13 (13), Confessions of My Dangerous Mind (15), The Sound and the Fury (16), Sheeple (18), The Frog (15-episode series, 20-21), World War III (22)

Costa Rican and Panamanian, Kattia G. Zúñiga holds a degree in physical therapy and graduated as a dancer from the Danza Abierta program at the University of Costa Rica. She has collaborated as a producer and starred in various audiovisual projects, including the feature films Viaje by Paz Fábrega and Nina y Laura by Alejo Crisóstomo. She directed, wrote, and produced the short films Es Cecilia (2012) and Cosas que no se rompen (2017). Sister & Sister is her feature debut.

Milena Aboyan was born a Yazidi Kurd in Armenia in 1992. In 2010, she began a four-year acting training program in Germany. During the program, she played parts in several theatrical productions. After receiving her acting degree, she changed disciplines and began to focus on writing. She started working as an assistant dramatic advisor for an ARD TV series. In 2015, she began studying screenwriting at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. In 2019 she won the Emden Screenplay Award. Elaha is her final film at the Filmakademie. It was awarded the ‘Kaiju Cinema Diffusion Prize’ at the Locarno Film Festival.

Maha Haj was born in Nazareth in 1970. She graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in English and Arabic literature. Her cinematic experience was derived from her work as an artistic designer on the production of The Time That Remains by Elia Suleiman, The Attack by Ziad Douairi, as well as On the Hill by Rafael Natjari.

She wrote and directed the short film Oranges (2009) and the documentary Behind These Walls (2010). In 2015 she shot her first feature film Personal Affairs which was selected in 2016 Cannes Film Festival’s Official Selection Un Certain Regard and critically acclaimed. The film also won the Haifa Film Festival’s Best Feature Award in 2016 and the Mediterranean Film Festival of Montpellier’s Critics’ Award, among others. Mediterranean Fever, her second feature, won the Best Screenplay award in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival last year.

Amarsaikhan Baljinnyam is a writer, actor, director, and producer who made history in the Mongolian cinematic world as the first Mongolian to step onto the international stage with his role as Ariq Boke (Kublai Khan’s brother) in the Netflix original series Marco Polo. He has acted in more than 20 films. His first script, Faith, became a feature film that won three nominations at the Cinema Awards of Mongolia, including Best Movie of the Year; it was also that year’s highest grossing film. Harvest Moon is Baljinnyam’s debut film as a director.

Youssef Chebbi was born in Tunisia in 1984. After studying art, he directed two short films, Vers le Nord (2010) and Les Profondeurs (2012), both selected by several international festivals. In 2012 he codirected the documentary Babylon, which won the Jury Prize at the FID in Marseille and was presented at MoMA. Ashkal is his first feature.

Puk Grasten attended the European Film College in Denmark and moved soon thereafter to Paris to pursue a BFA in Film Production at EICAR. After Paris, Grasten went to the U.S. where she received an MFA in Film Production from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. At NYU Tisch, she made a short version of her debut feature film 37. The short premiered at Slamdance and won best student film at Big Apple Film Festival. Her debut feature film, 37 (2015), had its world premiere at the 38th Moscow International Film Festival where it won the Best Director prize and the Russian critics’ award for Best Film. Grasten received the Danish Arts Foundation’s award for outstanding work in cinema and the Carl Th. Dreyer award for a brave visual style of storytelling. There’s No Place Like Home is her second feature.

Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk is a Ukrainian author and filmmaker who graduated from the Kyiv National I.K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University. He was a participant in the Berlinale Talents program and the Locarno Film Academy. He is the founder of the script platform Terrarium. He was first noticed with his short film Weightlifter, an EFA contender, and winner of the Best Short Film Award in Angers. His first feature, Pamfir, was supported by TorinoFilmLab, MIDPOINT, and Cannes’ Cinéfondation.

Austėja Urbaitė was born in 1991. She grew up surrounded by nature, in a small village near Vilnius, Lithuania. In 2010, she began studying film directing at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. Her student short film entitled The Etude (Etiudas, 2013) earned considerable attention, and was a prelude to her highly acclaimed debut short The Bridges (Tiltai, 2015). Both of these movies received numerous nominations and awards on the film festival circuit. Remember to Blink (Per Arti, 2022) is Austėja’s first feature film.