Mourning Sacrifice is a contemporary detective noir short film that explores how even the most altruistic love can turn monstrous.
Joanna Fernandez
Joanna Fernandez is a genre writer and director with a BFA from NYU and an MFA from USC, where she earned the Jeffrey Jones Award and Fox Fellowship. Her film Seraphim won the Jury Award at the 2023 Austin Film Festival, showcasing her focus on myth, morality, monsters, and scapegoats.
Alex Heller
Alex Heller’s debut feature The Year Between starring J. Smith-Cameron and Steve Buscemi is a mental illness comedy that received praise from the New York Times, Variety, and NPR. It premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and is streaming on Peacock. She is a Sundance Fellow from Chicago.
Manu Zilveti
Manu Zilveti is a Brazilian director from a Bolivian immigrant family, addressing aspects of the non-belonging feeling. Zilveti directed There’s No Sea In This Town (2024 Moscow International Film Festival) and Miss You Perdularia (2025 Sundance Film Festival), and studies at the International Film and TV School in Cuba (EICTV).
Roxy Sophie Sorkin
Roxy Sophie Sorkin is an American writer, director, and actress. She is best known for her women-led comedies and her breakout short Vodka that premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. Sorkin has an unrelenting knowledge of RuPaul’s life and cried vigorously when she first saw Lady Bird.
Dominic Yarabe
Dominic Yarabe is an award-winning filmmaker, interdisciplinary artist and 2024 MacDowell fellow. Her work has screened at several venues including the Sundance Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and True/False Film Festival. Yarabe received her MFA in documentary film from Stanford University and MA in visual culture from Brown University.
Chelsea Christer
Chelsea Christer began her filmmaking career in San Francisco. Her work centers on character-driven narratives, often exploring themes of identity, ambition, and human connection. Her feature-length debut, the award-winning music documentary Bleeding Audio, was released to critical acclaim. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their dog, Sagan.
Montana Mann
Montana Mann is a Persian American award-winning writer and director from Virginia. Her latest short, Azi, won the SAGIndie Award at the 2024 HollyShorts Film Festival. The feature version was accepted into the Film Independent 2024 Fast Track. As part of the southwest Asian/North African diaspora, her work explores identity when living between two cultures.
Ash Goh Hua
Ash Goh Hua is a filmmaker working between New York and Singapore, telling personal stories that reveal the inherently embodied politics of relation, society, and culture. Goh was named one of the 25 New Faces of Film by Filmmaker Magazine in 2022 and is a 2024 Berlinale Talent.