Melanie Belmonte
Born in Spain, Melanie Belmonte has lived, studied and worked in Madrid, Barcelona, Andorra and Ireland. With 16 films produced, she is a multi-award winning independent film producer, director, and screenwriter thanks to her short films Matrixfication, Bodies and Balaam. Co-founder of the National Association of United Cineart Filmmakers and Artists. Founding Director of Belmonte Cine Arte. General Delegate of the International Femme Filmmakers Festival (London). Member of the Organizing Committee and Jury at numerous International Film and Television Festivals. She has made small forays as an actress and is also painter, digital artist and writer. Having published in more than 65 anthologies, her latest book Catarsis was released in January 2022 by Editorial Amarante.
Tommy Britt
Tommy Britt is a Professor of Film and Video Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He is the recipient of the University’s Teaching Excellence Award and the creator of several classes, including Ethics of Film and Video, Global Horror Film, and Advanced Visual Storytelling. Recent publications include “Death in Modern Film” from The Routledge History of Death since 1800, “‘Between Two Mysteries’: Intermediacy in Twin Peaks: The Return” from Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return, and “Came Back Haunted” from The Streaming of Hill House: Essays on the Haunting Netflix Adaptation.
Tyler A. Chase
Tyler A. Chase is a filmmaker and the founder of L’ORAGE Productions, which she began while studying at NYU Film School. Tyler makes films about subjects that she feels strong empathy for and works to exhume the many layers that define the human condition.
Tyler was a judge for the Socially Relevant Film Festival. Her work includes but isn’t limited to the feature documentary A Castle in Brooklyn, King Arthur (2020) with Golden Globe Award winner Brian Cox (YoFiFest 2020, Audience Choice Award), short documentary Sweet Soul in Exile which won the Berlin Short Film Festival Audience Award in 2020 and the short narrative film Animal Crackers (2012). Presently Tyler is completing post production for Blues for 475 Kent. Tyler was accredited by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership to attend the United Nations Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights Violations in Geneva, Switzerland and screened testimony from footage of her work surrounding A Castle in Brooklyn and Blues for 475 Kent.
Ranelle Golden
Ranelle Golden is an award-winning Director, Screenplay Writer, Producer, and Author. Ranelle’s multitude of talents extends to experience in music, writing, film, and television. Ranelle has written over 60 screenplays, produced several tv pilots, a short series now on Amazon, five feature films since 2019, multiple music videos, commercials, and dozens short format films. For years, she ran a successful performing arts school that over 400 students attended during her time.
Ranelle has published dozens of articles through the years. In addition, she has multiple children’s books, along with book one of the Twin Curse trilogy and a monologue book currently available on Amazon. Besides being a seasoned screenwriter and director, Ranelle brings her corporate experience in Management and Accounting to her film productions. After completing the screenplays for Texas Grit and Rockslide, she is attached to Direct them in 2023.
Ranelle Golden has experience in every creative industry division: music, writing, television, and film. Coupled with drive and ambition, she is…. unstoppable…
Michèle Jedlicka
Michèle Jedlicka is an active filmmaker, experienced photographer and writer living in the North West of NSW. She has a BFA and MFA in visual arts from the University of Illinois, and since then, has worked at every level of the of the job market, with a wide array of employment and experiences which serve her storytelling and vision of the world, which has a strong social justice agenda and imaginative theme. Michèle has made 10 films since 2018, her work has been selected for 16 international festivals with 6 winning awards. She champions smartphone filmmaking because it allows accessible filmmaking for all.
She is currently working on a draft of her novel, and considering an adaptation for film, curating her photography portfolio and collection of essays for her updated website, and planning to provide digital storytelling workshops for regional Australian communities.
Rodney Kimbangu
Rodney Kimbangu, a Congolese film producer, artist, and visual storyteller based in North America, has a background in Painting and Film production. His work has appeared in magazines, galleries, National Geographic, and numerous film festivals worldwide.
Now pursuing an MFA in Creative Technologies at Virginia Tech, he is working with Photogrammetry and extended Realities to recreate and display displaced Congolese artifacts as a means of softly repatriating them by giving them to his community using technology. The latest highlight of his life was when he received the “Rodney Kimbangu Achievement Award for Excellence in Film Production,” a student award named after him for his outstanding contribution to the film program at Berea College.
Quentin Lestienne
Quentin Lestienne graduated from ESRA film school Paris in 2000. He started out as an electrician on film shoots while he directed independent short films, video clips and commercials. Quentin now concentrates on personal projects in screenwriting and directing. His latest film small fish was developed through a workshop of documentaries and was finished with my young production company Objectif Lune. It deals with a reflexion of how to make organic movies, an issue that questioned me very much.
