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Susannah Grant is an Academy Award-nominated writer, producer and director. Her film credits include the screenplay for Erin Brockovich, In Her Shoes, 28 Days, Ever After, Pocahontas, and Charlotte’s Web. She also wrote and directed Catch and Release and Netflix’s Lonely Planet. Her writing and producing television credits include Netflix’s Unbelievable, HBO’s Confirmation, the CBS series A Gifted Man, and the Fox series Party of Five. She was an executive producer of Fleishman is in Trouble for F/X and of Lessons in Chemistry for Apple TV+. Grant is an alumna of Amherst College and the American Film Institute, and received the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting. In 2011, Grant received the Valentine Davies Award from the Writers Guild of America.

susannahgrant1@gmail.com

Megan Twohey is a prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times and a best-selling author whose work has fueled changes to the law, criminal convictions, and cultural shifts. In 2017, she and Jodi Kantor broke the story of Hollywood Producer Harvey Weinstein’s long pattern of sexual harassment and abuse, which helped ignite the #MeToo movement and shared in the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Their book, “SHE SAID,” which takes readers behind the scenes of reporting on Weinstein, was adapted into a film of the same name. The Weinstein story was among many investigations by Twohey into sexual misconduct and the treatment of women that stretch back to her work revealing the problem of untested rape kits. She has also uncovered a black market for adopted children, exposed a suicide website run by two shadowy figures that was linked to the deaths of young people around the world, and revealed how Adidas tolerated antisemitism and other misconduct by Kanye West for nearly a decade in a sneaker collaboration that made billions. Most recently she’s been investigating cannabis legalization and commercialization in the United States.

megan.twohey@nytimes.com

Jodi Kantor is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at The New York Times and a bestselling author. In 2017, she and Megan Twohey broke the story of decades of sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein, helping to ignite the #MeToo movement and spur cultural, corporate, and legal changes around the globe. Their book “SHE SAID,” takes readers behind the scenes of the investigation and was called “an instant classic of investigative journalism” by The Washington Post, and named one of the top ten works of journalism of the decade by New York University. For the past two years, Jodi has been working to illuminate the Supreme Court, breaking stories about provocative flags at the homes of Justice Samuel Alito, the court’s handling of Trump-related cases, and more.

David Koplan is a film producer and founder of Magnetic Fields Entertainment with over 25 years of experience in the film industry. He is currently producing The Smashing Machine, directed by Benny Safdie and starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, which is in post-production and set to be released by A24. Koplan produced the musical-comedy Spirited, starring Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, and Octavia Spencer, directed by Sean Anders and distributed by Apple TV+. He served as an Executive Producer for Uncut Gems, directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, released by A24, which was named one of the National Board of Review’s Top Ten Films of 2019. Additionally, Koplan served as an Executive Producer on Daddy’s Home, directed by Sean Anders and released by Paramount Pictures, and Dumb and Dumber To, directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly, distributed by Universal Pictures. Koplan has also served as either Producer or Executive Producer on a wide range of award-winning independent films, including Michael Noer’s Papillon, Stuart Blumberg’s Thanks for Sharing, Marc Lawrence’s The Rewrite, Tim Blake Nelson’s Leaves of Grass, Ray McKinnon’s Chrystal, and Adam Rapp’s Winter Passing. A graduate of the University of Virginia, he serves on the board of the Virginia Film Festival, the LA Advisory Committee for Americares, and is an active member of Producers United and The Academy.

Cat Villiers has produced, executive produced, and co-produced many award-winning films from around the world; Macedonia, Bosnia, Egypt, Morocco, Australia, India, and more, including; Oscar-nominated and Venice Golden Lion-winner Before the Rain; Danis Tanovic’s Oscar, Golden Globe and Cannes winner No Man’s Land; Nick Cave and John Hillcoat’s acclaimed modern classic The Proposition, and Tamer El-Said’s critically lauded In The Last Days of the City. Cat has also worked with the award-winning directors, Jasmila Zbanic, Annemarie Jacir, Tala Hadid, and Hanan Abdalla. With a storied career encompassing journalism, activism, and philanthropy, Cat is a Founding Trustee of the Katrin Cartlidge Foundation with directors Mike Leigh and Simon McBurney. The foundation supports new directors and cultural initiatives from around the world. Among other awards, Cat has been given the prestigious Heart of Sarajevo, for her services to the art of Cinema.

Snežana van Houwelingen, a film production graduate from the Academy of Arts in Belgrade, has enriched her skills through esteemed producers programs including EAVE (2011), EAVE Plus (2021), and ACE (2024). Her recent work includes films like Mother Mara (SFF, 2024) and A Good Wife (Sundance, 2016) by Mirjana Karanovic, Darkling (Serbian Oscar Entry, 2022), Bad Blood – Ancestral Sin (sold to Netflix, 2021), and Occupied Cinema (IFFR 2019). She has also achieved success with TV series like Morning Changes Everything (2018) and Bad Blood (2021). Recently, her production Operation Sabre (2024), distributed by Beta Film, was recognized with the Special Interpretation Award for Cast at Canneseries and Best TV Show Award at the Serial Killer. Snežana teaches Film and TV Production at the Faculty of Media and Communications in Belgrade. She is a member of EFA and dedicates her time as a mentor at EWA, nurturing the next generation of female filmmakers with her wealth of knowledge and experience.

Academy Award, BAFTA, WGA, and Emmy nominee Ramin Bahrani is the writer, director, and producer of such films as Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo, 99 Homes, and The White Tiger. His films have all premiered at Venice or Cannes Film Festivals and additionally been screened at Telluride and Toronto. His debut feature documentary 2nd Chance, premiered at Sundance and was released by Showtime. Bahrani has also directed TV pilots for Universal Studios and Apple. Roger Ebert proclaimed Bahrani “the director of the decade” in 2010. Bahrani is a Guggenheim Fellow and his cinematic oeuvre is housed in the permanent collection at the MoMA in NYC. As a PGA-winning producer, Bahrani’s films include Alex Camilleri’s Sundance and Spirit Award-winning Maltese debut feature Luzzu (2020) and his forthcoming Zejtune, Alexandre Moratto’s Spirit Award-winning Brazilian debut feature, Socrates (2018), and his Venice-winning 7 Prisoners (2021), Saim Sadiq’s Cannes-winning Pakistani debut Joyland (2022), Angus MacLachlan’s Sundance premiere, A Little Prayer (2023) and Oscar nominee Joshua Oppenheimer’s Telluride debut, The End (2024).

Sarah Timberman’s producing credits include the seven-time Emmy-nominated FX limited series, Fleishman is in Trouble, based on the critically acclaimed novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Claire Danes, and Lizzy Caplan. She recently completed production on the FX limited series Justified: City Primeval, starring Timothy Olyphant and Aunjanue Ellis, as well as the Showtime limited series, The Man Who Fell To Earth, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Naomie Harris, based on the Walter Tevis novel and the Nicolas Roeg film. Timberman’s other recent notable credits include the Peabody Award and Critics Choice Award-winning, Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated Netflix limited series, Unbelievable (based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Marshall Project/ProPublica article, “An Unbelievable Story of Rape”), as well as seven seasons of the long-running CBS series, Elementary, four seasons of the acclaimed Showtime series, Masters of Sex, and six seasons of FX’s award-winning series, Justified (based on Elmore Leonard’s “Fire in the Hole”). Additional credits include CBS’ SEAL Team, Unforgettable, The Odd Couple, A Gifted Man and Doubt. Timberman also recently completed production on the Netflix film Lonely Planet, written and directed by Susannah Grant. Prior to starting Timberman/Beverly Productions (with partner Carl Beverly), Timberman served as President, Universal Network Television, playing a key role in acquiring the rights to the British series, “The Office,” for NBC.

William Horberg is a partner with Zhang Xin in Closer Media, a New York City-based company that finances and produces films, series, and documentaries. Their recent films include Ezra directed by Tony Goldwyn and starring Robert De Niro. Horberg produced The Queen’s Gambit, written and directed by Scott Frank, the most-watched scripted limited series in Netflix history, for which Horberg won the Emmy Award as well as the Golden Globe, Critics Choice, and PGA awards for Best Limited Series. Other recent films include Flag Day adapted by Jez Butterworth and directed by Sean Penn and starring Sean and Dylan Penn, as well as the Mick Jagger-starring noir thriller The Burnt Orange Heresy for Sony Pictures Classics. He was the president of production at Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, where he executive produced Craig Gillespie’s Lars and the Real Girl, starring Ryan Gosling, and written by Academy Award nominee Nancy Oliver. Horberg was also an executive producer on Focus Features’ Milk, starring Academy Award winner Sean Penn and directed by Gus Van Sant. Prior to forming Wonderful Films, he was partnered for 12 years with Academy Award-winning filmmakers Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella in Mirage Enterprises. During this time he produced Mr. Minghellas’s Cold Mountain, for which Renee Zellweger won an Academy Award, The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Matt Damon and Jude Law, Philip Noice’s The Quiet American, Tom Tykwer’s Heaven, Peter Howitt’s Sliding Doors and Steven Zaillian’s Searching for Bobby Fischer. Horberg was formerly a Senior Vice President of Production at Paramount Pictures and is the Chairman Emeritus of the Producers Guild of America, East.

