Anika Kan Grevstad
Anika Kan Grevstad is a biracial (Chinese/White) director based in Los Angeles. Her work explores themes of isolation and belonging through a lens of genre, humor and hope.

Her narrative and documentary shorts have screened at Oscar®-qualifying festivals nationwide, including LA Shorts, Provincetown Film Festival and LA Asian Pacific Film Festival. Her short film WHAT WE FIND IN THE SEA won Best Short Film at the Santa Fe Film Festival, and NO ONE EVER REALLY DIES received the Special Jury Award for New Voices at LAAPFF. Her documentary HELEN PASHGIAN: VISIBLE INVISIBLE was featured as an LA Times Short Doc. Her latest short, MY ONLY FRIEND IS A ROBOT NAMED BEANS, starring Midori Francis, won the Enderby Entertainment Filmmaking Fellowship at Austin Film Festival.

Kan Grevstad has directed work for LACMA and Dropout TV, and was a 2023 recipient of the Hedgebrook screenwriting residency. With a background in documentary cinematography and editing, she brings a holistic, craft-driven approach to directing. Recent credits include cinematographer and editor on LOVE, LIZZO (HBO Max) and cinematographer on THE JOB OF SONGS (DOC NYC).

Kan Grevstad is drawn to emotionally nuanced, intimate stories that center underrepresented perspectives while exploring universal themes.

Anna Remus
Anna Remus is a director and writer drawn to stories rooted in transformation and the unseen. She grew up in the wild, frigid landscapes of International Falls, Minnesota, America’s coldest city, where she first learned the power of atmosphere in storytelling through the Bible stories she heard on Sundays. After graduating from Harvard University, Anna began her career working on programs like DOWNTON ABBEY and interviewing award-winning talent, including Benedict Cumberbatch. She has since led visual storytelling projects for major brands such as Planet Fitness, Pfizer, Zulily and Apple TV+. Her narrative work has been recognized by respected development labs and film organizations. Remus was named a runner-up in the 2020 ScriptED Writing Challenge at Sundance Film Festival, and was selected for the Stowe Story Labs feature campus cohort in 2023. That same year, she was chosen as a Blackmagic Collective Producers Lab Fellow for her feature script “Shed.” Remus’s work explores emotional shifts within vivid, atmospheric settings, and she is drawn to the cracks where the ordinary breaks open.

Arabella Anderson
Arabella Anderson is a Peabody Award-winning and WGA Award-nominated writer/director based in Los Angeles. She has written and produced on television series including RIVERDALE (CW), STAR (Fox), and TRANSPARENT (Amazon). Anderson’s work focuses on women, gender and class through the prism of genre.

Carolina Espiro
Melissa Fisher is an accomplished director, writer and multi-hyphenate in the industry. As a member of the International Cinematographer’s Guild, she has over 12 years of industry experience working on Academy^® and Emmy^® Award-winning films and television series.

Fisher worked her way up from a camera PA on Michael Bay’s PAIN & GAIN to camera assist on films like Damien Chazelle’s LA LA LAND and FIRST MAN, to eventually running the camera department on hit television shows like GLOW and THE DROPOUT. Her decade of experience working behind the camera has given her a keen sense for aesthetic visual storytelling.

Fisher graduated from Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts with a BFA in Film Production. Her directorial work merges technical skill with poetic imagery to create emotionally evocative drama. She is drawn to projects that tackle social justice themes and highlight marginalized communities. Fisher has directed several short films that have screened in Academy^®-qualifying festivals. Her most recent film BUSCANDO ALMA focused on immigration and gender identity and won numerous awards including the Oscar^®-qualifying Jury Award at Atlanta’s Out On Film Festival making it eligible for the 2025 Academy Awards^®.

Christina YR Lim
Christina YR Lim is a Korean-American writer/director who explores fish-out-of-water, genre-bending stories often with an overachieving AAPI female at the center. Lim began in theater, then turned to filmmaking, earning her MFA in directing and screenwriting from USC.