Oswaldo Salas
Multi awarded Peruvian movie, TV and theatre actor. His most important movie roles include: leading actor in the feature film Extirpator of Idolatries (Extirpador de Idolatrías), by Manuel Siles, in the role of police detective Waldo, leading actor in the short films Holestepper (Pisahueco) by Sergio Fernández Muñoz, in the role of professor Angel, and Sonata For A Calendar (Sonata Para Un Calendario) by Carmen Rosa Vargas, in the role of accountant Alfonso, roles for which he won 148 Best Actor accolades between awards and nominations. He performed 3 voices for the 3D animated Peruvian motion picture Rodencia y el Diente De la Princesa (A Mouse Tale) directed by David Bisbano. He has been International Judge at Thessaloniki Free Short Festival, Greece 2022; Festival Internacional de Cinema Independente, Brasil 2021; Reels International Film Festival, India 2021; Festival Internacional de Cine de León, México 2020 and 2018; Festival Internacional de Cine de Pasto, Colombia 2019 and 2016.
Darr Reitknecht
Creating whether film, drawing, painting or writing has been a deep seeded passion within me for as long as I can remember. I started filming using a Bolex 16mm using black and white film while in college. I graduated from Cleveland State University with a Bachelor’s in Film and Digital Media. I went on to acquire a Masters in Creative Writing from Full Sail University. Throughout college and after I’ve written several screenplays and created several short films some of which have gone on to win awards. The one thing I learned and still am learning to this day is don’t ever stop following your passion which in my case is creativity.
Mike Thompson
Mike Thompson is an award-winning filmmaker based in the Louisville, KY area. Starting out in the editing room and eventually working his way to cinematographer, then director, Mike has been at the helm of countless music videos, commercials, and short films.
Hakan Ünal
Hakan Ünal is s Turkish film director, writer, producer and script consultant. He graduated with a degree screenwriting from the University of Toronto in 2002. His debut short film Orange was selected by national and international film festivals. His second film Crack in the Wall made its world premiere at the Reykjavik International Film Festival, he was selected by Reykjavik Talents the same year. His short screenplay The Shell won the First International Screenplay Award at the 38th edition of Rhode Island International Film Festival. His most recent screenplay Purgatorio won Best Short Script at the Gulf of Naples Independent Film Festival, Best Short Script at the 8th edition of Festival Largos y Cortos de Santiago and Best International Screenplay Grand Prize at the 40th edition of Flickers Rhode Island International Film Festival. Hakan has been a jury member for the Firenze Filmcorti Festival and the International Film Festival for Children and Youth in Iran.
Andrea Ward
Andrea Ward is an award winning Director, Producer, Writer, Actress, Stunt Woman, Activist, Author and is the creator of Redemption Images. Andrea’s career began in the fashion industry but her attention has shifted to the film industry with the debut of her upcoming action feature Reborn Redemption. Andrea’s most recent short, Deception Street, was nominated for 15 awards and earned 8 wins. Andrea has invested her time and energy in telling untold and authentic stories inspired by her lived experiences, this inspired her to launch her program Life After the Storm for families affected by domestic violence to create a safe learning environment to pursue writing, music and film.
Parisa Zandbaf
Parisa Zandbaf was born in an artistic family in Tehran, Iran. Since her childhood, she has been engaged in arts; in 2017, she played as one of the leading performers in Siavash Asad’s ‘Pillow Man’ theatre. She has also been active in classical music and piano performance under the primary supervision of Peyman Yazdanian and others such as Hassan Zandbaf, Alireza Shafaghinejad, and Ramin Behna for years.
Upon obtaining her BA from the University of Tehran and her joint MA from The Netherlands and Spain, she started studying film directing at the Rome International Film School (Rome, Italy) and CREA (Amsterdam, Netherlands) and made independent short films on a freelance basis. In October 2021, she was a jury member at Amsterdam Independent Film Festival. Currently, she is studying film aesthetics for her Ph.D. at the University of Amsterdam as well as working on her new film project.
Les Zig
Les Zig is the author of August Falling (Pantera Press 2018), and Just Another Week in Suburbia (Pantera Press 2017), and Pride (Busybird Publishing 2017). His stories focus on characters facing adversity trying to find their place in the world.
He’s had three screenplays optioned, and unproduced screenplays place and shortlist in over one hundred competitions. He has also directed several short films. His stories and articles have been published in various print and digital journals.
