Meet the jurors on our five features juries and our two shorts juries for SIFF 2025.
Feature film juries include New Directors, New American Cinema, Ibero-American, Official Competition, and Documentary. Short film juries include Live Action and Documentary & Animation.
David 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. He 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 8 years on the selection committee of the New York Film Festival. He is a three time winner of the Page One Award for his work at Newsweek.
Russel Brewer is the Operations Director for Denver Film’s Sie FilmCenter and the Denver Film Festival, and has filled various leadership roles with the organization over the past 8 years. He has participated on the programming teams, in various capacities, of the Telluride Film Festival, the Denver Film Festival, the Aspen Film Festival, and the Overlook Film Festival.
Florangela Davila is a longtime Seattle journalist. She’s the former race and immigration reporter at The Seattle Times. She worked as the managing editor and Crosscut Now host at Cascade PBS. Most recently, she led the KNKX public radio newsroom for four years as a news director. The child of immigrants from Colombia and Peru, she was born and raised in Los Angeles and graduated from UC Berkeley and Columbia University. She’s earned numerous individual and team journalism honors in print, online, and broadcast, including a 2023 National Edward R. Murrow Award for The Walk Home podcast.
Alison Foreman is a Features Writer at IndieWire covering TV, film, and industry trends. Mostly known offline as Ali, Foreman describes herself as a journalist with a passion for blood, spectacle, and basic human decency. She’s also the mad genius behind the midnight movie column IndieWire "After Dark," offering fringe cinema selections for the streaming age.
Reporting for Mashable in 2020, Foreman was awarded Best Online TV Feature by the Los Angeles Press Club for her work covering police procedurals and the Black Lives Matter movement. The following year, she was nominated twice more for the National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards. Foreman has bylines across sites and subjects, having written about video games, music, web culture, science, politics, and tech for The A.V. Club, Refinery29, CNN, and more.
Foreman graduated from Georgia Tech in 2017, specializing in applied computer science and experimental design. She previously worked in national broadcasting at CBS News, Showtime, and "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." A firm believer in Starship Troopers, Ali is now a full-time cinephile who can also lick her right elbow… but not the left.
Follow Alison Foreman on social media @alfaforeman or email her at aforeman@indiewire.com.
Megan Griffiths is a writer/director working in film and television. She has made eight features, including her breakout The Off Hours, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, Eden, which won the SXSW Audience Award, Lucky Them, which premiered at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival, and the upcoming Year of the Fox, and she is a member of the director’s branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Griffiths has directed television shows for HBO, EPIX, TNT, Hulu, USA, Fox, Netflix, and recently served as the producing director for Amazon’s "The Summer I Turned Pretty." She is currently working on an animated documentary about disability entitled View From the Floor.
Bill Guentzler most recently served as Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Operations for Gravitas Ventures, which is recognized worldwide as one of the largest all-rights distributors of independent films and documentaries. 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 leadership team making the festival one of the largest and most well-respected film festivals in the US, and one of the first in the world to transition to an online format in 2020. In 2021, a brief hiatus from the film industry led him to Medworks, a Cleveland-based nonprofit organization linking people who are uninsured and underinsured with vital healthcare services, where he served as Program Director. He holds a BA in Communications from Cleveland State University, which named him one of its inaugural 50 Fascinating Alumni. He also proudly serves on the Board of Directors for Collaborate Cleveland.
Short Film Jury – Documentary & Animation
Michael Huang is a Seattle born-and-bred creative, strategist, advocate, and b-boy with 15+ years of experience working across advertising, design, film, culture, and social change. He is the founder and managing director of Milli, a full service, purpose-driven creative agency, and a founding Seattle Film Commissioner.
Chris Lane currently serves as President of Distribution and Audience at Joint Venture, a new distribution company that is filmmaker-forward and centered on community building through distribution strategy, audience engagement, and innovative campaigns for independent film.
Most recently, as Vice President of Distribution at Participant, Chris worked on worldwide distribution strategies for the social impact-driven company’s narrative, documentary, and episodic slate which included Academy Award®-winning and Academy Award®-nominated films. Chris has also served in previous roles working in distribution at Park Circus, Sony Pictures, and MGM. Throughout his 20+ tenure in the business, Chris is always trying to find new and innovative ways to distribute and market films of all genres and audience sizes.
Short Film Jury – Documentary & Animation
A champion of bold, innovative storytelling, Missy Laney is shaping the future of comedy as the Director of Development at Adult Swim. In her role, she cultivates and champions fresh, groundbreaking projects, including Common Side Effects, Smiling Friends, and the upcoming Oh My God Yes! and Women Wearing Shoulder Pads, the network’s first Spanish-language series. With a track record that spans from BitTorrent Inc. to the legendary Sundance Institute, Missy’s expertise lies in discovering and elevating unique voices in the industry. Whether shaping the next cult classic or amplifying underrepresented narratives, she’s at the forefront of where art meets disruption.
