Navigating AI in Filmmaking

Adam Bhala Lough is a Punjabi‑American film director, producer, and writer known for crafting award‑winning, high‑profit, and widely viewed film and television projects for HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV+, Showtime, the BBC, and beyond. In February 2022, it was announced that one of his documentaries would enter the revered Criterion Collection, cementing his place among cinema’s most enduring storytellers.

Lough burst onto the scene at 19 when he directed three music videos for MF DOOM. At 23 he premiered his narrative feature debut Bomb the System (2002), a graffiti‑culture drama that earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature and landed him on Filmmaker Magazine’s “Top 25 Indie Filmmakers to Watch.” His follow‑up, Weapons (2007), starring a then‑emerging Nick Cannon and Paul Dano, was nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and distributed by Lionsgate.

Transitioning to documentary, Lough co‑directed The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry (2008), narrated by Academy Award‑winner Benicio del Toro, and the incendiary Lil Wayne portrait The Carter (2009). Though legally challenged by its subject, The Carter is routinely ranked among the greatest music documentaries of all time by Rolling Stone, NME, Billboard, and Complex. The Upsetter has since been inducted into the Criterion Collection.

His Sundance‑premiering The New Radical (2017) featured a rare interview with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian Embassy and explored Bitcoin and 3‑D‑printed guns, earning a slot on No Film School’s “Top 10 Political Docs of the Year.” Alt‑Right: Age of Rage (2018) followed, airing on Netflix (U.S.) and BBC (U.K.) after a fearless year embedded with both neo‑Nazi and ANTIFA.

Lough’s HBO Original doc‑series Telemarketers (2023), which he co‑directed and executive‑produced with Josh and Benny Safdie, became the most‑watched doc‑series on HBO MAX upon release. It earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series and won both the Critics Choice Documentary Award and Cinema Eye Honors Award.

His latest feature, Deepfaking Sam Altman—a sharp comedy about AI executive‑produced by Kevin Hart and Vox Studios—premiered at SXSW 2025 and is slated for theatrical release soon.

Committed to fostering new voices, Lough is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, a longtime mentor at the Sundance Native and Latino Screenwriters Labs, and a former member of Sundance’s Diversity Outreach Committee. He runs a documentary production company, ALL FACTS, with film financier Greg Stewart. Comfortable filming everyone from violent extremists to A-list celebrities and in between, he continues to fuse dynamic storytelling with an abiding curiosity for subcultures, music, and the extremes of human ambition.

AX Mina (she/they) is a special advisor for the Archival Producers Alliance and is director and producer of Rubbish: The Queer Kingdom of Leilah Babirye. She is a Senior Civic Media Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Journalism and Communications and member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and the Asian American Documentary Network. She was a 2024 Sundance Trans Possibilities Intensive Fellow and has spoken at Sundance Collab, DOCNYC, the Atlanta Film Society and other industry events. She also works in nonprofit local news and media and arts philanthropy.

Bryan Edward Hill is a screenwriter, filmmaker, and comic book author whose work blends genre storytelling with emotional and psychological depth. His screenwriting credits include Bitter Root (dir. Ryan Coogler / Proximity Media), and an untitled Prince biopic (dir. Ryan Coogler / Proximity Media). For television, he has written for Titans (WB / HBO Max), and in comics, he has authored acclaimed runs of Blade and Black Panther for Marvel.

His first feature as a director, Archangel, is currently in post-production (Image Nation / Spooky Pix). Bryan is also the co-founder of Kevlar Creative, a production company focused on high-concept, character-driven storytelling across film, television, and emerging media.

Partner, Donaldson Callif Perez

Chris specializes in all aspects of the firm’s practice, including representing independent producers and production companies through development, financing, production, rights clearance and distribution. He has helped hundreds of productions secure the E&O insurance necessary to distribute their films and has established himself as an advocate for artists’ rights. In addition to representing filmmakers, Chris serves as counsel to writers, podcast producers, radio personalities, museums and foundations.

Chris regularly lectures on production, distribution, financing, and clearance issues at various law schools and producing programs around the world and regularly contributes op-ed pieces for publications including the Daily Journal, LA Lawyer and Realscreen. Chris is also co-author of the 5th Edition of Clearance & Copyright, the industry’s leading book on rights clearances in film and television. He is often asked to provide expert authority on to entertainment law, copyright, artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge legal issues by various podcasts and publications, including The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and Forbes.

Chris has also been a leader on several of the firm’s advocacy projects since 2008, including the landmark Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) exemptions secured for filmmakers, for which he was recognized as one of California Lawyer’s “Attorneys of the Year.” He has been recognized for several other prestigious awards by Variety, California Lawyer and U.S. News.

Chris graduated from the University of Michigan, where he produced, directed, and wrote several student films. He earned his JD at the USC Gould School of Law, where he remains actively engaged with the Latino Law Students Association.

Prior to working with Donaldson Callif Perez, Chris worked for California Lawyers for the Arts, Technicolor, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

Chris serves as a board member for the International Documentary Association and on the Advisory Board for the Generative AI Initiative of the Archival Producers Alliance.

Chris lives in Los Angeles with his wife Maria, his two children Emery and Jack, and their dog Bill Paxton.

Julius Pryor IV is a filmmaker, producer, and creative strategist. A graduate of Morehouse College and NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Julius has spent the last decade developing original work across both the narrative and branded space.

His credits include two feature films that world premiered at Sundance: How to Tell You’re a Douchebag (dir. Tahir Jetter) and Cronies (dir. Michael Larnell), executive produced by Spike Lee. He recently produced The Vacation, winner of the 2023 Sundance Short Film Special Jury Award, which is currently being developed into a feature. He also produced Feathers, written and directed by A.V. Rockwell, funded by Tribeca’s "Through Her Lens" program and world premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Always with a focus on elevating underrepresented voices and bold creative perspectives.

