Based in Texas, born and raised in Wales, Jim is an independent film curator, primarily for South by Southwest Film & TV Festival (SXSW), where he has programmed international and documentary features since 2009. Other curatorial work includes Curaçao International Film Festival, Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival, consulting for Adelaide Film Festival, and custom film packages for KINO! Germany Now (Goethe Institute/German Film Office), and PANORAMICA for PLAY Acción Cultural in Spain. Every month Jim curates and hosts the public-facing KINO! Film Salon in partnership with Telescope Film. Jim has consulted and participated on numerous international festival juries, panels and committees including Cannes Docs, EFM, FICCALI, Locarno Industry Academy (Bogotá), REC Festival, and Sarajevo Film Festival. He has also mentored Latin American students for London Film School, and guest lectured for University of Texas Department of Radio, Television and Film. 

Marissa McDowell is a Wiradjuri woman, born in Cowra, NSW, Australia. She has over 20 years’ experience working in the First Nations multi-media storytelling space and is passionate about working with the film industry to share creatively ambitious and diverse stories that have global appeal. Throughout her career, she has worked with First Nations communities to share stories with a wider audience across commissioning, producing, photography and writing. At National Indigenous Television (NITV), she has overseen the commissioning of original First Nations content, including feature documentaries Skin in the Game, Keeping Hope and the award-winning Rebel with a Cause, as well as documentary series Our Law, and children’s animated series Eddie’s Lil’ Homies. As a producer, she has also had documentaries screened on SBS/NITV. She has had poetry published through Us Mob Writing, and photographs displayed at PhotoAccess and the Sydney Living Museum.

Miao Wang (director, producer, editor) is a Beijing-born New York-based filmmaker. Her primary focus is on creative and cinematic films that tell poignant human stories against larger societal forces. She holds a BA in economics from the University of Chicago, and an MFA in design and film from the Parsons School of Design. She apprenticed with two mentors while completing her MFA: renowned graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister and the legendary documentarian Albert Maysles. Design sharpened her senses to communicate through visual language. Maysles taught her to keenly observe people’s gestures and emotions with empathy and compassion. Wang approaches her films with curiosity and an open heart, attuned to socio-cultural nuances and the spaces in between. She founded Three Waters Films in 2005. She has directed and produced three documentary features, Admissions Granted (MSNBC Films), Maineland (SXSW Jury Award Winner, New York Times Critic’s Pick), and Beijing Taxi (New York Magazine Critic’s Pick), as well as dozens of short films including Made by China in America and Yellow Ox Mountain. Her films have screened at hundreds of international festivals (SXSW, Vancouver IFF, Big Sky, Maryland Film Festival) and institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum, with US theatrical releases, nationwide broadcasts, and digital releases on multiple platforms globally. In addition to independently producing critically acclaimed and award-winning non-fiction films, she directs, produces, and edits commissioned work for clients such as the Guggenheim Museum, the Criterion Collection, Vulcan Productions, and Vice Media, as well as branded programming for corporate and commercial clients such as Ogilvy, DuPont, Philips, Microsoft Design, and Time Inc. Miao is a recipient of grants and fellowships from Impact Partners, Firelight Media, the Sundance Institute, the Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, the Tribeca Film Institute, IFP (now Gotham), the Flaherty Film Seminar, and Women Make Movies. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Debra Zimmerman is the Executive Director of Women Make Movies, a NY non-profit social enterprise that has been supporting women filmmakers with distribution and production assistance of their independent films since 1972. For the last 20 years filmmakers from WMM’s programs have won or been nominated for Academy Awards, including last year’s To Kill a Tiger. Zimmerman is in great demand around the world as a jury member, speaker, panelist and mentor. She is on the board and selection committees for numerous organizations including Cinema Tropical and Docs Barcelona. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including NY Women in Film and Television’s Changemaker Award and Hot Doc’s Doc Mogul Award, given to those who have made an essential contribution to the creative vitality of the documentary industry, both in his or her home country and abroad.  She is a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences.