Conversations from the Sundance Film Festival London | Directors in Conversation with Nikole Beckwith (TOGETHER TOGETHER), Manuel Crosby (FIRST DATE), Sushmit Ghosh (WRITING WITH FIRE), Rintu Thomas (WRITING WITH FIRE), and Carlson Young (BLAZING WORLD)

Carlson Young is a director and writer, originally from Fort Worth, Texas. She attended the University of Southern California, where she studied creative writing. Carlson’s short film and directorial debut, The Blazing World, premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. She is also an actor, appearing in Scream: The TV Series, Key and Peele, and Emily in Paris.

Rintu Thomas is an award winning director-producer from India whose work is supported by the Sundance Institute, Chicken & Egg Pictures, IDFA, SFF Film Fund, Doc Society, Tribeca Institute, Finnish Film Foundation and Bertha Foundation, among others. Over the last 10 years, Rintu’s films have been used as advocacy tools for social impact, included in the curriculum of universities and exhibited globally in spaces such as the United Nations Climate Change Conference and The Lincoln Center for Performing Arts – becoming catalysts for new conversations.

Her debut feature documentary, WRITING WITH FIRE, won two awards at Sundance ‘21 (Audience Award and Special Jury Award: Impact for Change) and has gone on to play in over 30 major international festivals. WRITING WITH FIRE has also won the McBaine Documentary Feature Award (SFFILM, 2021), the Best Documentary Award and Audience Award at the BlackStar Film Festival and a special jury at Seattle International Film Festival.

Rintu lives between New Delhi and a quaint mountain-town in North India.

Sushmit Ghosh is an award-winning director-cinematographer from India whose work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Institute, Doc Society, SFF Film Fund, IDFA, The Bertha Foundation, Sorfond and the Finnish Film Foundation, among others. In 2009, he co-founded Black Ticket Films, a production company invested in the power of storytelling. With a strong eye on social justice stories, Black Ticket Films’ award-winning slate of films are being used as advocacy, impact and education tools by institutions across the world.

Five years in the making, Sushmit’s debut feature documentary, WRITING WITH FIRE premiered at Sundance ’21, winning two awards at the festival and going on to win a further 11 international awards.

In his spare time, you’ll find him motorcycling and hiking through the Himalayas.

Born in Brazil, Ana Souza was partially raised in The Netherlands and now resides in Los Angeles. She is the Manager of the Programming department at Sundance and a programmer on the features team, focusing on US and International fiction films across sections. She helped launch Sundance's newest international edition in CDMX in partnership with Cinépolis and regularly contributes to Sundance London. In addition to her work at Sundance, she is the Director of Programming at the Sun Valley Film Festival and the Forum Producer for the Palm Springs International ShortFest. She has also programmed for AFI FEST, Outfest, the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, and the LA Film Festival in the past, and she has worked in various capacities for LALIFF, Ambulante California, and NALIP’s Latino Media Fest, among others. In 2024 she was named one of Screen International's Future Leaders in Programming and Curation.