Rodrigo Garcia is a celebrated award-winning director, producer, and writer, born in Colombia and raised in Mexico. A consistent figure in independent film over the last 20 years, Rodrigo has directed the multiple Academy Award-nominated film, Albert Nobbs, starring Glenn Close, Mother and Child, starring Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, and Samuel L. Jackson, and most recently Netflix’s Familia starring Daniel Giménez Cacho and Maribel Verdú. Garcia has written and directed several films that have attracted critical acclaim, such as Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, which won the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes in 2000, and his sophomore film, Nine Lives, for which he received Independent Spirit Award nominations for both directing and screenwriting. Garcia has worked on several television shows including Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Big Love for which he directed the pilot episode and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Garcia is the co-chief executive officer of Indigenous Media, a next-generation digital studio focused on producing original content for digital and emerging platforms worldwide. He is the co-creator of WIGS, a digital drama channel offering scripted content. His memoir, “A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes,” was published in July 2021 by HarperVia.

rodgarcia59@gmail.com

Paula Cosenza is an independent producer with extensive national and international experience. She has produced series, feature films, and documentaries in partnership with Netflix, Disney, HBO, FOX, Warner Bros, and Sony Pictures, among others. Her films have been screened and awarded at Cannes, Berlinale, Venice, San Sebastian, Sundance, and Telluride, such as Tropicália by Marcelo Machado and Violeta Went to Heaven by Andrés Wood. As a distributor, she acquired and released in Brazil titles such as Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite and Ruben Ostlund’s The Square. European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs member and Variety’s “Latin American Producer to Watch,” she is currently producing 100 Days, based on Amyr Klink’s book and directed by Carlos Saldanha.

paula@ventrestudio.com

Nico Avruj has produced feature films selected and awarded at Cannes, Venice, Sundance, and Locarno, which were subsequently sold to dozens of countries and to the most important platforms worldwide. Together with Diego Lerman, he founded Campo Cine, a production company specializing in international co-productions. Among other films, he produced Diego Lerman’s The Man Who Loved UFOs, The Substitute, A Sort of Family, Refugiado, and The Invisible Eye, as well as Ana Katz’s Florianópolis Dream and My Friend From the Park, Planta Permanente by E.Radusky, In the Country of Last Things by A. Chomsky and Most People Die on Sundays by Iair Said. He directed the documentary NEY: Us, them and Me, and he co-produced Alejandro Lande’s Monos and Porfirio Akelarre, by Pablo Aguero, Las Olas by Adrian Biniez, Edouard Deluc’s Marriàge á Mendoza, Los Hongos by Oscar Ruiz Navia. He also produced the TV series LA CASA and tens of hours of documentary TV series.

nico@elcampocine.com.ar

Mariano Barroso is a Spanish film director, producer, and screenwriter. Throughout his career, he has received numerous awards including three Goya Awards, Karlovy Vary´s Crystal Globe, Toulouse Film Festival Best Director Award, and Malaga Film Festival Special Jury Prize, among others. He made his feature film debut in 1993 with Mi Hermano del Alma (My Soul Brother), followed by Extasis (1995), Los Lobos de Washington (1999), In the Time of the Butterflies (2000), Hormigas en la Boca (Ants in the Mouth) (2004), Invisibles (Documentary – 2009), Todas las mujeres (All the Women(2010). He has also written and directed several TV series: El Día de mañana, La línea invisible, Criminal, and Los Farad. He’s currently starting production of his next film, El Niño, for Netflix. Barroso teaches acting, screenwriting and directing at the Madrid Film School (ECAM) and at the Prague Film School (PFS). Previously, he was head of the directing program at the EICTV in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. Mariano Barroso was the President of the Spanish Film Academy (2018-2022) and Director of Film in Spain and Portugal for Netflix (2023-2024).

m.marianobarroso@gmail.com

Kathryn Thal is senior vice president of development & production at Vendôme Pictures, the Paris-based Academy Award-winning studio behind CODA. Kathryn is based in Los Angeles and oversees all English-language film and television projects from the development stage to production and delivery. Before joining Vendôme in November 2023, she was vice president of Black Bear Global, working closely with the production and management teams at Black Bear Pictures. Previously, she worked at Anonymous Content building out and servicing international co-ventures and sourcing project-related opportunities. Thal also worked at Hunting Lane as manager of development, after starting her career as an assistant at ICM Partners and then HBO and Netflix.

kathryn@vendome.movie

Jan Schomburg is a writer and director, known for the movies Above Us Only Sky (2011), Forget My Self (2014), and Divine (2020). Together with Maria Schrader, he wrote the screenplays for Stefan Zweig – Farewell to Europe and I’m Your Man. Jan is also a novelist, publishing “Das Licht und die Geräusche“ in 2017 and “Die Möglichkeit eines Wunders“ in 2024. His films have been  shown at Berlinale, Locarno, Rotterdam, and New York, among others. He was awarded the German Film Prize for the screenplay for I’m Your Man , while the film Stefan Zweig – Farewell to Europe won the Audience Award of the European Film Academy. Currently, he is the head author and showrunner of Other People’s Money (WT), an eight-part international TV series about the biggest tax heist in history for ZDF and DR.

janschomburg@gmx.de

Eitan Mansuri is a producer born in Jerusalem and a father of three. An alumni of the world-renowned Sam Spiegel School for Film and Television in Israel, Eitan has garnered experience in a wide range of production capacities throughout the years, both in local and international projects. He has produced numerous prize-winning, critically acclaimed, and commercially successful films and TV series, which exhibit unique diversity, in terms of content and production value. In 2013, Eitan established together with Jonathan Dowek the production company Spiro Films. Selected works: No Man’s Land, The Operative, When Heroes Fly, Here We Are, and Foxtrot.

eitan@spiro-films.com

Andrea Calderwood is an independent producer and partner in Potboiler Productions together with producing partner Gail Egan. Previously, she was head of drama at BBC Scotland and head of production at Pathé Pictures. Andrea has produced and executive produced over 40 award-winning feature films and TV series to date. Having established Slate Films in 2000 and joining forces with Potboiler in 2009, Andrea has won the BAFTA for Best British Film for the Academy Award-winning The Last King of Scotland and received an Emmy Award nomination for the acclaimed TV series Generation Kill with David Simon.

andrea.calderwood@gmail.com

Khadija Sharife (LLM) is an investigative journalist and writer focused on behavioral finance, natural resources, and political economy. She previously was a global journalist with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and a board member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network and the Platform for the Protection of African Whistleblowers. A Global Justice Fellow at Yale University, Khadija’s reporting has exposed complex financial networks and abuses of power. She has helped to build and sustain a number of legal and journalistic initiatives providing investigative support to journalists. Most recently, she led an OCCRP investigation into a U.S.-based medical company. Produced in collaboration with The Boston Globe, the project was a 2025 Pulitzer Prize finalist and received multiple awards. She loves dogs, trees, and books.