As a writer, Lim won SeriesFest’s Women’s Writing Competition, garnering her a development deal with Kyra Sedgwick’s Big Swing Productions. Her feature script, “Gyopo,” was selected for the Black List x Women in Film Feature Residency, and for Wscripted’s Cannes Screenplay List where it was presented at Marché du Film. Her script, “Icon,” was selected for EAVE’s Ties That Bind, Cine Qua Non and Stowe Story Lab.

Lim’s films have been screened and awarded at multiple film festivals, including Bentonville, RiverRun, Cinequest, LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, and Catalina Film Festival. She has directed films in Shanghai and Beijing and is an alumnus of Yale’s directing lab and Reykjavík International Film Festival’s Talent Lab.

Lim’s first feature film as an auteur, B-SIDE: FOR TAYLOR, was distributed by Buffalo 8 and EST Studios in 2024. She then filmed a proof-of-concept for her second feature, GYOPO, as a recipient of The Black List x GM incubator fund and Panavision’s New Filmmaker Grant. Objectively Good Media is producing the feature film. She recently received the Djerassi Artist Residency, and the prestigious SeriesFest x Shondaland Directing Mentorship.

Maaman Rezaee
Maaman Rezaee is a Los Angeles-based Iranian filmmaker and writer. Her work explores memory, political inheritance, and belonging, often threaded with dark humor. Born and raised in Iran, Rezaee’s early life as a political prisoner and member of a persecuted minority continues to shape the urgency and perspective of her storytelling.

Her debut feature script “Ashes” won the 2024 Slamdance Screenwriting Competition and is in development through their mentorship program. It also advanced in major competitions including the Austin Film Festival Screenwriting Competition and NBC’s Launchpad Feature Competition.

Rezaee’s latest short film EVANESCENCE won the Programmer’s Award at the 2024 Virginia Film Festival and is currently on the festival circuit, screening at LA Shorts, Santa Fe International and deadCenter. Her previous shorts have been featured at BlackStar, Anthology Film Archives, the Institute of Contemporary Arts LA, and multiple international and experimental venues.

She was recently named a fellow of the Writers Guild Foundation’s Access Program and shadowed Oscar®-nominated director Steph Green on DUSTER, an HBO series created by J.J. Abrams and LaToya Morgan. Rezaee holds an MFA in Film & Digital Arts from Temple University and formerly taught as an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico. She is currently developing her first feature, ASHES.

Mary Ann Anane
Mary Ann Anane is a Ghanaian-born, New Jersey-raised filmmaker. She was a 2022 San Francisco Film Rainin Grantee, a 2021 Sundance Screenwriters Lab Fellow, a 2020 Athena Feature Lab Fellow and a 2020 Film Independent’s Project Involve Fellow. Her projects have been invited to the Gotham Market Project Week and have been listed on the Wscripted Cannes Screenplay List. Anane’s directorial debut short film, THE DAUGHTER, premiered at the Austin Film Festival in 2025.

Sindha Agha
Sindha Agha is a BAFTA-winning and Emmy-nominated director and writer. In 2018, without formal training or industry connections, Agha made her first film, a no-budget personal documentary, BIRTH CONTROL YOUR OWN ADVENTURE. The short became a New York Times Op-Doc, received over 12.5 million views, was accepted into Tribeca and nominated for an Emmy®. Agha has since been awarded two Sundance Institute fellowships, the Cannes Lions Gold Young Director Award, Best Episodic at Tribeca X, and a Special Jury Mention for Screenwriting at AFI FEST. She co-executive produced the Netflix series THE PRINCIPLES OF PLEASURE, directed the documentary anthology BODY LANGUAGE for BBC Three, and the documentary shorts EVERYTHING WRONG AND NOWHERE TO GO for ITVS and PBS and THE DESIRE TO OWN NOTHING for The New Yorker. She has guest lectured at MIT, UC Berkeley and NYU and her documentaries are included in the curricula of film programs and medical schools worldwide. She has served on the AFI FEST shorts jury and previously had three short films programmed at the festival.

Most recently, Agha wrote and directed HOW TO BE A PERSON, an anthology of shorts for Channel 4 which won a 2023 BAFTA.