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Meet the jurors on our five features juries and our two shorts juries for SIFF 2022.
Feature film juries include New Directors, New American Cinema, Ibero-American, Official Competition, and Documentary. Short film juries include Documentary & Animated.
New American Cinema Competition
Adams is a prominent American film critic, an outspoken voice in the Hollywood community, and a founding participant in the Awards Site GoldDerby.com. A two-time Chair of the New York Film Critics Circle, she has been the in-house film critic for Us Weekly and The New York Post, and has written essays, celebrity profiles, and reviews for AARP, Variety, Yahoo! Movies, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Parade, Marie Claire, and The Huffington Post. She co-produced the Emmy-nominated Feud: Bette and Joan. Adams studied history at UC Berkeley and received her MFA from Columbia University. She is the author of the best-selling historical novels Bittersweet Brooklyn, The Last Woman Standing, and Playdate, which Oprah magazine described as “a witty debut novel.”
Ibero-American Cinema Competition
Aguilar is a journalist and film critic originally from Mexico City. In 2014, Aguilar was chosen as one of six young film critics to partake in the first Roger Ebert Fellowship organized by RogerEbert.com, the Sundance Institute, and Indiewire. Aguilar’s work has appeared in prestigious publications such as the Los Angeles Times, Variety, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wrap, Indiewire, Vulture, RogerEbert.com, and MovieMaker Magazine, among others. He is a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) and the National Society of Film Critics (NSFC).
Official Competition
An is the Head of Acquisitions at Roadside Attractions. She started her career in U.S. theatrical distribution more than a decade ago at First Independent Pictures, where she managed the release of films such as Big Fan. Since then she has acquired for Cohen Media Group and Samuel Goldwyn Films. Titles she has brought to the big screen include The Courier, Pinocchio, Judy, Peanut Butter Falcon, The Alpinist, Beatriz At Dinner, Lady Macbeth, Renoir, and the upcoming Call Jane. Before entering distribution, An worked on the post-production and marketing of Dark Matter starring Meryl Streep. She began her entertainment career at Endeavor after graduating from New York University with a degree in art history.
Official Competition
Ansen was a movie critic for Newsweek from 1977 to 2008. He was the Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Film Festival from 2010 through 2014, and is currently the Lead Programmer of the Palm Springs International Film Festival. He has written documentaries for TNT, HBO, and PBS on Greta Garbo, Groucho Marx, Bette Davis, and Elizabeth Taylor, and has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, Interview, Cosmopolitan, and other publications. In the 1990s he served for eight years on the selection committee of the New York Film Festival.
New Directors Competition
Brown is an award-winning film, television, and digital producer known for her highly acclaimed multiplatform repertoire as well as for championing inclusion and diversity in Hollywood both behind and in front of the camera, Brown has produced several critically acclaimed films and award-winning projects including Real Women Have Curves (directed by Patricia Cardoso), Dear White People (2015 Independent Spirit Awards Best First Screenplay), and HBO’s Project Greenlight (executive-produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck), among several others. Brown also served as an executive producer on Lee Daniels’ Star on FOX and Disney Channel’s Zombies. Prior to Gamechanger, Brown founded Duly Noted Inc., a company dedicated to ground-breaking narratives that use genre to challenge and advance our culture in a disruptive way. Brown’s dream is to change the world through film and TV – celebrating our differences while bringing us all closer together.
Documentary Cinema Competition
Browning is a filmmaker and film festival professional based in Los Angeles. Originally from Washington, D.C., Kimberley studied music and film at USC, then began her career working in production at Disney's Touchstone Television. She is the Head of Programming for the Catalyst Content Festival and is an Associate Short Film Programmer at Tribeca Film Festival. Browning is the founder and Festival Director of the Hollywood Shorts Film Festival, which launched in Los Angeles in 1998, and served as the Executive Producer of HBO Access, a development program for episodic writers and directors.