Diego Fernández Romeral is an Argentinian journalist and has covered a wide range of stories impacting Latin America, the U.S., and Europe since 2010. Diego works with newspapers Página 12 and Clarín and his stories have been published in Latin American media such as Gatopardo and Orsai. Since 2019, he has worked as a screenwriter and researcher with production companies DL-Cine and Planta Alta, developing films and series. He writes about mafias, serial killers, jewel thieves, millionaire scammers, and famous criminals. Diego’s investigations have taken him to prisons, luxury hotels, neighborhood gyms, psychiatric hospitals, and underground cultures. In 2023, he was one of 14 journalists selected for the first Floodlight Summit and this year, he won the Gabo Prize in the text category for “The Night of the Horses.”

fernandezromeral@gmail.com

Peter Carlton has been a Senior Executive Producer and partner at UK-production company Warp Films for more than ten years. Prior to that, he was a Senior Commissioning Executive at Film4. His production credits include: acclaimed tv series Little Birds (a queer melodrama set in 1955 Tangier on the eve of independence, written by Sophia Al-Maria and Ruth  McCance); “The Last Panthers” (a thriller inspired by the so-called ‘Pink Panther’ jewellery thieves from former Yugoslavia, created by Jack Thorne and journalist Jerome Pierrat);  Southcliffe (about the aftermath of a spree killing in a small town, written by Tony Grisoni); and feature films, Jonathan BuMerell’s Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Steve McQueen’s Hunger, Chris Morris’s Four Lions, Gabriel Range’s Death of a President and Miranda July’s Me & You & Everyone We Know. Warp projects in production include Adolescence, written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, a co-production with Matriarch and Plan B for Netflix; Reunion, a returning thriller set in the deaf community written by Willam Mager for BBC. Upcoming projects on Carlton’s slate include Costa Armonia, a dark horror series set in a luxury wellness retreat run by AI, co-created with Neda Film in Greece, The Loss Adjuster, a British-Chinese investigative thriller starring and co-produced by Stephen Graham, and MAOC (N), a returning series about the eponymous multi-national agency based in Lisbon set up to combat narcotics traffic on the high seas, in co-production with Eléphant International, France.

peter@warpfilms.com

Roman Paul holds a master’s degree in theatre, film, and media studies from Goethe University in Frankfurt. He started his career in the film business as Director of Acquisitions for the arthouse distributor Prokino in Munich. In 1999, he took over as Head of International Acquisitions at Senator Film Distribution in Berlin. In 2002, he founded Razor Film Produktion in Berlin along with Gerhard Meixner. From 2002-2006, besides working as a producer, he also served as an acquisitions consultant for Celluloid Dreams World Sales in Paris. Roman is a member of the European and German Film Academy, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), as well as Atélier du Cinéma Européen (ACE). Since 2013, he has been the co-director of the International Production Masterclass “Atelier Ludwigsburg-Paris” at the Filmakademie Ludwigsburg and La Fémis Paris. In 2019, he was named “Chevalier des Arts et Lettres” by the Republic of France. Roman’s filmography is anchored by an array of critically acclaimed international films and major festival selections. Key films include the Academy Award-nominated Paradise Now (2005, Berlinale Competition), the Golden Globe-winning animated documentary Waltz with Bashir (2008, Cannes Competition), and Wadjda (2012), which made history as the first feature film directed by a Saudi woman, premiering at the Venice Film Festival. Noteworthy co-productions include the Oscar-nominated Quo Vadis, Aida (2020, Venice Competition) and the IDFA Best Film winner Aswang (2019). Roman also collaborated on films selected for Cannes and Berlinale, such as The Future (2010), Petrov’s Flu (2021), and Rafiki (2018).

Ada Solomon is a Romanian film producer working in the film business for 30+ years and has credits on almost 100 films, including Golden Bear winners Bad Luck Banging, Child’s Pose, and EFA winner and Oscar-nominated Toni Erdmann. She is the Deputy Chairwoman of the Board of the European Film Academy, member of the Board of European Producers Club, and a founding member of the Board of Romanian Alliance of Producers. She received the Eurimages Award for Contribution to the development of European Co-productions and was listed by The Hollywood Reporter as one of the 40 Most Influential Women in International Film.

Alina Radu is an investigative journalist and manager of Ziarul de Gardă (ZdG), the largest investigative reporting outlet in Moldova. ZdG recently published high-profile investigations into Russia’s illegal financing of digital and offline armies to organize protests and corrupt voting in elections. ZdG publishes a newspaper, maintains websites in Romanian and Russian, has a  Youtube channel, and is active on multiple social media platforms.

Carmen Aristegui is a Mexican journalist with a long and distinguished career in television, radio, publishing and digital media. She is the founder and director of the multiplatform outlet Aristegui Noticias. Carmen has led major investigative projects that have earned national and international recognition. She has received the National Journalism Award, the Gabriel García Márquez Award, and the Knight International Journalism Award, among others. She holds the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and the French Legion of Honour. Recent distinctions include the Diario Madrid Journalism Award (2022), the Grand Press Freedom Award from the Inter American Press Association (2023) and the World Press Freedom Hero Award (2023). She has led investigative teams on landmark reports such as The White House of Enrique Peña Nieto and Televisa Leaks. Carmen has also contributed to global collaborations including “The Panama Papers” and “The Pegasus Project.” She is the author of “Transition: What Was Done and Left Undone for Mexican Democracy” and “Marcial Maciel: The Story of a Criminal.”

Luke Davies is an award-winning screenwriter, producer, novelist, and poet. His screenplay Lion was nominated for an Academy Award, and won the BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay. Other screenplays include Beautiful Boy, Candy, News of the World, and the limited series Catch-22. His novels include the cult best-seller “Candy,” and “God of Speed.” (Luke adapted “Candy” for the screen, his first produced screenplay, which starred the late Heath Ledger.) He has published five volumes of poetry; “Interferon Psalms,” which won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, and “Totem,” which won the Age Book of the Year. Luke has written a children’s book, “Magpie.” 

As co-creator, lead writer, and supervising producer of Band of Brothers for HBO

in 2001, Erik Jendresen received a  Golden Globe Award and Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries. As a writer, producer, and showrunner for television, his projects include a Dashiell Hammett series for WBTV; a series based on the Francis Ford Coppola film, The Conversation; The Pony Express (with Robert Duvall); The 43, a series about WWII British ex-servicemen fighting fascism; A Slave in the White House, a series about James Madison’srelationship with Paul Jennings; Castner’s Cutthroats, a series about the Battleof the Aleutians; No Man’s Land, a series about the war to end all war; Shot All to Hell, a series about the James-Younger

Gang; Wicked, a series adaptation of the novel by Gregory Maguire; Killing Lincoln for the NationalGeographic Channel; The Crowmen, a series set in the world of international espionage; and Lawrence in Arabia, a  series about T.E. Lawrence. As a writer/producer for film, his current projects include Mission: Impossible 7 & 8 (with Christopher McQuarrie); Broadsword (the story of an S.O.E. operation in WWII); The Mariner (directed by Christopher McQuarrie); Saint-Ex (about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry); Aloft(based on, “On the Wing” by Alan Tennant), La Légion (about the French Foreign Legion in 1954); The Windsor Knot, about Sherlock Holmes’ son; The Tracker (based on the book by Tom Brown, Jr.); and Iron Curtain (with Christopher McQuarrie and Michael B. Jordan). He lives on a 120-year-old Dutch former-naval vessel (a veteran of Dunkirk) in Sausalito, California, and on the Catawba River, North Carolina, with his wife, psychotherapist Venus Bobis.

Lowell Bergman is the Emeritus Reva and David Logan Distinguished Chair in Investigative Journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He created the Graduate School’s Investigative Reporting Program (IRP) in 2006. Bergman spent three decades working in national television news with ABC, then CBS’ 60 Minutes, and then the PBS documentary series, Frontline. In 1998, he created a partnership between Frontline, The New York Times, and the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley. It went on to do multiplatform investigative projects that were honored with multiple Emmy, duPont, and Peabody awards. In 2004, The New York Times received a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a multiplatform investigation, A Dangerous Business, led by Lowell, along with his co-author, David Barstow, and two graduate students at Berkeley’s IRP. The documentaries were awarded every major prize in television news. Lowell’s 60 Minutes investigation of the tobacco industry that aired in 1996 was dramatized in a 1999 feature film, The Insider, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards. He was a New York Times correspondent until 2008, a senior producer and consultant to Frontline until 2015, and retired from the University in 2019. From 2017, he has been a co-producer and reporter on the HBO limited documentary series, Agents of Chaos, as well as executive producer and co-producer of the Netflix series, The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez, The Bomb and The Cold War, and Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror on the 20th anniversary of the attack.

Carole Cadwalladr is a Pulitzer-nominated investigative journalist, podcaster and press freedom advocate. After a 20-year career with the Guardian and Observer, she is now the co-founder of a new female-founded news outlet, The Nerve. She came to international prominence with her expose of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal with the Guardian and the New York Times for which she was a Pulitzer Prize-finalist for National Reporting in 2019 and won multiple awards including a Polk, Loeb, and Orwell Prize. Her 2018 TED talk Facebook’s role in Brexit – and the threat to democracy was watched by more than five million people and led to a four year legal battle in which the subject of her reporting — and the man who financed Nigel Farage’s Brexit campaign — sued her for defamation. Twenty-one press freedom organizations called the case a SLAPP and she crowdfunded nearly £1 million in order to defend herself in the UK High Court. Cadwalladr co-founded a tech justice non-profit, The Citizens, in 2020 and after appearing in the Netflix documentary, The Great Hack, she launched Project Citizen, a long-form documentary and podcast studio focused on developing tech stories. Her recent number one podcast, Sergei & the Westminster Spy Ring tells the story of her investigation into Russian interference in UK politics. Cadwalladr’s latest venture, The Nerve, was founded in September 2025 by five former Guardian and Observer journalists, all women, and is focused on culture, politics, and technology. Her personal newsletter can be found at How to Survive the Broligarchy on Substack.

