Stanley Kalu is a fast-rising filmmaking voice who splits his time between Nigeria, Mexico City, Los Angeles and Baltimore. He gained attention for winning The Launch: Million Dollar Screenplay Competition and having his script, The Obituary of Tunde Johnson, turned into a low-budget drama that premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2019, opened the 2019 Austin Film Festival, and won the Audience Award for debut narrative feature at OutFest 2020. It received a theatrical and PVOD release in 2021 and garnered a 2022 GLAAD Media Awards nomination for outstanding film — limited release. That same year, he was named on Coverfly's 2019 The Young and Hungry List (The Top 100 New Writers of the Year).
Stanley is an award winning Nigerian writer/director who is currently writing and directing best selling Sci- Fi Novel FEED for 20th Century Studios. He also wrote Sci-Fi action feature ONE NIGHT IN COMPTON for Kenya Barris for Paramount Players, has his original series GOLLLY is set up at UCP, and he is currently directing the independent documentary Lord, Baltimore and has much, much more in development.
Jennifer Reeder was recently named by Bong Joon Ho as a filmmaker to watch in the 2020s. She constructs nuanced genre films about relationships, trauma, and coping that borrow from a range of forms including after-school specials and amateur music videos and could be classified as NOIR CAMP. These films have shown at festivals and museums around the world, including Sundance, Berlin, Rotterdam, SXSW, Tribeca, BFI-LFF, and The Whitney Biennial and the Venice Biennale. She received the 2024 Tour De Force Award from the Chicago International Film Festival. Her film PERPETRATOR premiered at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival. KNIVES AND SKIN, premiered at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival and was released theatrically by IFC Films. Reeder's NIGHT'S END, with Michael Shannon, is a Shudder Original and premiered on the platform in March 2022. She directed a segment for horror anthology V/H/S '94.
She has been an advisor at the Sundance Indigenous Program and the Sundance Ignite Program. She is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including the USA Fellowship, the Alpert Film Award residency at MacDowell Colony, a Creative Capital Grant and the SFFIM/Rainin Foundation award. She is a Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Marco Bermudez is a Chicago-based filmmaker and screenwriter whose work interrogates the human condition through the lens of the marginalized. A graduate of Columbia College Chicago's film program, he crafts politically charged, moody, existential narratives that challenge power structures and spotlight social injustice. His award-winning short "Rey" won best Latin film at The IndieFEST Film Awards. Drawing from his mixed-heritage background, he brings an authentic perspective to stories of resilience and resistance.