Katja Esson  [Director/Producer]

is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker based in Miami. She is known for her character-driven documentaries tackling race, class, and gender. Her documentary short Ferry Tales garnered awards at international film festivals, was nominated for an Oscar and premiered on HBO in 2004. Other notable films include: Hole in the Sky - The Scars of 9/11; Skydancer; and Poetry of Resilience (Cinema for Peace Award Nomination). She was awarded the Simons Public Humanities Fellowship at Kansas University and her films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, American Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Knight Foundation, the Ford Foundation.

Ann Bennet  [Producer] 

is an Emmy nominated documentary filmmaker and multimedia producer. She produced the NAACP Image Award-winning PBS documentary, ‘Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People,’ as well as the multi-platform community engagement initiative, ‘Digital Diaspora Family Reunion (DDFR).’ Bennett’s credits include; Citizen King and Fisk Jubilee Singers for the PBS series “American Experience,” Hymn for Alvin Ailey for “Dance in America,” and the award-winning PBS mini-series Africans in America and America’s War on Poverty. She was a consulting producer on “Always in Season” (directed by Jacqueline Olive) 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Bennett is a graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Harvard College.

Ronald Baez  [Producer Miami] 

is a Caribbean-American screenwriter, director, and award-winning immersive media artist from Miami, FL. His most recent film project, SCENES FROM OUR YOUNG MARRIAGE, premiered at the Borscht and Miami Film Festivals, before being distributed PBS Broadcasting and Seed&Spark Online SVOD. Baez was awarded the Fledgling Fund's Rapid Deployment Grant in 2018 for his doc series about global warming and sea level rise in Miami, KING TIDE. Hew also received the NAB Futures Innovator's Award in 2019 for his ongoing immersive reality projects produced in collaboration with the University of Florida's MET Lab. He also serves as the Artistic Director of the After School Film Institute, a nonprofit organization mentoring at risk, inner-city students in South Florida.

Jason Fitzroy Jeffers [Consulting Producer]

is a Miami-based writer and filmmaker from Barbados whose work focuses on giving voice to the often-marginalized stories of the tropics. As a journalist, he has written for The Miami Herald and American Way. As a filmmaker, he wrote and produced the award-winning short film Papa Machete, which explores the esoteric martial art of Haitian machete fencing. The film world premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival and had its U.S. premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Jason is also co-executive director of the Caribbean filmmaking and arts collective Third Horizon. Its annual Third Horizon Film Festival celebrates and empowers the new creatives emerging from the region. He is also cinematic arts manager of Oolite Arts, one of Miami’s largest support organizations for visual artists.

Hector David Rosales [Cinematographer]

is a Cuban cinematographer based in Miami. His work has been showcased at the Sundance Lab Miami, Clermont Ferrand, Vancouver Film Festival, Documenta Madrid, Havana Film Festival. In 2014 he won the special Jury Price at the 'Feria Internacional Cubadisco' for his work as director/DP at the documentary “De Que Van...Van”. In 2017 he won Best Photography at the Festival 'Muestra Joven ICAIC' in Havana for his work on the documentary “Bateria” (Director: Damian Sainz).  He recently filmed the award-winning narrative short “Me 3.769” (Director: Elaine del Valle) which premiered at the Miami Film Festival and aired on HBO in 2019; as well as “Hapi Berdey Yusimi In Yur Dey“ (Director: Ana Alpizar), a short film commissioned by Borscht, Miami.

Ricardo Acosta [Editor]

has been working in the film industry for over 25 years. He has been awarded with an Emmy, and nominated several times for Genie, Gemini, CCE and CS Awards for best editing. He is a Sundance Institute fellow as alumnus, teacher and adviser and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. His keen sense of the human condition has contributed to the making of several award-winning films including: “The Silence of Others” (2018), Winner of the Berlinale Panorama Audience Award and Berlinale Peace Film Prize, Grand Jury Award at Sheffield Doc/Fest, Founders Award for Best Foreign NonFiction Film at Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival, Nominated for a GOYA for Best Documentary. Other notable credits include: “The Blessing” (2018). “Sembene!” (2015), “Marmato” (2014) and “Herman’s House” (2012), which won an Emmy for for Outstanding Arts and Culture Programming 2013, and was broadcast by P.O.V.

Chanda Dancy [Composer]

Native Texan, Chanda Dancy, started composing orchestral works at the age of 12. An alumnus of the prestigious USC Film Scoring Program, and the Sundance Composers Lab, Chanda is both an accomplished film and television composer with over 15 years of experience and an emerging classical concert composer. Arts Boston named her one of “10 Contemporary Black Composers You Should Know”. She is known for her work with award winning director Aleem Hossain, whose sci-fi feature “After We Leave” has garnered critical acclaim around the globe. She is also known for her work with the hugely popular Youtube filmmaking group, Wong Fu Productions, on their debut feature “Everything Before Us”, starring Randall Park. 

Shannon Sea [Composer]

Born and raised in Miami, Shannon Sea is a Bahamian-American composer, sound artist, and sonic activist.  Her compositions are deeply influenced by the avant-garde aesthetic, electronic music, Taoism, and her Afro-Caribbean roots.  Sea's works explore themes of nature, spirituality, Afro-futurism, and self-exploration.  In her music, she seeks to create sound worlds that fuse together acoustic and electronic means of expression.  Sea has composed music for theatre, dance, and ensembles.  Most recently, she composed the score for the theater play Lauf und bring uns dein nacktes Leben in Darmstadt, Germany. 

Marshall Davis [Story Consultant - African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, Liberty City, Miami]

is the director of the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, Liberty City, Miami. He is a Miami native and has since 1983 served as Director of the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center (AHCAC), and has been dedicated to promoting arts learning, training and access in Liberty City and Miami’s broader African American community. Working closely with Miami’s underserved communities, he has developed successful curricula in classical, contemporary and traditional arts that has led students to Juilliard, Broadway, television and film. Among them is playwright and co-writer of the 2016 Academy Award winning film Moonlight, Tarell Alvin McCraney, who credited the AHCAC as “a beacon of arts excellence in African American artistic life in South Florida.”

Ana Monte [Sound Designer / Audio Post Production]

Brasilian-born Ana Monte is Co-Founder and Executive Director of DELTA Soundworks, an audio production company with focus on immersive audio formats. She holds a Bachelor degree from California State University - Chico where she studied “Music Industry and Technology” with a focus on “Recording Arts” and a Masters degree from the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg, where she studied “Film sound and Sound design". For her work as a sound designer, Ana has received diverse sound awards including “Best Sound Design in a Drama series” at the LA Webfest 2015 and a “Best Sound” nomination from the LA Film Review. She is also the 2019 recipient of the “Helene Hecht Award”, honoring women in the arts.

Leslie Fields Cruz [Executive Producer for Black Public Media]

Jody Allen [Executive Producer for Vulcan Productions]

Sabine Schenk & Anja Murmann [Executive Producers for Shorelight Pictures]