All Eyes on Women

Cristina Ibarra is a Chicana border crosser and a Sundance award-winning independent filmmaker with roots along the Texas/Mexico border. Her new film collaboration, The Infiltrators, a hybrid docu-thriller, received the NEXT Audience and Innovator Awards at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The New York Times calls her documentary, Las Marthas, “a striking alternative portrait of border life”. It premiered on Independent Lens in 2014 and was awarded the Best US Latino Film by Cinema Tropical. USA Today describes The Last Conquistador, her feature documentary collaboration that premiered on POV in 2008, as “Heroic”. Her directorial debut, Dirty Laundry: A Homemade Telenovela, was broadcast on PBS.

A global citizen, Iram Parveen Bilal is an award-winning empathic creator excited to tell thought-provoking stories that are socially impactful and envision an inclusive world. Bilal has quickly become a voice to reckon with in the Muslim community and on the World Cinema stage. Invested in “raising while rising”, her past films have led to measurable shifts in causes they championed. She has not only formed initiatives to uplift her community in film and tech but has also championed causes that are traditionally unpopular to support. Bilal initiated the formation of the Pakistani Oscar committee and is the founder of QALAMBAAZ, Pakistan’s first professional screenwriting lab, now in year ten. Iram is also an active mentor for women in film and tech. Spotlighted as 1 of 8 directors to watch by The Alliance of Women Directors, a board member of Film Fatales, she is also a Film Independent, Watson fellow, and multiple time Women in Film awardee. She has been profiled by The New York Times, featured on NPR, BBC, Bloomberg, Filmmaker Magazine among others. She is a proud graduate of Caltech and the USC Peter Stark Program. When she isn’t telling stories, she is dancing to Bollywood tunes or nerding out with fellow Caltech engineers. She believes genuine curiosity is the only antidote to fear. Her biggest and boldest work to date, feature film Wakhri (English Title: One of a Kind) just returned from a critically successful World Premiere at the Red Sea Intl. Film Festival.

Before working in film and theatre as a creative, Khadifa Wong trained at the iconic London Studio Centre in all aspects of dance. After 10 years as a Dancer she moved to New York to further study acting at TVI Actors Studio. Her acting training continued at Identity School of Drama in London. On her return to London, frustrated by the lack of opportunities and abundance of stereotypes for performers of colour, Khadifa realised she could make more of a difference behind the scenes and she formed her production company to help increase inclusion and erase stereotypes. She divides her time working in film, theatre and education. Her credits include films such as Uprooted – The Journey of Jazz Dance, Mondays and The Woman Who Knocked On My Door. Theatre credits include – Black Women Dating White Men, 15 Heroines.

Kavery Kaul is an award-winning filmmaker whose character-driven documentaries challenge who “we” are and who tells that story. Through an intimate lens, she crafts stories which boundlessly straddle different worlds. The founder of riverfilms, her films have been featured at DOC NYC, Telluride, London, Rotterdam, and Sydney Festivals; in countries including India, Japan, Burkina Faso, and Italy; at the Kennedy Center (DC), National Museum of Women in the Arts (DC), Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Cleveland Museum, and High Museum (Atlanta). Kavery has received a Fulbright and a Logan Fellowship. She has garnered the Best Cultural Film Award (Havana) and a Proclamation of Excellence (NYC). She directed the prestigious Imagen Foundation Best Documentary Short Nominee Cuban Canvas, a Margaret Mead Film Festival Selection. Her film Back Walking Forwardwas showcased at the Maysles Cinema (NYC) and went on to numerous screenings internationally; Long Way From Home was a Film Threat, Time Out, and Booklist Critic’s Pick. Her cultural documentaries include the theatrically-released One Hand Don’t Clap; First Look presented on PBS-TV by the National Latino Consortium; and Wild at Art, part of the PBS-TV Art to Art series executive produced by Asian Women United.

Washington D.C. based documentary filmmaker Yi Chen is a Soros Equality Fellow and DC Arts and Humanities Fellow. Her debut feature First Vote – about Asian American voters in battleground states – is an official selection at the 2020 AFI DOCS, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival, CAAMFest, LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, Vancouver Asian Film Festival, and more. The film is playing in virtual cinemas followed by national broadcast premiere on World Channel’s American ReFramed series in October. It’s also currently on a campus and community tour across the US through Good Docs and its Good Talks speaker series. Yi’s work has been supported by the Ford Foundation JustFilms, Open Society Foundations, Center for Asian American Media, ITVS, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Kartemquin Films and Southern Documentary Fund. Yi holds an MFA in Film and Media Arts from American University and taught documentary filmmaking at George Mason University.