Short Film Jury – Documentary & Animation
Based in Los Angeles and Honolulu, Anderson Le diligently works in the global promotion of independent and world cinema as Artistic Director for the Hawai‘i International Film Festival (HIFF), now in its 45th year. He is also a programming consultant for the Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy and was the Head of Programming for the inaugural Ho Chi Minh City International Film Festival. He has previously consulted for the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Toronto Reel Asian, and Singapore International Film Festival. In 2020, Le co-founded EAST FILMS, a transpacific media company whose mission is to empower visionary storytellers to excel in the global entertainment market through engaging and thought provoking content. EAST projects include Ròm (2019), which won the Busan Film Festival's New Currents Award; Be Water (2020), currently on Disney+; and Maika (2022). The latter two had their world premieres at Sundance.
Carlos A.F. Lopez is a multifaceted filmmaker with over a decade of experience in the Seattle underground/DIY scene. His short film Dream Creep premiered at Sundance 2024 where it received a Vimeo Award for Best Director. IndieWire deemed it "The Scariest Short on the Festival Circuit" and Filmmaker Magazine included Lopez in their annual 25 New Faces of Independent Film for 2024. A first-generation Washingtonian born to a Filipino mother and Mexican father, their cultural influence is imbued throughout his work in nuanced ways that subvert what it means to be an artist of color in the independent film community.
Chelsea Lupkin is a Senior Programmer at Short of the Week and is known for her short horror film Lucy’s Tale, which is streaming for free on Gunpowder & Sky’s horror platform, ALTER, where it has been viewed over 6.8 million times. She is also a commercial director represented by Greenpoint Pictures, directing spots for brands like Tubi and Google. Her most recent short, Scooter, premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in 2022 and became an Official Selection of the SITGES Film Festival and Beyond Fest within its festival lineup. It is also available to stream on ALTER. She has served on the jury at various festivals including the Fantasia International Film Festival, Fantastic Fest, and Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. She has also mentored participants in the Frontières International Co-Production Market in Montreal, Canada and is currently on the jury for the Killer Shorts Horror Short Screenplay Competition for rising screenwriters in the genre.
Jonathan Marlowe is an occasional curator, composer, and cinematographer, as well as an intermittent filmmaker and producer with a handful of award-winning shorts and feature-length projects to his credit. Prior to his role as Executive Director of SV Archive (otherwise known as Scarecrow Video), Marlowe was—and continues to be—affiliated with numerous film festivals (including Telluride, Crossroads, and Camera Obscura), film institutions (Canyon Cinema Foundation, IFS [aka Flaherty Seminar], Consolidated Works, Grand Illusion, Northwest Film Forum), and film distribution companies (notably Paracme, Amazon, Fandor, and others). In addition to Marlowe’s writings and interviews for numerous online and print publications, he is known to host screenings throughout the world showcasing remarkable films otherwise unavailable elsewhere.
Sarah Menzies is the Director of Original Productions at Cascade PBS, where she oversees the team creating compelling and impactful video and podcast content for web, broadcast, and streaming. Prior to joining the company in 2021, Menzies worked as a senior multimedia producer at Vulcan Productions and is the director and founder of Let Media. She also directed the feature documentary, Afghan Cycles, which screened at SIFF in 2018.
Zia Mohajerjasbi is an Iranian-American filmmaker from Seattle, a city that has served as the primary focus of his work. He has shot and directed critically-acclaimed music videos for Macklemore, Blue Scholars, and Jake One, as well as a 2007 mockumentary short with standup comedian Hari Kondabolu, Manoj. In 2009, Mohajerjasbi became the youngest winner ever of the “Genius Award,” presented by The Stranger. In 2015, he wrote and directed the award-winning narrative short film, Hagereseb, and is also the cinematographer and director of an ongoing storytelling series, "The Charcoal Sky." In April 2022, Mohajerjasbi's debut feature film Know Your Place, which he wrote and directed, premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival where it was awarded the New American Cinema Grand Jury Prize and the Golden Space Needle Award for Best Film.