Brad Simpson is an Emmy and Golden Globe-winning producer of film and television. He is partners with Nina Jacobson in Color Force. His films and television shows have collectively received 65 Emmy Nominations and six Academy Award Nominations. His most recent television series, Say Nothing, based on the book by Patrick Radden Keefe, debuted this November to widespread acclaim, which Esquire calling it “one of the best TV series of 2024.” Simpson is executive producer of The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, and Impeachment: American Crime Story.  For his work on the franchise, he has received two Emmy ®Awards, two Golden Globe ® Awards, two Critics’ Choice Awards, three TCA Awards, two AFI Awards, two PGA Awards, a BAFTA, and a NAACP Award.

Simpson is also the executive producer of Pose, Y: The Last Man, America Sports

Story: Aaron Hernandez, and Clipped. In features, Simpson most recently produced The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which dominated the 2024 Thanksgiving box office in the United States.

In 2018, he produced Crazy Rich Asians, which became a cultural phenomenon. It opened at number one at the U.S. Box Office, went on to gross over $230 million worldwide, won the 2019 Critics’ Choice Award for Best Comedy and was nominated for a 2019 Golden Globe Award and a 2019 PGA Award. Along with Jacobson, Simpson produced the incredibly successful and beloved Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise which spanned four films. Simpson was also an Executive Producer on World War Z starring Brad Pitt, which grossed over $540 million worldwide in 2012. Other feature producing credits include All Day and a Night, The Goldfinch, Ben is Back, Far From Heaven, Party Monster, Camp, and Boys Don’t Cry. Prior to Color Force, Simpson was President of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way. He began his career as a producer and executive at legendary New York indie production company Killer Films. While there, Simpson was involved with such classic independent films as Velvet Goldmine, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Happiness and One Hour Photo. Originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, Simpson graduated magna cum laude from Brown University.

Ziad Doueiri is a writer and director born in Beirut, who lived in Lebanon until the outbreak of the civil war in 1975. At 19, he fled the war and moved to California. Trained as a cameraman, he completed his film studies in the United States. He now lives in France, working in Europe and the United States. His film experiences include assistant cameraman and cameraman on the set of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, From Dusk Till Dawn and Jackie Brown. He wrote and directed The Insult (2018), which was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Foreign Film and won the award for the Best Actor in Venice. The Attack (2012) was a Toronto Official Competition Selection, and received the Marrakech Golden Star, and West Beirut (1998) won the Cannes François Chalais prize, Toronto Critics’ Prize, Valladolid Best Film, and the Brussels Audience Prize, among others. West Beirut was in competition for the Best Foreign Film at the 1999 Golden Globes and was the official Lebanese entry for the 71st Academy Awards. He also directed the series The Trigger (Canal+), Dark Hearts (Amazon and France 2), Derapage (Arte and Netflix), and Sleeper’s Cell (Showtime USA).

ziaddoueiri@gmail.com

Maria Schrader started her career as an actor and screenwriter and starred in the Emmy Award-winning series Deutschland 83-89 and films like In Darkness, Aimee & Jaguar, and Nobody Love Me while also writing scripts and co-directing films such as The Giraffe, starring David Strathairn and Jeffrey Wright. She won the Silver Bear in Berlin and three times the German Film Award for Best Actress. She directed and co-wrote Stefan Zweig – Farewell to Europe, Austria’s 2016 Oscar entry. For her direction on Netflix’s acclaimed mini-series Unorthodox, she won 2020’s Primetime Emmy, making her the first German director to receive the prestigious television award. Maria co-wrote and directed I’m Your Man which premiered in the main competition at the Berlin Film Festival in 2021, winning the Silver Bear for Best Performance and being shortlisted at the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film. The film received the German Film Awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress. In 2022, Maria made her U.S. debut with Universal’s She Said. The film stars two-time Academy Award-nominee Carey Mulligan and Emmy Award-nominee Zoe Kazan as New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, whose joint exceptional investigative reporting exposed abuses of power against women in Hollywood. The film won 2022’s AFI and New York Film Critics “Movie of the Year.”

maria.schrader@gmx.net

Kevin Macdonald was born in Scotland and lives in London. He has made both documentaries and fiction films over the last 25 years. His documentaries include One Day in September (2000, winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary); Touching the Void (2003, winner of the BAFTA for Best British Film of the Year); Marley (2011, BAFTA nominated), and most recently: Klitschko: More than a Fight (2024) about the mayor of Kyiv during the Ukrainian war, Vitaly Klitschko. His feature films include: The Last King of Scotland (2006, Oscar for Best Actor); the journalistic thriller State of Play (2009), and most recently The Mauritanian (2021, BAFTA nominated and Golden Globe winner). Kevin has recently started a joint venture to produce documentary films with Plan B Productions in Los Angeles.

kevinmacdonald1@me.com

Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of five books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland,” which received the National Book Critics’ Circle Award for Nonfiction, was named one of the “20 Best Books of the 21st Century” by The New York Times, and is the subject of a 9-part FX series on Hulu and Disney+; “Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty,” which received the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction; and “Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks.” He is also the creator and host of the award-winning investigative podcast “Wind of Change,” which explores the strange convergence of Cold War espionage and heavy metal music, and was named the #1 podcast of 2020 by the Guardian and Entertainment Weekly. The recipient of a National Magazine Award and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, he lives with his family in New York.

psrkeefe@gmail.com

Anna Gielewska is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of VSquare.org, one of Central Europe’s leading investigative journalism platforms, and co-founder of FRONTSTORY.PL, a Polish newsroom uncovering stories in the public interest. She also serves as vice-chairwoman of Fundacja Reporterów, Poland’s first independent, non-profit investigative journalism center. Anna specializes in exposing influence operations and political power networks. A Stanford JSK Fellowship alumna, she has received several prestigious journalism awards in Poland for her reporting.

Torbjörn Wester is a Swedish journalist based in Malmö. He began his journalism career at local newspapers in southern Sweden in 2004 and switched to freelancing in 2016. Since then, he has worked for a wide range of media outlets across the Nordic countries, focusing on international feature stories and investigative projects. Recently, he has worked on investigations into global fraud networks, such as West African romance scammers.

Holger Roonemaa is an investigative reporter and editor based in Tallinn, Estonia. He founded and leads the investigative desk at Estonia’s largest news site, Delfi.ee, which he has built into an award-winning team since 2020. Holger is also an editor with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). His work has focused on money laundering, corruption, sanctions evasion, and national security issues — with a strong emphasis in recent years on Russian influence and security threats in Europe. He has led and coordinated major cross-border investigations, including Say Privet, Kremlin Papers, and Kremlin Leaks — high-profile collaborations exposing Russian sabotage, election interference, information manipulation, and territorial aggression directed by Vladimir Putin’s regime. In 2024–2025, Holger was a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan.

Steven Dudley is the co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime and a senior research fellow at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies in Washington, D.C. In 2020, he published his second book, “MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang” (HarperCollins), which in 2019 won the Lukas Prize for work-in-progress. Steven is the former bureau chief of the Miami Herald in the Andean Region and the author of “Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia” (Routledge 2004). He has also reported from Haiti, Brazil, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Miami for outlets such as National Public Radio and the Washington Post. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Latin American History from Cornell University and master’s degree  in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Anuj Chopra is an award-winning journalist and a New America–ASU Future Security Fellow. He is a Washington-based reporter for Agence France-Presse. Anuj was AFP’s first disinformation correspondent and helps cover global crises, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Previously, he was AFP’s bureau chief in Riyadh and Kabul. He joined AFP in 2011 in Hong Kong as an editor and his assignments have included Syria, Afghanistan, and Myanmar. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Time, The Economist, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Post. He has received the Walid El-Gabry Memorial Award, the CNN Young Journalist Award, the Society of Publishers in Asia Award, the Human Rights Press Award, and the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Hoda Osman is an investigative reporter and editor based in New York. She serves as executive editor of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), where she leads international collaborative investigations, including the Gaza Project, which investigated the targeting of journalists by Israel in Gaza. She was also co-producer of the PBS Frontline documentary Syria After Assad. Over the course of her career, Hoda has worked with ABC News, CBS News, France24, and the Associated Press, and she regularly trains journalists around the world in investigative reporting.