Her film credits include Archie's Final Project, which world-premiered and won the Silver Bear Award at Berlinale; feature documentary Uprooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance, which premiered on HBO Max in February; and the upcoming Acting Like Nothing Is Wrong. Other credits include All Hallow's Eve 2, Certified, Room 19, Earbuds: A Podcasting Documentary. Her episodic and nonscripted credits include programming for HBO, A&E Networks, CBS, NBC, ABC Signature, Rollingstone.com, People.com, Warner Brothers TV, Comedy Central, and RealNetworks.
Official Competition
Campbell has worked for Denver Film since 2009. He oversees the festival programming for Denver Film, including the Denver Film Festival. He has also held positions at the Sundance Film Festival, the LA Film Festival, the Palm Springs International Film Festival, Film Independent's Spirit Awards and EarthX Film Festival.
New American Cinema Competition
Carlin currently serves as Director of Theatrical Distribution and Sales for Oscilloscope Laboratories. Prior to that, he was Head of Theatrical Sales for Music Box Films from 2012-2015. He has worked on the theatrical releases of over a hundred films, including The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, Oscar nominee Monsieur Lazhar (2012), Oscar winner Ida (2015), and Oscar nominee Embrace of the Serpent (2016). Over the past year, he's enjoyed becoming a father, learning how to cook, and generally avoiding all the people he knows and cares about.
New Directors Competition
Clark is a longtime film-festival programmer, currently with Geena Davis’s Bentonville Film Festival and Sundance. Previously she was Executive Director of Slamdance, where she also led Feature Programming and served as Senior Programmer and Head of Filmmaker Relations at L.A. Film Fest. As a producer, Clark has released three independent features: Mo Perkins’ The Last Time You Had Fun, Mike Ott’s Lake Los Angeles, and Amber Sealey’s No Light and No Land Anywhere, executive-produced by Miranda July. She’s also produced numerous shorts, music videos, webseries, and a pilot for FX directed by Charlie Day. She is currently Producer-in-Residence at Film Independent and was Nominations Manager for the 2022 Spirit Awards. Clark co-hosts movie podcast Maximum Film! with critic Alonso Duralde and comedian Ify Nwadiwe on the Maximum Fun network.
Ibero-American Cinema Competition
Delgado-Aparicio holds a B.Sc. in Economics and Management Studies and an M.Sc. in Organizational Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He studied film at the London Film Academy.
He has written and directed two award-winning short films, which have been in official selection in more than 80 film festivals around the world. His short film The Companion premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and became a Grand Jury prize finalist, and earned him a nomination for Best Director at the World Independent Film Awards in Warsaw.
Delgado-Aparicio wrote and directed Retablo, his first feature film, which was developed at the Sundance Lab Feature Film Program. In 2018, Retablo had its world premiere at the Berlinale, winning the Teddy Award for Best First Film and the Crystal Bear Jury Special Mention for Best Film. Since then, Retablo has gone on to win over 50 awards on the film-festival circuit worldwide, including festivals in Vancouver, Sydney, New York, Chicago, Bucharest, Ukraine, Toronto, San Francisco, Switzerland, La Habana, Bilbao, South Africa, Brazil, and China, among others. Retablo was Peru’s official entry for Best International Film at the 2020 Academy Awards, and in the same year received one of five nominations for Outstanding Debut at the British Academy Awards and was nominated for Best International Film at the Independent Spirit Awards. Furthermore, Retablo was nominated for Best Director and Best Actor in the International Film category at the Chinese Academy Awards, winning in both categories.
Live Action Shorts Competition
Diev serves as the General Manager of Ouat Media, a Toronto-based short film distribution and sales company. In her role, Diev is responsible for the company’s business operations and oversees all the film sales and acquisitions. Ouat Media is one of the world’s primary destinations for work by the industry’s rising stars. The company currently boasts an award-winning catalogue of titles featuring 12 Oscar nominees, including three Oscar winners to date. Ouat Media’s network of licensing partners spans multiple continents and media, and includes global platforms and broadcasters such as HBO, Canal+, BBC, PBS, ESPN, Al Jazeera, Condé Nast Entertainment, The Criterion Channel, Kanopy, and most recently Tencent Video, the highest-grossing entertainment app in China.