Garineh Nazarian is the founder and managing director of Venera Films, a boutique distribution and sales company dedicated to championing women filmmakers from the Middle East, South Asia, Asia, Africa, and their diasporas. Her mission is to bridge the gap between the cinema of these regions and North American audiences. She previously served as Director of New Releases at FilmRise and is currently Head of Theatrical Distribution at Giant Pictures, overseeing its labels Drafthouse Films and Tribeca Films. Before relocating to the United States, Garineh spent over a decade in Iranian mainstream film and television as a producer and director. She is also the founder of the first-ever Iranian Women’s Film Festival.
Born and raised in Seattle (go Nathan Hale Raiders!), Dr. Cara Ogburn moved to Milwaukee in 2002 to attend graduate school at UWM, where she completed her Ph.D. in English in 2015. In 2011, she joined Milwaukee Film in a seasonal capacity before becoming a part of the full-time, year-round education staff in 2013. Since then, she has held many titles at Milwaukee Film and in 2020 was named Artistic Director; in this role she leads the organization’s artistic vision and strategy as well as the programming and marketing teams for its two annual festivals and two year-round cinemas. Cara is the immediate past president of the Board of Directors of the national Film Festival Alliance and is engaged with various national efforts to strengthen our field.
As Managing Director, Ortiz oversees the development, financing, and production of Latino-themed programming which is distributed for broadcast on national public television and online at PBS.org. Ortiz also administers LPB’s Public Media Content Digital Media funding initiatives, which support independent filmmakers in the creation and dissemination of Latino-themed documentaries for PBS. In addition, he serves as Series Producer for VOCES on PBS, LPB’s signature series that features the best of Latino arts, culture, and history, and shines a light on current issues that impact Latino Americans.
Claudia Puig is a nationally recognized film journalist, movie critic, and festival curator. She is Director of Programming for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Claudia has been a film critic on National Public Radio’s “Film Week,” on KPCC-FM, since 2005. She was the lead critic at USA Today for 15 years, and host of the USA Today video series The Screening Room. She also reviewed books during her tenure at USA Today. Before that, Claudia was a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times for 11 years covering city government, courts, and the entertainment industry. While at the LA Times she was part of a team of journalists that won the Pulitzer prize for spot news reporting of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising.
In 2020, she was Senior Programmer for the AFI Film Festival, prior to which she was Program Director for the Mendocino Film Festival and FilmFest 919 in Chapel Hill, N.C. as well as consulting program director for the Napa Valley Film Festival. In 2016, Claudia was a speechwriter and diversity consultant for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She is also Program Director for Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival in Bellingham, Washington and has been a featured guest on NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered, KCRW, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Spectrum News, Al-Jazeera and Mitch Albom’s syndicated show. Claudia is also a frequent moderator for film-related panels and Q&As, and has a consulting business specializing in film analysis and cultural diversity issues.
Claudia has covered the Sundance, Toronto, and Cannes film festivals and has been a juror at dozens of film festivals around the world from Ashland to Zurich. She is fluent in Spanish, conversant in Italian, and studied at both Cambridge University and Universidad Ibero-Americana in Mexico City. Claudia has a B.A. in Communications Studies from UCLA and an M.A. in Communications from USC’s Annenberg School. In 2020, Puig won the Excellence in Entertainment Journalism award from the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP) and in 2017, she was the recipient of the Roger Ebert Award for Excellence in Film Criticism from the African-American Critics Association (AAFCA). She was featured in the Los Angeles Times as one of 14 film critics making media more inclusive and in IndieWire as one of 20 Latin Americans making a difference in American independent film.
Gabe Van Amburgh is a Senior Film Programmer and Manager for the SXSW Film & TV Festival in Austin, Texas. With over a decade of experience at SXSW, Amburgh has been instrumental in shaping the festival's exhibition strategy. As a Senior Film Programmer, Amburgh has curated a range of programs, including Narrative Shorts, Documentary Shorts, Midnight Shorts, and Music Videos, and has been a key figure in shaping the festival’s diverse programming. Since 2011, he has overseen all aspects of film presentation, including film print logistics, theater build-outs, and the full transition to 100% digital DCP exhibition. His work has also involved valuable analytical and strategic contributions to the Film & TV team.
Peter Van Steemburg hails from upstate New York and started his career in NYC after graduating from Williams College. After early stints at Miramax and Cinetic Media, he spent the next 7 years working his way up in the Acquisitions department of Magnolia Pictures & Magnet Releasing. He relocated to Los Angeles to run West Coast acquisitions in 2010. In 2015, Peter joined ICM Partners as an Agent in the International Independent Department where he arranged financing and/or distribution for feature films until heading back to film distribution at Universal Pictures. He was most recently the Vice President of Acquisitions & Production at the Universal Pictures Content Group. He’s been at XYZ as the Head of Talent Management since 2019 building out the talent management roster, focusing on global genre filmmakers.