Sebastián Barragán was born in Toluca, State of Mexico. He earned a bachelor’s degree in communication from the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico and a master’s degree in journalism and public affairs from Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas. Sebastián has worked for Milenio Estado de México, UN1ÓN — a partnership between El Universal and Uno TV — Noticias MVS and Aristegui Noticias. He is co-author of the investigative report “The White House of Enrique Peña Nieto” and has covered corruption as part of the special investigations team at Aristegui Noticias.

Bryan Avelar es un periodista salvadoreño especializado en violencia, migración y crimen organizado en México y Centroamérica. Ha publicado su trabajo en The New York Times, The Guardian, El País, Insight Crime, El Faro, entre otros. Algunos de sus textos han sido traducidos al inglés, alemán, ruso e italiano. Ganador del Premio Ortega y Gasset 2024 en la categoría Mejor Investigación por “Moskitia: La selva hondureña se ahoga en cocaína”. Ganador del Premio Ondas 2025 en la categoría Mejor Podcast Narrativo de No Ficción y del Premio Gabo 2025 en la categoría Audio, ambos con el proyecto “Humo: Murder and Silence in El Salvador.” Actualmente vive en la frontera sur de México, desde donde reporta sobre migración y violencia y escribe su primer libro. Bryan se ha enfocado principalmente en construir reportajes y crónicas de largo aliento sobre la MS-13 y el Barrio 18, las dos pandillas latinas más poderosas de Centroamérica, así como sobre la crisis migratoria mundial hacia Estados Unidos.

Bryan Avelar is a Salvadoran journalist who specializes in violence, migration, and organized crime in Mexico and Central America. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, El País, InSight Crime, El Faro, and other outlets. His stories have been translated into English, German, Russian, and Italian. He won the 2024 Ortega y Gasset Award for Best Investigation for “Moskitia: The Honduran Jungle Drowns in Cocaine.” In 2025, he received the Ondas Award for Best Narrative Nonfiction Podcast and the Gabo Award in the Audio category for the project “Humo: Murder and Silence in El Salvador.” He is also writing his first book. His reporting focuses on in-depth investigations and long-form narratives. Much of his work centers on the MS-13 and Barrio 18, Central America’s most powerful gangs. He also covers the global migration crisis toward the United States.

Anda Ionescu has been working with film production and cultural management in Romania and Denmark for the past twelve years. She is currently a managing partner and producer in Bucharest-based Tangaj Production and an active producer in the European market. Anda produced, co-produced, and released a number of features, documentaries, and shorts, including: TWST / Things We Said Today (2024, FR/RO), by Andrei Ujică, part of the Official Selection of the Venice FF, My Uncle Jens (2025, NO/RO), by Brwa Vahabpour, selected for SXSW, and the short film Index (2025, RO), by Radu Muntean, recently premiered in Locarno FF. She is a member of notable industry networks such as ACE Producers and EAVE, as well as an alumna of EAVE Producers Workshop, Ties That Bind, and EAVE+, Emerging Producers, Berlinale Talents and ACE Series Special. She is also a member of European Women’s Audiovisual Network (EWA), European Producers Club (EPC), and Documentary Association of Europe (DAE).

Oksana Karpovych is a Ukrainian-Canadian documentary filmmaker whose work explores the intersection of war, state power, and private life in moments of extreme political rupture. She studied Cultural Studies at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy before continuing her film education in Montreal. She draws on her deep roots in Ukraine to craft films of striking moral and aesthetic clarity. Her latest film, Intercepted, constructed from recorded phone calls of Russian soldiers and stark images of Ukraine during the full-scale invasion, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Ecumenical Jury Prize, and went on to earn international acclaim, including the Best Direction award at BAFICI and a nomination for the 2024 Gotham Awards.

Agnieszka Dziedzic is the founder and co-owner of Koi Studio. She is currently also a creative producer at Aurum Film. Her most recent productions premiered in 2023: Dangerous Gentlemen by Maciej Kawalski — a critical and audience success in Poland, winner of the Audience Award at the Warsaw Film Festival — and the international co-production Delegation by Asaf Saban, which had its world premiere at the Berlinale. Agnieszka is an alumna of renowned European training programs including EAVE, EAVE Puentes, and ACE Producers. She was awarded the Debut Producer Prize for Little Crushes by Ola Gowin and Irek Grzyb, and achieved box office success with the original family franchise Double Trouble, producing two theatrical features in 2018 and 2020. In 2023, she received the Best Producer Award at the Krakow Film Festival for the documentary Radical Move by Aniela Gabryel, and was nominated for the Female Voice Award, which recognizes outstanding women shaping the Polish film industry. Her current slate includes a mix of international feature co-productions and commercially driven film and series projects developed in collaboration with major industry partners such as HBO and Netflix.

Juan Gordon is a producer and one of the founders of Morena Films. He began his career as a producer shooting María Ripoll’s first feature film Twice Upon a Yesterday in London. Since 1999, as founder and producer of Morena Films, he has been responsible for the development and production of more than 25 titles, among them: Out in the Open by Benito Zambrano (2019); Icíar Bollaín’s works Yuli (2018), The Olive Tree (2016), and Even the Rain (2009), chosen by the Film Academy to represent Spain at the Oscar Awards in 2010; To Steal from a Thief (2016) and Invader (2012) both by Daniel Calparsoro; Neon Flesh by Paco Cabezas (2011), and the winner of eight Goya awards Cell 211 by Daniel Monzón (2010); and comedies such as A Mother’s Love (2022), and The Three Wise Kings vs. Santa, (2022) both by Paco Caballero. Recently, Juan has produced the feature films Shoddy Body (Curro Velázquez) and

This Shall Too Pass (María Ripoll); the sports docuseries La Liga: All Access and

Alcaraz: the Docuseries, both for Netflix, as well as the series Invisible by Paco

Caballero for Disney+. He is currently developing several film and series projects.

New York-based Palestinian Writer-director Sameh Zoabi was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to study Filmmaking at Columbia University, earning an M.F.A. in 2005. His work has been featured in prestigious film festivals like Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, and the New York Film Festival. Sameh’s short film Be Quiet (2005) won a prize at Cannes, and his debut feature, Man Without a Cell Phone (2010) received multiple awards, including the Golden Antigone at Montpellier Film Festival. He also wrote the script for The Idol (2015), which premiered at TIFF.

Sameh’s 2018 film, Tel Aviv On Fire, debuted at both TIFF and Venice Film Festival, winning Best Actor in the Orizzonti section. The film represented Luxembourg at the 2019 Academy Awards and achieved international success. Sameh also directed episodes of Howard Gordon’s show, The Accused, a Fox/Sony production, including the premiere episode starring Willam H. Macy and Felicity Huffman. He is currently in post-production for the first season of his comedy series Handsome Groom. Additionally, he serves as an Associate Arts Professor at NYU Graduate Film, teaching directing and screenwriting.

Liberian-born and raised between Monrovia and Beirut, Oualid Mouaness is an American Lebanese award-winning director, writer, and producer. His first feature film as director, 1982, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the NETPAC Award. It has also won a FIPRESCI International Critics Prize, the PRIX CANNES ECRANS JUNIORS 2021, the UNICEF 2021 Prize, and it was Lebanon’s Best International Feature Film submission to the 92nd Academy Awards. He wrote and directed a Lebanese short film, The Rifle, The Jackal, The Wolf, and The Boy, which was shortlisted for an Oscar in 2017. Oualid produced seminal music videos with artists David Bowie, Lana Del Rey, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Damien Rice, and many others. He produced Annie Lennox’s Night of Nostalgia, which was nominated for an Emmy. He produced several feature-length films, most notably the indie feature film Kitchen Privileges (SXSW 2000), starring Peter Sarsgaard, which he co-produced and edited, as well as the acclaimed documentary Rize, which premiered at Sundance 2005 and was Oscar-shortlisted in 2006. Oualid also produced the documentary I Am Thalente (2015) and Max Richter’s Sleep (2019), which premiered at IDFA (2019) and Sundance (2020). He was commissioned to adapt the seminal and polemic novel “Bilqiss” by Saphia Azzeddine for the Kennedy Marshall Company, which he hopes to direct. He served as a creative advisor and mentor with the Sundance Institute, Film Independent, and the AFLAMUNA Cinema Platform,

Marco Mehlitz is a film producer with decades of experience in the German and international film industry. Since 2004, he has been the founder and managing director of Lago Film GmbH, based in Berlin and Potsdam-Babelsberg, as well as Lago Fernsehen GmbH, which was added in 2019. He is a member of the Producer’s Guild of America, the European Film Academy, and the German Film Academy. His recent notable television projects include the high-end period series Davos 1917 and the crime series The Next Level, based on a story by acclaimed journalist Alexander Osang. Marco has been a producer for major international co-productions, including David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method (2010), starring Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender, which premiered at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals. Other major festival selections include Wim Wenders’ Palermo Shooting (2008, Competition Cannes), and Mr. Nobody (2009), which won the Osella for Best Technical Contribution at the Venice Film Festival. His work also spans high-profile genre films, such as the English-language thriller Hitman: Agent 47 during his three years as Head of Production and Development for Fox International Productions Germany. Earlier work includes a key role in producing Michael Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine (2002). Marco later produced Jennifer Lynch’s thriller Surveillance (2008), which earned the Best Picture award at the Sitges Film Festival. Domestically, his production of Tschick, directed by Fatih Akin, won numerous national and international film awards and has a successful, year-long theatrical run in Germany.

