CDMX 2025: Urgency and Documentary Storytelling

Sudeep Sharma is a Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival with a focus on documentary feature films. With nearly two decades of experience in film curation, Sudeep started at the Institute as a screener for international documentaries and reader for the Labs and has had several roles including Programming Associate, Associate Programmer and Shorts Programmer. He has worked in programming at many eclectic organizations including major Los Angeles film organizations such as Film Independent, AFI Fest, Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. He has also been Director of Programming and Interim Artistic Director for the Palm Springs International ShortFest. He has served on festival juries and film award committees around the world and has led and participated on panels on a variety of industry and cultural topics. He holds a PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from UCLA and has taught film and television history, industry and criticism courses at universities throughout Southern California.

Mstyslav Chernov is a Ukrainian filmmaker, war correspondent, videographer, photojournalist, and novelist. He is a Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award® winner known for his coverage of the Revolution of Dignity, War in Donbas, the downing of flight MH17, Syrian civil war, Battle of Mosul in Iraq, and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the Siege of Mariupol.

Chernov’s work on the Siege of Mariupol for The Associated Press, earned AP the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, Deutsche Welle Freedom of Speech Award, the Knight International Journalism Awards, Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award, Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award, Free Media Awards, CJFE International Press Freedom Award, Royal Television Society Television Journalism Awards, and Shevchenko National Prize. AP video journalism from Mariupol became the basis of the film 20 Days in Mariupol, which was included in the competition program of the Sundance Film Festival in 2023, where the film won the Audience Award in the World Cinema Documentary category. The film later won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary and Best Documentary Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards. Chernov won a Directors Guild of America Award. In 2023, The Associated Press earned the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for Chernov’s work with Evgeniy Maloletka, Vasilisa Stepanenko, and Lori Hinnant.He has both won and been a finalist for the Livingston Award, Rory Peck Award, Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize, and various Royal Television Society awards.

Chernov is an Associated Press journalist and the President of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers (UAPF). He has been a member of "Ukrainian PEN" since July 2022.

David Borenstein is a multi-award winning film and TV director. His feature titles include Mr. Nobody Against Putin (2025), Can’t Feel Nothing (2024), and Dream Empire (2016). He has a background as a journalist, Chinese interpreter, and touring saxophonist in China's first ska-punk band. 

Gianluca Matarrese is an Italian director based in Paris. He holds a degree in North American Cinema and is a graduate of the École de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. He started in the French television industry, contributing to over 25 programs in fiction and entertainment. Over the past five years, he has directed nine films, touring international festivals including Mostra di Venezia, IDFA, Thessaloniki, CPH:DOX, Hot Docs, DMZ, Torino Film Festival, Visions du Réel, Festival dei Popoli, Cinéma du Réel, and others.

He explores a variety of topics, including body manipulation, gender affirmation, economic decline, traces of unresolved traumas, the social meaning of sex practices, unemployment, debts, theatre, and the borders between reality and fiction. He has earned awards such as Best Italian Documentary at the Torino Film Festival and the Queer Lion in Venice. Gianluca is regularly supported by broadcasters like France Télévisions, Arte, RAI, RTS, RSI. His main titles include "Everything Must Go", "The Last Chapter", "Fashion Babylon", "A Steady Job", "Les Beaux Parleurs", "Pinned into a Dress", and "The Zola Experience". He is currently touring internationally with his tenth feature-length film "Gen_" about a hospital in Milan specializing in gender transition and fertility disorders. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2025 in the World Competition.

Lindsay Utz is an award-winning director, producer, and editor who has worked on some of the most high-profile documentaries of the last decade, including editing the 2020 Academy Award-winning American Factory. She most recently premiered her directorial debut Prime Minister, about the former PM of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern, at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Documentary Audience Award. In 2023 she produced the first documentary out of Ben Affleck’s Artists Equity, which premiered at number one on Amazon Prime in February 2024. Her other editing credits include Martha (2024), the Oscar-shortlisted Billie Eilish: The World's A Little Blurry (2021), Miss Americana (2020), and Quest (2018), a ten-year vérité portrait of a Black Philadelphia family, which was nominated for both Emmy and Peabody Awards. Her work has screened at major festivals around the world, and has been included in prestigious archives such as the MoMA film library and The Criterion Collection. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and American Cinema Editors (ACE).