Zachary Goldkind is an experimental-narrative filmmaker, festival programmer, and cultural scholar based in Tkaronto/Toronto, so-called-Canada. Zac holds an MFA in Film Production from York University. Their studies orbit subjects of image-ideology and narrative theory, taking careful consideration of the role aesthetics have in producing and reproducing cultural hegemonies. Their concerns regard the implementation of marxist analysis within formalist theorizing, focusing precisely on the role linguistics and affect theories have in articulating the machinations of cinema as an ideological tool. Through this theoretical praxis, Zac seeks the outcome of their work to be one that shifts discourses towards the role of labour within artistic production, its political character shown to be indicative of the larger problematics they wrestle with.

Jake Burling is a production executive at Elevation Pictures, Canada's largest indie distributor and producer of creator-driven, commercially-minded content.

Devin Shears is a filmmaker from St. John's, Newfoundland currently living in Toronto. His past work has played at VIFF, The Atlantic Film Festival and Image+Nation. Cherub is his first feature film, made as part of his MFA Thesis at York Univeristy and has screened at VIFF, Festival du Nouveau Cinema, BFI Flare and The Jeonju International Film Festival.

Isiah Medina (b. 1991) was born in Winnipeg and currently lives in Toronto, where he directs and produces films with his company Quantity Cinema. His features include 88:88 (2015), Inventing the Future (2020), Night is Limpid (2022), and He Thought He Died (2023). His films have played at the Locarno Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Berlin Critics’ Week, Mar del Plata International Film Festival, Jeonju International Film Festival, and the Viennale, among others.

Sabrina Zhao is a Sichuan-born filmmaker and artist, founder of Barbarous Films. Her work is process-led and explores being and nature through abstract, non-narrative form. She studied Film & Literature at NYU Abu Dhabi and holds an MFA in Film from York University. Her films—including The Good Woman of Sichuan, Nini, What Time Is It There?, and This Cave Is Very Large—have screened at Berlinale Forum, CPH:DOX, Sharjah Film Platform, and Diffusion. Her latest project is A History of the Wind, a silent film on wind. She is now completing a new film on clouds.

John Greyson is an award-winning Toronto video/film artist. Since 1984, his many features, shorts and transmedia works use humour and song to explore such queer activist issues as police entrapment, prison, AIDS activism, global solidarity, homo-nationalism and apartheid (both South African and Israeli). The winner of 4 Teddies, 4 Canadian screen awards, and Best Film Prizes at over 50 international festivals, his works include: Door Prize (2025), Death Mask (2024), Photo Booth (2023), International Dawn Chorus Day (2020), Mercurial (2018), Gazonto (2016), Murder in Passing (2013), Fig Trees (2009), Proteus (2003), Lilies (1996), Zero Patience (1993), The Making of Monsters (1991) and Urinal (1989).