JHANE MYERS (Comanche and Blackfeet Nations) is an Emmy award winning filmmaker, Producer Guild of America nominee in 2023 for the six time Primetime Emmy nominated and winning “Prey” (20th Century/Disney), and Sundance Alumni, recognized for her passion and dedication to films surrounding preserving the legacies of Native language, human rights and Communities. Myers is currently a Gotham-Cannes 2024 producer fellow and is producing a documentary on the longest serving US political prisoner and Native American activist Leonard Peltier (Public Square Films) and a narrative feature titled “Will to Win” (Kirkpatrick & Kinslow Productions). more...

David France is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, New York Times bestselling author, and award-winning investigative journalist, France directed HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE (2012), which received Academy and Emmy nominations and a Peabody Award. His 2017 film, THE DEATH & LIFE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON, a Netflix Original Documentary, won the Outfest “Freedom Award” and a special jury recognition from Sheffield International Documentary Festival. He won a BAFTA, Peabody, Teddy, and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights award for WELCOME TO CHECHNYA (2020), which premiered at Sundance. David's latest film, HBO’s HOW TO SURVIVE A PANDEMIC (2022), won The Cinema for Peace Award on Global Health 2022 and an Emmy award for Outstanding Science and Technology Documentary. more...

Jesse Short Bull (Member of Oglala Sioux Tribe) is a writer and director with a deep connection to his home in the Badlands of South Dakota. LAKOTA NATION VS. UNITED STATES (2022), his most recent film, premiered at Tribeca in 2022 and has won multiple festival awards. The recipient of a fellowship from the Sundance Documentary Fund, Short Bull is also the first Indigenous filmmaker to ever be named to the prestigious DOC NYC Shortlist program. A graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts, Short Bull previously received a 2016 Sundance Institute Native American and Indigenous Program Development Grant and also attended the Creative Producing Summit at Sundance. more...

Soheil Rezayazdi is a Digital Course & Event Producer at the Sundance Institute, where he produces multi-session courses, master classes, filmmaker Q&As, and other digital programs for Sundance Collab. Prior to Sundance, Soheil served as the Nonfiction Programs Manager at the Gotham Film & Media Institute. He oversaw the Gotham’s core documentary programs: the Documentary Feature Lab, the Spotlight on Documentaries project market, and the Documentary Development Initiative in partnership with HBO Documentary Films. Soheil has worked with emerging filmmakers since 2015, when he began a seven-year tenure at the Columbia University MFA Film Program. At Columbia he managed the Columbia University Film Festival (CUFF), the Dr. Saul and Dorothy Kit Film Noir Festival, and the Carla Kuhn Memorial Speaker Series. Soheil is also a freelance writer on film and pop culture with articles in Indiewire, McSweeney’s, Vice, Filmmaker Magazine, Documentary Magazine, Paper, Paste, and elsewhere. He has also served as an external reviewer for artist programs operated by Creative Capital, Kartemquin Pictures, Chicken & Egg Pictures, and the International Documentary Association. A native of Iran, he holds an MA in journalism and a BA in film studies from the University of Iowa. more...