Most recently, Julius has partnered with acclaimed writer-director Bryan Hill (Blade, Titans, Killmonger) on a slate of genre-driven feature films, including the upcoming occult thriller Archangel.

Together, they are also launching a new creative platform and production banner to house their shared vision for boundary-pushing, artist-first storytelling: Kevlar Creative.

At the core of Julius’s approach is the belief that the best art comes from trust, alignment, and shared vision. He brings a spirit of precision, adaptability, and focused collaboration to every project—whether producing, directing, or writing.

Michaela A. Ternasky-Holland is a Peabody-nominated and Emmy award-winning director who specializes in creating impactful stories using immersive and interactive technology. She is one of the first directors to create and premiere a short film utilizing Open AI’s SORA platform, which screened at Tribeca Festival. 

As a nominee for the Producers Guild of America’s Innovation Award, she is also a consultant, speaker, and thought leader, who has been recognized as one of the 100 Original Voices of XR and listed as one of Blooloop’s 50 Immersive Influencers.

Philip Shane is an award winning documentary filmmaker with over 35 years of experience. He is currently producing & directing a feature documentary, THE WORLD I WANT TO LIVE IN, about MYST, one of the most important video games of all time that is now residing in The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

His previous works as Producer, Director and Editor include the beloved documentary film BEING ELMO (Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival), and History Channel’s EINSTEIN (2008). As Editor of DANCING IN JAFFA (2013), which had its World Premiere at the TriBeCa Film Festival, he won the Best Editing Award at Israel's DocAviv Film Festival. He was a member of the editing team on the award winning film by Sandi DuBowski, SABBATH QUEEN (2024) which is currently in theatrical release around the world.

With Paul McCartney and his family, Shane was the Editor of WINGSPAN (2001), about the McCartney's life after The Beatles. Shane’s previous project, THE BEATLES REVOLUTION (ABC, 2000) told the story of the band through the memories of musicians, artists, politicians, writers, and other celebrities. Other artists he's worked with include CARLY SIMON (Lifetime), BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN (Disney) and THE BOSTON SYMPHONY (NHK).

At ABC News for nearly a decade, Shane edited many distinguished long form programs including Ted Kopple's Iraq War documentary, TIP OF THE SPEAR (2004), which won the DuPont Columbia Award for Broadcast Journalism, and MARTIN LUTHER KING: SEARCHING FOR THE PROMISED LAND (1999) which won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program. A short film he made with Peter Jennings, WITNESS TO HISTORY (2001), preserved Jennings' personal memories of 9/11 and has been placed in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

Beyond filmmaking, Shane also produces and hosts the long-running podcast, WHAT THE IF. Each week he invites scientists, science historians, journalists to show us how they would use real science to explore extraordinary imaginary scenarios.

Shane has also become a regular speaker and consultant on the use of Artificial Intelligence in documentary filmmaking and beyond. His appearances include SiriusXM, DOC NYC, The World Congress of Science & Factual Producers, The NY State Bar Association and many more. He’s spoken at many documentary filmmaking events including The D-Word, Doc NYC, The Woodstock & DC/Dox Film Festivals and more. He teaches in depth classes at Desktop-Documentaries.com and produces the weekly webinar, AI CAFE, a professional series for film & video creators. 

Quinn Halleck is a director and thought leader at the cutting edge of AI and film. His latest short film, Sigma 001, redefines the role of AI in independent filmmaking, using AI as a collaborative partner in every stage of production. With a background in both narrative and documentary filmmaking, Quinn honed his skills under the mentorship of acclaimed director and producer Michael Bay.

He has shared his insights on AI's transformative potential in cinema at Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film and recently delivered a TEDx talk on the topic.

Seth Piezas is the Founder and Executive Director of the Colabi Foundation, an organization dedicated to advancing successful human-AI collaboration and unlocking AI’s potential for Superintelligent Good. He also works as a Senior Product Manager in Physical AI at NVIDIA where he is developing the next generation of autonomous machines through simulation. Seth began his career in film at Pixar Animation Studios during its golden age and has followed the frontier of technology ever since, developing award winning projects from entertainment to education to medical imaging. He serves on the technical board of the Sundance Institute focusing on Artificial Intelligence.

Verena Puhm is a Sundance-featured, award-winning AI filmmaker and creative technologist blending emotional storytelling with cutting-edge tools. With a background in producing series for CNN and BBC and writing for Leonine Studio's Wiedemann & Berg TV as well as Red Bull Media's Terra Mater Studios, she bridges traditional and AI-driven cinema. Her work has been honored by Forbes, The Hollywood Reporter, and top AI festivals.

A keynote speaker and panelist at Cannes Film Festival 2025, Berlinale 2025, Austin AIFF, Stockholm AI Film Conference, AI Film & Ad Fest Dubai, and the Atlanta International AI Film Festival (AIAIFF), she is a frequent speaker and judge in the field. Verena is part of OpenAI’s Sora Creator Circle, Google Veo 2 Beta, Adobe AI Community Leader Program, Luma, Kling, Hailou Minimax, LTX, Freepik, Pika and Showrunner AI's Creator programs and collaborates globally across studios, pushing the future of storytelling forward.

In addition to her solo creative work, Verena has developed several hybrid and fully AI-driven production pipelines, combining cutting-edge tools and processes for cost-efficient, high-quality content creation. She commands a distributed team of global specialists across production, AI and 3D animation, editing, VFX, sound, and compositing—allowing fast iteration, flexibility, and stylistic precision while keeping production lean and scalable. Verena’s workflow merges traditional filmmaking with generative AI capabilities, ensuring both narrative strength and technical innovation.