She has worked at the Morelos Radio and Television Institute since 1988 as a writer, producer, and presenter of several radio and television programs. In 2009 she co-founded Cinema Planeta, the International Film and Environmental Festival of Mexico, which she co-directs since then. She is co-founder and president of the Green Film Network where 32 festivals from 30 countries participate. She co-produced and co-directed her first feature films “Nahui Ollin, Sol de Movimiento” and “Mar Incendiado” which both draw attention to the impacts of climate change in Mexico. In collaboration with several activists, she managed to change the law of solid waste to prohibit single-use plastic and polystyrene in Morelos and 28 states. She works at the Secretariat of Culture in Morelos.
Katharina Weingartner is a director, journalist, author, and producer. She studied jazz drums and literature, then worked for a German record company in Cologne. She initiated the first German hip-hop label and the radio show “Tribe Vibes & Dope Beats,” which is still broadcast weekly by Austrian radio ORF. From 1990 to 2004, she lived and worked in New York, writing for the German music magazine SPEX, producing film documentaries for cinema and TV and radio stations on subjects such as feminism, health, ecology, and counter cultures, mostly in search of the deep scars colonialism has left in society.
Mafalda Ade holds a degree in Film Production from the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne, where she made one feature and two documentary shorts. She worked on various Swiss film productions before returning to university to study political science, history, and Turkish. In 2011 she earned her PhD in Ottoman history and has published several articles and books. Mafalda has also taught classes on film genre and Middle Eastern cinema at Koç University in Istanbul and the Université du Québec à Montréal in Canada. Recently, she has started to research for another graduate degree from the Film and Moving Images Studies at Concordia University in Montreal on a topic related to women and queer filmmakers.
Born in Diyarbakir, Turkey, and lived in Istanbul, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Athens, Vienna, Venice, Kiev, San Diego, and Moscow for education and work. Tekeş is an international human rights expert, who has worked for several years for the United Nations and as a lecturer at Koç University. She has been a self-made filmmaker and producer on social, political, and environmental issues since 2015. Her feature documentary “Aether” premiered in the International Competition of Visions du Réel 2019, received the Golden Orange Jury Prize at Antalya FF, and screened at BIFED 2020. She is an alumni artist of Tarabya Kulturakademie, where she has developed her new projects “Philax” and “Ethnos”. Tekeş is a member of the European Film Academy.
Born in Beirut in 1975, Simon El Habre obtained his diploma in Audiovisual Directing from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in 1998 and graduated from La Femis (Paris) in Film and Video Editing in 2000. He edited many award-winning documentaris, short and feature fiction films. He directed three feature independent documentaries and several films for Al Jazeera Documentary and other TV channels. He teaches film editing and directing at Lebanese University, in addition to supervising graduation films. He is a founding member of the Cultural Association for the Development of Arab Cinema.
Alper Maral is a composer, and musicologist. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations, a master’s degree in composition and sensory design, and a PhD in musicology. He has authored or co-authored numerous publications focusing on music-identity-politics relations. The countless programs produced by him were broadcast on radio stations such as TRT3, Hr2, and WDR. Currently working at Ankara Music and Fine Arts University, where he is a professor, Maral continues to contribute to the dissemination of contemporary music, the recognition of the music of early periods, and the strengthening of the relationship between music and society in numerous national and international events with his composer, performer, producer, and organizer qualities.
Bruno Schneider started at the age of 9 years old to play the horn in the Conservatoire of la Chaux de Fonds. Robert Faller and later Michael Hoeltzel have been his mentors. After 15 years of playing in orchestras in Zurich, Munich, and Geneva, he devoted himself to teaching at the Universities of Music in Geneva and Freiburg, besides an intense international career as a pedagogue and soloist. Numerous recordings and DVDs have been witnesses of his work as a soloist and chamber music performer for decades.
Can Azbazdar, who moved to Los Angeles in 2016 and graduated at the top of his class in Composition and Film Score from Musicians Institute Hollywood, has performed at various famous stages of Hollywood as a rock and metal guitarist and has specialized in orchestral music composition after he decided to continue his professional career as a visual media composer. Together with composing for the series “Yaratılan”, written and directed by Çağan Irmak, and “Yarın Yokmuş Gibi”, directed by Zeynep Günay Tan, he has also been a part of Hollywood productions such as “Destiny 2” and “The Lost City”, taking on various roles in the musical department and orchestration.
Mattia de Virgiliis is a creative director and experienced designer based in Italy, with over 10 years of experience in experiential communication. His work spans multiple mediums: performance, video and visual communication, music, and interactive installation art. Since 2019, Mattia has been part of “Trascendanza,” a multidisciplinary cultural collective based in Italy, exploring new possibilities through the fusion of artistic languages and focusing on cultural, environmental, and social sustainability.
Sonay Ban holds a BA in Sociology from Boğaziçi University and an MA in Cultural Studies from Sabancı University. She completed her MA and PhD in Cultural and Visual Anthropology at Temple University. She taught graduate and undergraduate courses at Temple University and Sabancı University, published academic articles in the American Anthropologist and Visual Anthropology Review, organized international academic and professional panels and conferences, and wrote annual reports on artistic freedom for global platforms, including Speak Up Platform in Turkey and Denmark-based Freemuse. In addition to working full-time as an editor, she is currently writing a textbook entitled Documentary Cinema in Turkey with Can Candan (MFA) and has two forthcoming book chapters, one on ethics in documentary cinema and another on Boğaziçi University Resistance as a case of academic freedom in Turkey.