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.

Born in Rasht, Iran, Milad Alami, a Swedish director, graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 2011. Since then, he has made short features like Void and Mini among others. They were both nominated for the Danish Film Awards Robert Prize in 2015. Void premiered at Directors Fortnight in Cannes in 2014. Alami’s first feature The Charmer (2017), premiered at San Sebastian, and won several prizes at festivals around the world, including the Fedeora Award at San Sebastian, the Silver Hugo Prize at Chicago, NDR Film Prize at Lübeck and Best Film at Warsaw. It was also nominated for the Dragon Award. Alami was the conceptualizing director for the series When the Dust Settles, released in February 2020. It was critically acclaimed and sold worldwide. His second feature, Opponent premiered at the Berlinale earlier this year.

Dennis Hopper, the quintessential Hollywood rebel, came to prominence in 1955 when he played a part in Rebel Without a Cause. Blacklisted from Hollywood in the early 1960s due to his recalcitrance, he made his way back when he married Hollywood royalty in the form of Brooke Hayward, a childhood friend of Peter Fonda. Together with novelist Terry Souithern and a few oothers, Fonda and Hopper wrote a road movie that changed Hollywood: Easy Rider. Made for very little money, it grossed more than $60 million, opening the studio doors for other young directors, like Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, and Elaine May (to name only three). Along with Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider heralded the birth of the New Hollywood Cinema.

Born in Berlin in 1984, Ílker Çatak grew up there and in Istanbul where he completed high school. He then studied film and television directing in Berlin and Hamburg. His graduation film Sadakat won the Student Oscar in Gold in 2015. He followed his debut feature film Once Upon a Time… Indianerland (2017) with I Was, I Am, I Will Be (2019), which won Best Screenplay at Filmfest München and the Bronze Lola at the German Film Awards. He has also lectured at universities in the USA, Germany, Turkey, Japan, Italy, and Greece. The Teachers’ Lounge captured the Best Film prize at the recent German Film Awards.

Simão Cayatte was born in Lisbon in 1984. He studied theatre at Goldsmiths University London and film at Columbia University in New York. As an actor he has worked with directors such as Werner Schroeter, Stan Douglas, Cristele Alves-Meira, and Ivo Ferreira. He has written and directed several short films including The Trip (Festival de Cannes, Cinéfondation 2011) Miami (MotelX best short 2015) and Young Lady (Portuguese Academy Award for best short film 2017). He recently co-produced the Richard Stanley feature Color Out of Space and directed the TV Series Vanda, produced by SPi, La Panda and Legendary Pictures, which premiered at the Berlinale Series Market in 2022. He also teaches screenwriting through various lab programmes across Europe. Drifter, his first feature film, is produced by Ukbar Filmes and co-produced by Good Fortune (France) and Krakow Film Klaster (Poland).