As a recognized leader in her field and a sought-after mentor to emerging talent in the industry, Diev continuously shares her expertise by leading workshops, participating in guest panels, and serving on film festival and awards juries internationally and locally. For six years Diev served on the Board of Canadian Filmmakers’ Distribution Centre (CFMDC), Canada’s leading not-for-profit, non-commercial distributor and resource for independently produced film.
Diev is an alumna of York University and University of Oxford.
Live Action Shorts Competition
In his 36-year career, Fukushima has been an animator, filmmaker, producer, and head of the National Film Board of Canada’s Animation Studio. He’s a member of the AMPAS® Academy, with over 200 films (and some nice awards) under his belt. He has produced three Oscar-nominated animation shorts (most recently, Affairs of the Art by Joanna Quinn and Les Mills), and executive-produced a fourth. Now mostly retired, Fukushima skis, cycles, and cherry-picks projects that interest him and “spark joy.”
New American Cinema Competition
Guentzler is currently the Senior Director of Acquisitions for Gravitas Ventures, one of the leading all-rights distributors of independent films and documentaries in North America. After spending a summer studying in Berlin in 1998, he joined the Cleveland International Film Festival as an intern and grew with the organization, ultimately being named Artistic Director in 2005, a position he held for 15 years. During his time at CIFF, he was part of the team making the festival one of the largest and most well-respected film festivals in the U.S. and one of the first in the world to transition to an online format in 2020. In his brief hiatus from the film industry, he worked for Medworks, a Cleveland-based nonprofit organization linking people who are uninsured and underinsured with vital healthcare services. Guentzler holds a BA in Communications from Cleveland State University, which named him one of its inaugural 50 Fascinating Alumni. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Cleveland Social Venture Partners.
Documentary Cinema Competition
Guirgis is a film producer and production executive who has worked in both fiction and documentary film. Recent documentary credits include MLK/FBI by Sam Pollard; Oscar winner Summer of Soul by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson; The Meaning of Hitler by Petra Epperlein and Mike Tucker; Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami; and The Brink by Alison Klayman. Guirgis has also produced the narrative features Keep the Lights On by Ira Sachs and The Lonliest Planet by Julia Loktev.
Guirgis is currently Head of Production at Play/Action Pictures, a company she launched with Jeffrey Lurie in 2019. She previously ran the documentary division of RatPac Entertainment, where she oversaw the development and production of numerous feature documentaries and documentary series. Prior to working in production, she worked in film distribution for many years.
New Directors Competition
Humphreys has worked in film programming for over 20 years; she started her career working with young audiences with the Junior Dublin Film Festival in 1994. In 1995 she joined the IFI as Education Officer and expanded her role to include programming seasons on Andy Warhol, Agnès Varda, and Harold Pinter.
She became Assistant Director in 2001 and programmed both the Stranger Than Fiction Documentary Festival and the Dublin French Film Festival from 2002 to 2007. Among other projects, she co-edited Ireland into Film, a series of publications on a number of key Irish films. She has served as a jury member on several international film festivals and has coordinated numerous Irish film seasons at international events. She is a Board Member of the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris and has been Festival Director of the Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival since 2007.
Ibero-American Cinema Competition
Jaisinghani is an Artist Development Executive, Producer, and Curator with a
background in theater, music, and film that forms her interdisciplinary lens for storytelling and
programming.
Jaisinghani’s professional journey began at the estate of George Harrison with the music documentary Concert for George, The Dark Horse Years box set, and the Grammy-winning album Brainwashed.
Jaisinghani has produced three films: Beholder, directed by Nisha Ganatra; Tent City, directed by Aldo Velasco (both of these played at the Tribeca Film Festival and SXSW); and Igor Voloshin’s Bedouin, which played at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. With 10 editions of AFI FEST, a program of the American Film Institute, she created the Cultural Relations department to promote international talent and films. Additionally, Jaisinghani served as the first Artistic Director for the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles at ArcLight Hollywood.
