Filmmakers

Shukree Tilghman has written and directed several short films and penned several feature screenplays. His screenplay The King and Blue Brown (formerly Lean) placed in several screenplay competitions including the Top Ten Percent in the Bluecat and Austin Film Festival screenplay competitions, as well as a semi-finalist at the ScriptShark Insider… Show more competition. His Cars that Fly, a short screenplay, was a finalist at the Anything But Hollywood screenplay competition. In addition to writing and directing, Shukree has also served as an associate producer on the Marco Williams feature documentary Banished, an Official Selection of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. As an editor, Shukree has worked on documentary series for networks including A&E, Discovery, TLC, and MTV. Shukree received a B.F.A. in Film from NYU where he was a recipient of the Martin Scorsese Filmmaker Scholarship. He is a Screenwriting MFA candidate in the Film Division at Columbia University. Show less

Sonia Kennebeck is an independent documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist who has worked for CNN and for German public television's (ARD) highest-rated and longest-running current affairs program, Panorama. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she runs her own production company, Ten Forward Films, that makes films about international… Show more politics and human rights. Her most recent documentary about the German brothel industry, Sex - Made in Germany, was an Official Selection of the Montreal World Film Festival 2013 and the Festival de Télévision de Monte-Carlo 2014. Kennebeck has over 12 years of production experience. She received a Master’s degree in International Affairs from American University in Washington, D.C. and was born in Malacca, Malaysia. National Bird is her first feature-length documentary film. Show less

Bernardo Ruiz is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. His directorial feature debut, Reportero (POV, PBS 2013) about attacks on the press in Mexico, was nominated for a 2014 News and Documentary Emmy® Award and premiered at Full Frame (U.S.), IDFA (Europe) and Ambulante (Mexico). New York Magazine called it “a powerful reminder of how journalism… Show more often requires immense amounts of physical and psychological bravery.” His latest feature documentary, Kingdom of Shadows was called “unforgettable” by The New York Times and premiered at SXSW and IDFA. Ruiz founded Quiet Pictures, a New York-based production company, in 2007 in order to produce independent documentaries. Through Quiet, he created and Executive-Produced the two part bilingual PBS series, The Graduates/Los Graduados for Independent Lens. The series, about the lives of six Latino and Latina students, was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and co-produced with ITVS. In the fall of 2015, Ruiz was a “filmmaker in residence” at the Investigative Reporting Program (IRP) at the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He currently serves on the advisory board of the Full Frame Film Documentary Festival and the International Documentary Association's Enterprise Fund. Show less

June Cross has won two national Emmys and two duPont-Columbia Journalism Awards. Her previous work includes Wilhemina’s War, which follows a Southern grandmother who struggles to help her granddaughter survive the health risks and social stigma of living with HIV in South Carolina. Her film The Old Man and the Storm followed the travails of an extended… Show more New Orleans family for three years after Hurricane Katrina. She was an executive producer for This Far by Faith, a six-part PBS series on the African American religious experience broadcasted in 2003.

During her career, she completed eight documentaries for Frontline. She has also worked at CBS News, and PBS’s MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. She is the author of Secret Daughter, published by Viking in 2006, and based on an earlier documentary she produced that aired on Frontline. She is the founder of the Documentary Program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. Show less

Originally trained as a molecular biologist, Hao Wu traveled to the Internet world before focusing on filmmaking and writing. His documentary films have received funding support from The Ford Foundation JustFilms, Tribeca Film Institute, Sundance Institute, and international broadcasters. Wu is a fellow at the New America Foundation. His writing on… Show more China has appeared on Time.com, Slate.com, Marketplace Radio, Strait Times, and China Daily. Show less

Zeshawn Ali was born and raised in Ohio. He moved to New York to study film at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts where he concentrated on directing and cinematography. He directed the short film Shallows and short documentaries for the 30 Mosques series which were featured in festivals and publications across the country. He's currently based in New York.