Catherine T. Nguyen is an award-winning director/producer based in California. Her passion for storytelling drew her to the NYU Tisch School of Arts, where she graduated cum laude with a B.F.A in Film and Television and a minor in Business of Entertainment, Media and Technology at Stern. Leveraging her diverse suite of skills, Catherine served as a producer for Chicken, which world premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. White Butterfly is her directorial debut which has screened at festivals around the world, including the Hawai’i International Film Festival, CAAMFest (AT&T InspirASIAN Undergraduate Winner), Yale Student Film Festival (Best Director Winner), among others. She is currently a producer at EST Media bridging East and West stories.

Sally Tran is a NYC-based writer and director originally from Vietnam and New Zealand. Known for her unique storytelling that focuses on multiple cultural experiences and important social issues, Sally has a passion for highlighting marginalized communities. Her work is recognized by institutions such as the NZ Film Commission, Creative NZ, and Asian NZ. Sally has been a part of prestigious programs like the Massey University Writers Residency, Berlinale Talents, and has received the Script To Screen Killer Films Grant. Her short film Don't (2024) received funding from NYCWF, NYFA, Panavision, Vimeo BIPOC Fund, and MOME. Currently, she is working on a short documentary, Still a Go Between, supported by the BRIC Film Labs Residency and the Tribeca Kickstart Initiative. Her upcoming projects explore themes like Asian hate crimes, displacement, and community dynamics. Sally Tran is dedicated to crafting narratives that resonate deeply, share underrepresented stories, and fostering empathy globally.

Noriko Matsumoto is a producer of animation films and the head producer of dwarf studios. She started her career as a TV commercial producer. After producing both DOMO (1998) and the exhibition showcasing what goes on behind the scenes of animation films, she shifted her field to the animation and character industry and she supported Goda on creating Komaneko when he started the studio dwarf. Matsumoto was one of the first producers in Japan to work with international streaming services, bringing the superior quality stop-motion techniques that dwarf is renowned for to an even wider audience. Highlights of her recent productions include the series Rilakkuma and Kaoru in 2019, and Rilakkuma’s Theme Park Adventure in 2022 with Netflix. Always looking for something new and interesting, she launches projects that push the boundaries of stop-motion and is a producer who has been elevating not only dwarf but the Japanese industry as a whole. In 2023, she successfully crowdfunded a sensational stop-motion pilot film HIDARI (NYAFF 2023) which has been shown at the cinema even though it’s just a pilot film! The next challenge is to turn it into a full-length feature.

Alyssa Loh is a filmmaker and writer based in New York. She was a 2021 Sundance Lab Fellow and Sundance | Alfred P. Sloan Development Fellow. She was recently selected for TIFF's 2023 Breakthroughs program and the 2023 Wscripted Cannes Screenplay List. Her short film, Let, premiered at SXSW in March of 2024, and is currently on the festival circuit (SIFF, Palm Springs Shortfest, NYAFF). It won NYU’s Martin E. Segal Production Award, Roger King Finishing Award, Riese Production Award, Faculty Commendation in Filmmaking, and Screenwriting, Acting, and Sound Design Craft Awards. Her first short — a genre film called Other Bodies — premiered at Fantasia in 2021, where it won Best Actor. Her essays on technology, surveillance, and visual culture have appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She sits on the Editorial Board of the history journal Lapham’s Quarterly, and is associated with the collective The Friends of Attention.

Celine Kao is a strategic and highly motivated producer committed to developing projects with international perspectives that reflect contemporary social issues and care for humanity. In 2021, she helped develop the Taiwanese cult crime drama The Amazing Grace of Σ, which was selected at the Series Mania and had its Asia premiere at the Golden Horse Film Festival. From 2022, Celine has primarily worked on the feature film project The Horse, which was selected by Talents Tokyo, Golden Horse FPP, and Focus Asia 2024 in Udine. Based on the same motif, the short film of the same name premiered at the 2023 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and had its international premiere at the 2024 Osaka Asian Film Festival. Currently, she is also actively developing the popular Taiwanese immersive theater-adapted series The Great Tipsy: 1980s and Rocking Against the Tides, a Taiwanese independent music documentary.

Born in 1980 in Japan, Akihiro Nishino is a children's book author. His works include beloved picture books such as Dr. Ink's Starry Sky Cinema, Zip & Candy: A Robot Christmas, Music Box Planet, Poupelle of Chimney Town, Poncho of the Bookstore, Tick Tack: The Clock Tower of Promises, and Marco, all of which become bestsellers in Japan. In December 2020, Nishino made headlines as the screenwriter and executive producer of the animation film Poupelle of Chimney Town, which became a massive hit. The film received the Excellent Animation of the Year award at the Japan Academy Prize, was nominated for the Feature Film category at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and garnered acclaim internationally. Poupelle of Chimney Town has been expanded beyond film to include musicals, kabuki, ballet, NFT, and many other business and expressive activities.

A queer ex-Filipino-soap-opera-translator-turned-filmmaker, Achim’s passion for film started in his teens, when Marilou Diaz-Abaya, a renown Filipino director and National Artist, offered to mentor him. As a teenager, Achim would fly back and forth between his hometown of Davao and Manila to attend her classes. Back in the Philippines, he helped create “Stages Sessions,” a YouTube channel that focuses on indie Filipino musicians and poets. Achim’s works focus on the radical power of joy to change the world, especially the joy experienced by his fellow Filipinos and queer persons of color. In his spare time, Achim likes to perfect his family’s longsilog recipe.