Jaisinghani has also programmed in partnership with Film Independent, KCRW, and MOCA a
showcase called The New Wave, featuring films, conversations, and performances from cultural changemakers. She consults for the Sundance Institute, identifying screenwriters for their Screenwriter’s Labs. Additionally she is a mentor for the Institute’s BIPOC Artist Program. Just before the pandemic, Jaisinghani co-founded Global Cinematheque, founded by longtime colleague Jacqueline Lyanga, to celebrate international cinema, and launched the World Cinema Awards. Recently, for Global Cinematheque, Jaisinghani curated a series of new films from global auteurs for FILM at LACMA.
Jaisinghani is currently the Program Head for Ojalá’s Ignition Lab at Universal Content
Productions. The lab was founded by Tanya Saracho, VIDA creator, executive producer, and
showrunner. She is passionate about supporting youth programming and intersectional
skateboarding events.
Documentary/Animated Shorts Competition
Laney is the Director of Development at Adult Swim. Previously she worked at BitTorrent Inc, leading their film strategy, and at Sundance Institute. Laney is based in Los Angeles.
Documentary/Animated Shorts Competition
Before joining Vimeo in 2014, you could find Oretsky cheering on filmmakers in the comments sections of countless videos on their site. Today she serves as a Senior Curator on Vimeo's curation team, for which she watches and curates thousands of videos a year in consideration for Vimeo Staff Picks.
Shorts Cinema Competition
Roustan has been a curator and champion of short films for half a decade, working for the popular website Short of the Week, passionately promoting directors and their respective films. She has been on the programming teams for a host of international festivals, including SXSW, SFFILM, TIFF, the Catalyst International Film Festival, the Palm Springs International Film Festival, and ShortFest. Recently she joined French production company Films Grand Huit and is now handling the distribution of their films.
Documentary Cinema Competition
Trzebiatowska is a programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, focusing on U.S. and World documentary features. Prior to joining Sundance she was the Sales & Acquisitions Executive for the doc sales agency Autlook Filmsales as well as Senior Director of Acquisitions at NYC-based agency Visit Films. Aside from her work at Sundance, Trzebiatowska is also the festival director of Sands: International Film Festival of St. Andrews (Scotland), and was the artistic director of Off Camera IFF (Krakow, Poland) from 2008 to 2020. She trained in production and post-production at the BBC and the British Museum, and holds a Master’s degree in film studies as well as a Master’s in Digital Culture and Technology from King’s College, London.
Documentary/Animated Shorts Competition
Zaman is a queer Bangladeshi-American filmmaker, critic, educator, and curator whose award-winning work as a director has screened at Sundance, Toronto, the New York Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, and more. Her first feature was Remote Area Medical, followed by This Time Next Year and the doc/fiction hybrid Feast of the Epiphany as well as several shorts (Kombit, Nobody Loves Me, American Carnage, and To Be Queen, which is part of the Emmy-nominated New York Times Op-Doc series “From Here to Home”). She produced the Sundance-award winning Netflix Original Ghosts of Sugar Land, which was shortlisted for A 2020 Academy Award nomination.
Zaman has written for Reverse Shot, Film Comment, Elle, and The Huffington Post, among others, and her industry experience includes roles at Magnolia Pictures, IFP, The Flaherty Seminar, and the Laura Poitras-founded company Field of Vision. Zaman also contributes to the documentary community through teaching and mentoring at institutions like SVA, NYU, Uniondocs, and the Bronx Documentary Center, and through equity-driven collectives like Beyond Inclusion and Brown Girls Doc Mafia, where she serves as the Director of Grants and Programs. Zaman was Documentarian in Residence at Bard College in 2018-2019; named a “Top 40 under 40” filmmaker by Doc NYC; is currently an Impact Partners Producing Fellow and Firlight Spark Fund Recipient; and is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