Didar Domehri founded Maneki Films in 2009 and later launched Maneki Stories, dedicated to producing television series. Formerly the Head of International Sales at Films Distribution/Playtime, she is now Vice-President of  Unifrance, a member of the Union of Independent Producers (SPI) and group leader at European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE). She has produced/co-produced over 26 feature films by directors such as Eva Husson, Erige Sehiri, Laurent Cantet, Alex Lutz, Santiago Mitre, Hlynur Pálmason, and Karim Aïnouz, many of which have premiered at Cannes, Venice, and TIFF. She regularly serves on major festival juries and expert committees, including Cannes Critics’ Week, the CNC’s Aide aux Cinémas du Monde, La Cinéfondation, and Qumra.

Rob Bullock is currently working with acclaimed writer/director Scott Frank on the crime thriller series Department Q (Netflix). After the global success of the first series, it has been renewed for a second season. Rob joined Left Bank to produce the sci-fi pilot Oasis (Amazon Studios), directed by Kevin Macdonald. He has since developed and produced Origin (You Tube); Strike Back (HBO/Sky); and Who Is Erin Carter? (Netflix), which became a global number one title.  Prior to joining Left Bank, Rob produced The Night Manager, the multi-Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning series for BBC/AMC. He started his career as a graduate trainee at Granada TV, becoming a producer in the comedy department. After completing an MBA at London Business School, he went on to produce a string of much-loved dramas including Monarch of the Glen, Wild at Heart, and The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher. 

Born in the UK and raised in Brazil, Daniel Dreifuss is a film and television producer based in Los Angeles. His most recent project is Ghosts of Beirut, based on the international manhunt for Imad Mughniyeh (Showtime and Paramount+). He produced All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Edward Berger (Netflix), which  won four Academy Awards and seven BAFTA Awards, the most ever for a non-English language film, and appeared in Netflix’s Top 10 in over 90 countries. He was the first Brazilian to produce an Oscar-winning film and received Globo’s “Make a Difference Award,” which celebrates global changemakers in the arts. His first Netflix collaboration, Sergio (2020), based on the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power, premiered at Sundance and starred Ana de Armas, Wagner Moura, and Bradley Whitford. Daniel’s career began with the Oscar-nominated No, directed by Pablo Larraín and starring Gael García Bernal. Winner of the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, it was Chile’s first Academy Award-nominated film. He served as the U.S. representative for the Rio Film Commission, later joining Paramount Pictures’ global strategy team. Daniel’s upcoming slate includes: One Blood, about the life of Dr. Charles Drew; Disobedient, an adaptation of Elizabeth Fremantle’s award-winning novel; What Is Mine, based on the international bestseller; Muse No. 1, a Black Listed script; The Polish Woman, a drama with director James Kent (Testament of Youth); Red Man, about Austrian painter Egon Schiele; and A Boy’s Own Story, an adaptation of Edmund White’s novel. Daniel holds an MFA in Producing from the American Film Institute.

Alberto “Albatros” González, an accomplished writer, screenwriter, and playwright, is a creative force with over 25 years of experience developing projects from initial concept in the writers’ room through to the final editing suite. Notable projects include Arrepentidos – El Infierno de Montoya, which won the 2015 International Emmy Award for Best Non-English Language U.S. Primetime Program, and Promesas de Campaña, which was nominated for a 2021 Emmy for Best Comedy Series. He has consistently explored new formats and genres, leading creative teams as Head Writer for acclaimed series such as Contra el Tiempo, La Mariposa, and Operación Pacífico. His writing credits also include multiple seasons of Lynch and Tiempo Final. Beyond television, he has authored theatrical plays that have been presented across Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, and Spain.

Dooho Choi is the founder of Kate Street Picture Company, based in Los Angeles. He was a producer on the Bong Joon Ho films Mickey 17 (2025), Okja (2017), and Snowpiercer (2013) and the Snowpiercer television series (2020). Upcoming projects include a limited series adaptation of the Oscar-winning film Parasite, adapted by Adam McKay.

Neil Burger is an American filmmaker. He is the director, writer, and producer most recently of the film Inheritance (2025), starring Phoebe Dynevor and distributed by IFC Films. He is best known for his movie Limitless, starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro, and the critically  acclaimed The Illusionist, starring Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti. His other feature directing credits  include Divergent, starring Shailene Woodley and Kate Winslet, and The Upside, starring Bryan Cranston, Kevin Hart, and Nicole Kidman, which grossed over $100 million in North America and was Neil’s third number-one opening in a row. His directorial feature debut, Interview with the Assassin, won Best Feature Film at both the Woodstock Film Festival and the Avignon Film Festival, and received nominations for three Independent Spirit Awards. On television, Neil directed and executive produced the pilot and (seven seasons later) the final episode of Billions, the Showtime series starring Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti. He also directed the first season finale of Showtime’s The Agency starring Michael Fassbender, Richard Gere, and Jeffrey Wright. He began his career directing commercials at Ridley Scott and Associates for clients like Nike, MasterCard, and Coke. A graduate of Yale University with a degree in fine arts, Neil resides in New York City with his family.

Karoline Leth produced the first two seasons of the dramedy series Rita for TV2 Denmark. Created by Christian Torpe, the series has been a huge success at Netflix. Several remakes have been made in Europe. Karoline developed the disruptive crime series Norskov for TV2 Denmark with creator Dunja Gry Jensen. She moved to DR Drama (Danish Public Service Television) to produce The Legacy, created by Maya Ilsøe. The series gained a remarkable 30% viewership share and was sold to more than 80 countries. The successful series has received Danish Film Academy Awards for Best Series and Best Actors and Supporting Actors through all three seasons. The series has also received the FIPA Award for Best Drama Series and Best Script. Karoline later produced the mini drama series Liberty at DR, based on the bestseller book by Jakob Ejersbo, created and written by Asger Leth and directed by Mikael Marcimain. Liberty had its world premiere at the Berlinale 2018. She produced The Dreamer — Becoming Karen Blixen for Viaplay (2022). Created by Dunja Gry Jensen, the series had its world premiere at Cannes Series as the first Danish series ever. Connie Nielsen (Gladiator, Wonder Woman) played the main character, Karen Blixen, for which she was nominated for an Emmy. Karoline also  produced DNA II, created by Torleif Hoppe; it aired in 2022/23 on TV2 Denmark, Arte France, andBBC4 with huge ratings. (Torleif Hoppe wrote the original The Killing  at DR TV.)

Bruno Nahon is a French film and television producer, and the co-founder, together with Caroline Nataf, of the acclaimed production company Unité. Over the course of his career, he has produced more than one hundred films, series, and documentaries, many of which have been selected and awarded at major international festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, and Toronto. Among his most recent works are: L’Histoire de Souleymane, which received the Jury Prize and the Best Actor Award in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, and went on to win four César Awards; DJ Mehdi: Made in France (Arte), winner of Best Documentary Series at Canneseries, a vibrant portrait of the French electronic music scene through the life and legacy of DJ Mehdi; Tapie (Netflix), a major international success crowned with the BAFTA for Best International Series, chronicling the rise and fall of one of France’s most emblematic public figures. Through Unité, Bruno continues to support a new generation of filmmakers and showrunners, both in France and abroad. Unité is a member of The Creatives.

Dana Stevens has had a long career writing features and television. Her most recent film was The Woman King, starring Viola Davis and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. Other films include Fatherhood, starring Kevin Hart, Safe Haven, City of Angels, and For Love of the Game. She created and produced Reckless, a legal drama for CBS. Dana was recently elected a governor of the Writers Branch at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her current projects include The Nightingale, a World War II drama starring the Fanning sisters, and 28 Summers, which she is also directing.

