JURY
Adam Jepsen
Adam Jepsen is an actor, writer, director and producer based in New York City. He can soon be seen in Season 2 of ‘Severance’ on Apply TV+ and in Alan Brown’s feature film, Other People’s Bodies. TV: ‘City on a Hill’, ‘The Mysteries of Laura.’ Adam was last seen on stage as Sven in the Original Broadway Cast of Frozen. Broadway: Chicago, Cinderella (Original Cast). He was also seen as Charles Parker in the Moisés Kaufman directed reading of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. On the producing end, his work was last seen at Santa Fe Intl. Film Festival. His writings, in the final round of consideration for the Sundance Screenwriters Development Track. With a background as an athlete, dancer, and then as an Associate Movement Director, Adam has continued to be inspired by the body and visual storytelling.
Eli Zavala
Eli Zavala is a multi-hyphenated talent working in the Arts, Media & Entertainment industry. Her areas of expertise are film programming, distribution, exhibition & production. Eli founded La Filmadora and Splinter Pictures (NYC), as well as Numina (Mx) companies championing artistic & culturally authentic films. She is focused on bringing better representation (and fighting misrepresentations) of minorities on the screen. Her film "Still the earth moves" (2017) is considered as one of the best films of the year by the prestigious British Film Institute Sight&Sound.She is part of the shorts programming team at AFI Fest & Tribeca; she’s also the Chairwoman of the Board of Cinematográfica y Escénica de México, a LatAm NGO; the Executive Programming Director of Latitudes Cinema, a NYC microcinema bringing together diverse filmmakers and their communities; and she just recently got appointed as the Festivals Commissioner & Producers Liaison of The Independent Film Industry Convergence of Mexico and Latin America.
Eli is passionate about indie, auteur and avant garde films, since 2018 she has been extending her expertise into AR,VR,AI, and being part of the conversation about how these techs are reshaping our industry.
Bedatri Datta Choudhury
Bedatri is The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Arts and Entertainment Editor. Before this, she worked extensively with documentary films, particularly in the areas of program management and commissioning. She was most recently the Managing Editor of Documentary magazine, and is a programmer with DOCNYC and SFFILM. An alumna of the NYFF Critics Academy, Sundance and SXSW Press Inclusion Initiatives, the National Critics’ Institute, and Berlinale Talents, she shuttles between New York City and Philadelphia, and can often be heard on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour.
Hoai-Tran Bui
Hoai-Tran Bui is the Entertainment Editor at Inverse. She previously was an editor and film critic at SlashFilm, and her work has appeared in USA Today and The Washington Post. She is a Rotten Tomatoes-certified critic and co-hosts a Doctor Who/Star Trek podcast called Trekking Through Time and Space.
Siddhant Adlakha
Siddhant is a film critic from Mumbai who now resides in NYC. He's a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and a recipient of the National Art & Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Film Critic. His work can be found in Variety, The New York Times, Vulture, and TIME Magazine.
Alexandra Vivas
Alexandra Vivas is a New York producer and production manager born in Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico. She received an MFA in Creative Producing from Columbia University. In 2020 she co-producer the Sundance award winning film I CARRY YOU WITH ME (Sony Pictures Classics). Since 2019, Alexandra has been a member of the Directors Guild of America as Production Manager and has worked on tv shows such as KATY KEENE (The CW), AWKWAFINA IS NORA FROM QUEENS Season 1 and 2 (Comedy Central), MODERN LOVE Season 2 (Amazon Studios), PRETTY LITTLE LIARS: ORIGINAL SIN (MAX) and SEVERANCE Season 2 (Apple TV).
Charles Reynoso
Identifying as an AfroLatino New Yorker, Charles seeks to tell stories of people uniting for social change, in an effort to build stronger bonds between communities, as well as educate people on the strength of their unified voice. With over twenty years’ experience as an educator, and media artist, Charles Reynoso is the Director of Education at Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, a youth development organization dedicated to diversifying voices in the film industry by providing quality film and workforce training to high school and early college students from underrepresented groups.The majority of these young filmmakers are currently working in the film industry, adding fresh voices to the storytelling.Prior to this role, Charles was a teacher in the Department of Education where his students explored American History through the lens of modern-day social tensions. As part of the course, students created narrative and documentary films examining the history of race, gender, and class in America. In addition to his role as an educator, Charles explores issues of blackness in the Latino community through his art as a filmmaker. He is a member of the AfroLatin@ Forum, an organization that works toward a world where Black Latinidad is affirmed, and the contributions of the African Diaspora are embraced as central within Latinidad. His latest documentary short, Faith in Blackness, was featured in the Smithsonian and has won over 20 laurels. Charles holds a Master of Science in Education from Long Island University, and a BA in Broadcast Journalism from CUNY Lehman College.
Giona Jefferson
With a deep understanding of film’s ability to shape cultural landscapes, Giona Jefferson navigates the convergence of cultural impact and entertainment. She is currently developing a hybrid feature documentary exploring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s lesser-known perspective. Previously, she produced Harry & Meghan, the biggest documentary debut in Netflix history, Children of the Underground (FX/Hulu), which was nominated for an International Documentary Association Award as well as an Independent Spirit Award, and the critically acclaimed Netflix series, The Innocence Files. She is the first Black American filmmaker to produce a documentary garnering 84+ million global streams in its first three days of release, as a producer on Harry and Meghan.Beyond filmmaking, Giona serves on the Advisory Board at PANO network, a non-profit that supports underrepresented women and non-binary filmmakers, and she has spoken on various industry panels including the 2023 Sundance Panel, A Seat at the Table. With a commitment to supporting the next wave of filmmakers, she was a 2023 Trainer for the Writers Guild of America East’s, Associate Producer to Producer training program.Giona’s leadership and filmmaking expertise have been further recognized through her participation as an Impact Partners Producers Fellow (2021-2022), and through her contribution to Black Star Film Festival’s inaugural Philadelphia Filmmaker Lab.