Anne Carey is film and television producer with a long history of development-oriented producing and collaborations with award-winning filmmakers. Her recent producing credits include the three-part Netflix documentary Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer, directed by Liz Garbus; Marielle Heller’s Night Bitch, starring Adam Adams for Annapurna and Fox Searchlight; Dead Ringers, the drama series for Amazon, written by Alice Birch, starring Rachel Weisz; and Maryam Keshavarz’s The Persian Version, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics.

Anne’s additional notable producing work includes Lost Girls, directed by Liz Garbus; Can You Ever Forgive Me?, directed by Marielle Heller, written by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty; Mike Mills’s 20th Century Women; Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl, starring Kristen Wiig and Alexander Skarsgård; Mr. Holmes, directed by Bill Condon; Tamara Jenkins’s The Savages; Greg Mottola’s Adventureland; and Anton Corbijn’s The American, starring George Clooney. In addition to producing, Anne is an active industry mentor, educator, and lecturer. She is a member of the Producers Guild of America, the Producer’s Branch of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Producers United.

An acclaimed television and film producer, Koby Gal Raday is Janeiro Studios’ founding partner and CEO. He served in numerous senior film and television executive positions, including: CCO of Beta Film, Germany’s powerhouse sales, distribution, and co-production group; CCO of the leading Israeli television provider yes (Fauda, Shtisel, Your Honor); SVP International Co-Production at the European broadcaster giant ProSiebenSat. 1.; EVP Drama, Comedy and Cinema at the Israeli commercial broadcaster Reshet; Co-Founding MD, July-August Productions. His producer and script editor credits include numerous award-winning cinema and television titles, including Rise of the Raven, La Storia, and Sunset (Venice IFF, 2018); Son of Saul (Oscar for best foreign film 2015); The Band’s Visit, and many more.

Ronna Rísquez is a Venezuelan investigative journalist and the author of the book, “El Tren de Aragua,” (“The Aragua Train”) about a gang that revolutionized organized crime in Latin America. She was a member of “The Panama Papers” investigation team in 2015 and in 2016, was a finalist for the Gabo Award for a series about the Tumeremo Massacre. In 2018, she was again among the Gabo nominees for “OLP: The Mask of Official Terror in Venezuela.” Her work has received recognition and awards, such as the Global Shining Light Award, IPYS Venezuela, and Javier Valdez. She currently leads Alianza Rebelde Investiga, an editorial coalition of three media outlets in Venezuela. Ronna created the Monitor de Víctimas database and is a co-founder of In.visibles, a platform that focuses on stories about victims of organized crime in Latin America.

Roman Anin is the founder of IStories (or “Important Stories”), an investigative news site that digs deeply into stories that are very difficult to tell in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He is known as a top-notch investigative reporter who has shed light on Russia’s rampant corruption and demonstrated how it reaches far beyond the country’s borders. Roman has worked on cross-border investigations with OCCRP since 2009. He is the winner of the 2020 Knight Trailblazer Award and the 2013 Knight International Journalism Award, both from the International Center for Journalism (ICFJ). In 2015, he won an award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in the category of Best in Business, International-Investigative. He was a member of the “The Panama Papers” investigative team that received the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2017.

Rinat is the co-founder and CTO of Kloop, a leading investigative outlet and OCCRP member center in Kyrgyzstan. He reports, codes, and trains other journalists. Rinat’s work has won several awards, including the 2019 Tom Renner Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), the 2021 data journalism Sigma Award, and the 2024 Free Media Pioneer award by the International Press Institute. He has used drones for investigative reporting and graph databases to identify systemic corruption in public procurement. Rinat has also created a system to coordinate and train thousands of election observers (used in Kyrgyzstan, Zimbabwe, Poland, Hungary, North Macedonia, and other countries) and created the first massive open online courses in Kyrgyzstan on journalism and the English language.

Mahtab Divsalar has worked as a journalist in the Farsi media for more than two decades and has had the privilege of covering stories on three continents. She has experience in various roles and platforms, from newspapers and websites to radio and TV. Mahtab studied civil engineering in Tehran in the 1990s and moved to the U.S. in 2003 to pursue her work unimpeded by political constraints. Mahtab further developed her career as a managing editor and TV producer for Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. In 2019, she moved to Amsterdam to focus on investigative journalism and follow her longtime passion for fiction writing. Currently, Mahtab works for independent news organization Zamaneh Media where she specializes in reporting about money laundering and corruption.

Liliana Botnariuc is an investigative journalist with RISE Moldova, a newsroom in Chisinau. She has been a reporter for seven years and previously worked at  storytelling newsroom Oameni și Kilometri and investigative newspaper Ziarul de Gardă. Liliana’s reporting has won several awards, including first place in the Superscrieri Romania competition. Liliana is passionate about using different formats to tell stories and has written a script for a short film, Elena’s Death, from an investigative series into the mistreatment and lack of medicine and humanity in the case of a patient who died of COVID in the hospital. She co-wrote the first fictional episode of a mini-series about two Russian women who struggle for the emancipation of factory workers in Tsarist Russia in the 19th century.

Kira Zalan is an investigative editor at OCCRP, and currently works with journalists in Cyprus, Malta, and Greece. She has coordinated award-winning collaborations like “The Pandora Papers,” “Story Killers,” and “Cyprus Confidential.” Prior to joining OCCRP in 2019, Kira was based in East Africa, where she was a freelance journalist covering conflict and security. She also worked in Washington, D.C., where she was an editor at U.S. News & World Report and oversaw the publication of feature news magazine The Report, and covered financial regulation and crime for MoneyLaundering.com. Kira studied at Columbia University, Georgetown University, London School of Economics, and University of California, Santa Cruz. She has a dog named Clyde.

Kevin G. Hall is the North America editor for OCCRP. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a former Brazil-based foreign correspondent covering Latin America for Knight Ridder/Miami Herald. He won the Society of Professional Journalists award for foreign correspondence for a year-long series in 2004 on modern slavery in the Amazon. Some of Kevin’s reporting for OCCRP has revealed how the DEA is secretly involved in the drug trade, how more than 300 members of the right-wing Oath Keepers movement were employed by Homeland Security, and how a Putin-aligned Russian oligarch had a Pentagon contract to research an antidote for battlefield radiation exposure. He speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and was an adviser to actor/director Alex Winter on his The Panama Papers documentary.

Julian Rubinstein is an Emmy and IRE-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist. His most recent book, “The Holly: Five Bullets, One Gun and the Struggle to Save an American Neighborhood,” was a New York Times “Editors’ Choice” and winner of the 2022 Colorado Book Award and 2022 High Plains Book Award. Julian wrote, directed and produced a feature documentary, THE HOLLY, while reporting it. The film won multiple awards, including a 2024 Heartland Emmy and the 2024 IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) Award. It is streaming on Amazon Prime and Apple Plus. His feature writing has appeared in such publications as the New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Rolling Stone. He is currently Filmmaker and Journalist-in-Residence at Western Colorado University.

Ilya Lozovsky is a staff writer and senior editor at OCCRP. Based in Amsterdam, he writes about the intersection of corruption and democracy; covers Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia, and the Caucasus; edits investigations; and is working on new products in other formats. He was a key editor on OCCRP’s award-winning “Plunder and Patronage” and “Matraimov Kingdom” projects about smuggling and money laundering in Central Asia. He was also integrally involved in “Azerbaijani Laundromat,” “Troika Laundromat,” “The Paradise Papers,” “Russian Asset Tracker,” and other high-profile investigative series. Prior to joining OCCRP, Ilya edited and wrote for Foreign Policy magazine’s Democracy Lab channel in Washington. Ilya’s work has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Haaretz, and other outlets.

Eyal Abrahami is the editor-in-chief of Shomrim. He is a senior journalist who has held a number of key reporting and editing roles in Israeli media. Eyal served as a police reporter in Jerusalem, a news editor at the now-defunct Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha’ir, a reporter coordinator at the national daily newspaper Haaretz, and an investigative editor at the weekly magazine Sheva Yamim, part of the Yedioth Ahronoth media group. From 2009 to 2018, Abrahami was the editor of G Magazine, published by the financial daily newspaper Globes. During his career, he covered significant news events, including the widespread protests against the Oslo Accords and the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Abrahami holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations from the Open University of Israel.

Carlos Martínez is a Salvadoran journalist with 24 years of experience. He is currently part of the El Faro special investigations team. He is the author of the book, “Juntos, todos juntos,” (“Together, All Together”) (2019), and co-author of “Crónicas desde la región más violenta,” (“Chronicles of the Most Violent Region”) (2019), and “Crónicas Negras, desde una región que no cuenta,” (“Dark Chronicles from a Region that Doesn’t Matter”) (2013). Carlos has won many prizes, including the 2024 Maria Moors Cabot Prize, the 2020 and 2021 Gabo Prize, the 2018 Hillman Prize, the 2013 IPYS Prize, and he was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2017. He is the writer and producer of the documentary “Unforgivable,” which won 27 international awards, and was the first Salvadoran film qualified to compete for an Oscar nomination.

cmartinez@elfaro.net

Aubrey Belford is OCCRP’s lead editor for the Pacific. He specializes in leading large international collaborations that reveal the nexus between crime, corruption, disinformation, and politics. These include a 2019 investigation into efforts in Ukraine to influence the U.S. presidential election, an exposé that helped lead to that year’s impeachment scandal. Aubrey has led investigations on topics including arms smuggling in the Balkans, tourism corruption in the Maldives, backchannel diplomacy in Turkey, dodgy European COVID contracts, the 2020 Beirut port explosion, and the growing influence of a Korean doomsday cult in Fiji. Prior to joining OCCRP in 2016, Aubrey worked for nine years as a journalist in Southeast Asia for outlets including Reuters, The International New York Times, and Agence France-Presse.

Art Kane has worked in the news business for three decades, as a reporter at top U.S. newspapers and as a producer and executive producer at KMGH-TV, a top-20 market television station in Denver.

He is currently an investigations editor at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Art’s work regularly results in indictments and firings of corrupt government officials and changes to law and policy. His work has been honored with a Peabody, two duPont-Columbia awards, a national Emmy and other top honors. The Nevada Press Association named him Outstanding Journalist of the Year in 2020 and 2022. He is the author of “The Last Story: The Murder of an Investigative Journalist in Las Vegas.”

András Pethő is co-founder and executive director of Direkt36, an investigative journalism center in Hungary.  During his 20-year-long career, he was a senior editor for leading Hungarian news site Origo, worked for the BBC World Service in London, and was a reporter at the investigative unit of The Washington Post. András has contributed to several international reporting projects, including “The Panama Papers” and “The Pegasus Project.” He was a World Press Institute fellow in 2008, a Humphrey fellow at the University of Maryland in 2012-2013, and a Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 2019-2020.

Alia Ibrahim is a co-founder and CEO of Daraj.com, an independent digital media platform that launched in November 2017. Previously, she was a senior correspondent at Al-Arabiya News channel. Since 2015, Alia has produced and directed episodes for Special Mission, a prime-time investigative reporting show. Her opinion and news stories have appeared in several publications including Al-Hayat newspaper, Al-Arabiya.net, and The Washington Post, where she was a contributing reporter for six years. Alia started her career in 1996 as a general news reporter at The Daily Star in Beirut and became managing editor of the newspaper in 2004. She is also a journalism instructor at the Lebanese American University and the mother of two girls, Yasma, 18, and Mia, 17.

Mary Jane Skalski’s career spans over 25 years as a producer specializing in taking projects from inception thru release. Credits include Bart Layton’s BIFA-awarded American Animals, four films with Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor, Win Win and The Cobbler); Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin, which premiered at the 2004 Venice Film Festival, Wilson directed by Craig Johnson, Todd Louiso’s Hello I Must Be Going, which opened the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, Adam Salky’s Dare, Peter Callahan’s Against the Current, Julian Goldberger’s The Hawk is Dying, Jem Cohen’s Chain and Naomi Foner’s Very Good Girls.  Mary Jane was an executive producer on Pariah, Trick, Putzel, Before You Know It, and Philippe Falardeau’s My Salinger Year. Mary Jane started her career at Good Machine, the production and sales company, where she worked on the early films of Ang Lee, Nicole Holofcener, and Ed Burns, among others. She teaches in the Graduate Producing Program at Columbia University and is a member of Producers United, the PGA, and AMPAS, serving on the Producers Branch Executive Committee. She is a graduate of The University of Michigan. Mary Jane is currently an active and hands-on producer and the President of Production at Echo Lake Entertainment.

Jean-Baptiste Delafon is the creator and screenwriter behind several acclaimed series and films, known for his sharp focus on reality and contemporary themes. His work includes the series Baron Noir (season 1 directed by Ziad Doueiri, streaming worldwide on Prime Video), a three-season saga following a politician’s relentless fight to keep the French left-wing alive, which earned an Emmy nomination. He also penned Of Money and Blood, a gripping 12-episode series directed by Xavier Giannoli, which unravels the largest fraud in French history — the infamous carbon tax scam. More recently, The Confidante, Max France’s first local production, tells the true story of a compulsive liar who infiltrated a victim support group established after the 2015 Paris attacks. Delafon wrote episodes of and contributed to Netflix’s Tapie (BAFTA winner for Best Series in 2024), a dynamic portrayal of the life of a controversial businessman whose achievements in finance, politics, and football mirror the evolution of modern France over three decades. His film Promises offers a close-up look at the struggles of a suburban mayor navigating the complexities of local politics. Currently in production, Les Braises, directed by Thomas Kruithof, dives into the social upheaval of the 2018 Yellow Vest movement. Another upcoming project, Gourou (directed by Yann Gozlan), takes a chilling dive into the world of self-help, following a life coach’s descent into fanaticism.

Most recently Gary wrote on the second season of Apple TV’s Sugar starring Colin Farrell. Gary is the creator of Clean Sweep, a six-episode thriller set in Ireland starring Charlene McKenna and Barry Ward for RTÉ and Sundance Now. His script for My War: Killing Time in Iraq is an adaptation of Colby Buzzell’s memoir of his time soldering and blogging in Iraq. He began his TV career creating MDs, an irreverent medical dramedy starring William Fichtner and Jane Lynch for ABC. Since then, he’s sold numerous pilots, including Supreme Courtships for Fox, starring Leslie Odom Jr. and Kurtwood Smith, and Devil Docs, a fictional account of Sanjay Gupta’s experience embedding with a specialized army surgical unit in Iraq. He wrote on Medium featuring Patricia Arquette. His adaptation of the Japanese format A BEAUTIFUL NEIGHBOR was set up at USA Network, with Dan Sackheim attached to direct. In 2016 he was invited to the UNC School of the Arts to help create an MFA screenwriting program. Among other projects in development, he’s working on an adaptation of an investigative podcast exposing cocaine smuggling/dealing in Europe. In early 2025 his original feature Santa Ana, a psychological thriller about a clinical psychologist who gets revenge on her scammer, will go into production with Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor starring. His “white whale” project is telling the story of AP reporter Mark Kellog who was the first journalist killed in combat while embedded with Custer’s troops at the Little Bighorn.

Bill Wheeler has written screenplays for six produced motion pictures. His filmography includes The Hoax (directed by Lasse Hallstrom and starring Richard Gere), The Reluctant Fundamentalist  (directed by Mira Nair and starring Riz Ahmed), and Queen of Katwe (directed by Mira Nair and starring David Oyelowo and Lupita N’yongo). The Reluctant Fundamentalist was an opening night selection for the 2012 Venice Film Festival. Queen of Katwe was runner-up for the People’s Choice award at the 2016 Toronto Film Festival and won four NAACP Image Awards. Bill has written screenplays for directors including Steven Spielberg, Steven Soderbergh, Luca Guadagnino, Terry Gilliam, Jay Roach, Joe Kosinski, and many others. In television, Bill was a consulting producer on Showtime’s Ray Donovan and later Netflix’s Cursed. Bill’s Ray Donovan episode “Exsuscito” was nominated for three Emmys. Currently, Bill is adapting original reporting from a previous Floodlight Summit into a film that is being produced and financed by L.A.M.F. in conjunction with Floodlight. Additionally, Bill and his brother Tom Wheeler are adapting the true story of UFO investigator George Knapp into a feature film to be directed by Colin Trevorrow. For years, Bill has mentored filmmakers from around the world through the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Lab in Utah. He has advised at Sundance International Labs in Jordan, Turkey, and Greece, and served as artistic director of Sundance International labs in Mumbai and Tokyo.

Yanina Korniienko is a Ukrainian investigative journalist based in Kyiv, working with Slidstvo.Info, a member center of the OCCRP network. Engaged in investigative reporting since 2016, she specializes in international investigations exposing corruption, hidden assets, and human rights abuses. Together with OCCRP colleagues, she has contributed to major cross-border projects, including the Beirut Port explosion inquiry and investigations into global financial crimes.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Yanina’s reporting has focused on war crimes, Russian occupation policies, sanctions evasion, and the forced deportation of Ukrainian civilians and children. Her recent work uncovered what happened to Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna, who was killed in Russian captivity.