Considered the elder statesman of Albanian cinema and now residing in The Bronx, Bujar is also known for championing younger filmmakers from his region. We are proud to present a small retrospective of his works in a special screening that also includes some of those rising young voices.

 Karolína Alvarez is a freelance documentary filmmaker from the Czech Republic. She graduated in Humanities at Charles University and in Conceptual Art at the Academy of Arts, Design and Architecture in Prague. After the fall of the communist dictatorship in Eastern Europe she started to travel to countries with living native cultures (Ireland, Siberia, Himalayas, Amazonia, Mexico). From 2018 she focused her attention on urban culture. Karolina is a promoter of multidisciplinary hiphop projects. She sings and plays guitar, she leads Sufi dance workshops, she snowboards and runs the Copper Canyon marathon

On June 22, 2012, Noman Robin's debut film, Common Gender - The Film, spotlighted the urgent issue of hijra (transgender) rights in Bangladesh. The film's emotional impact spurred public pressure, leading the government, under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, to recognize hijras as a separate gender on November 11, 2013. This achievement earned Robin the reputation of being "the voice for the voiceless," transforming him into a socially conscious storyteller. His work has since tackled diverse issues, including adult autism, Rohingya refugees, biodegradable jute polybags, women’s empowerment, child marriage, and the struggles of fishermen and shrimp farmers facing climate change. In 2022, he produced musical films on plastic pollution and served as chief advisor for Miss Earth Bangladesh (2020-2021), promoting the 5R principles of plastic pollution.

 Born in Yokohama, Japan.
Professor, Seian University of Art and Design. Sakurai’s work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada and J. Paul Getty Trust. Sakurai won awards at the 35th Asolo Art Film Festival (2016), Italy, 39th Tokyo Video Festival, 18th FILE 2017, São Paulo (2017) and 56th Ann Arbor Film Festival (2018). Exhibitions include 4th Sydney Biennale (1982),62nd Melbourne International Film Festival(2013),58th San Francisco International Film Festival (2015) and 24th Rhode Island International Film Festival(2020).

Dr. Romma leads a distinguished international career in the arts and entertainment as playwright, director and filmmaker taking on immigration, xenophobia, racism and LGBTQ rights in poetic verse vehicles laden with equal doses of the poetic and the profane. She is producing Artistic Director at The Garden of the Avant-Garde Film and Theatrical Foundation, through which she offers filmmaking, screenwriting, directing, and playwriting programs and workshops for young writers and artists, particularly women in film and television with the hopes of achieving gender parity in this competitive industry. For the past twenty years she has worked as an international human rights attorney, and university professor. She is also an international law and human rights attorney whose practice over 20 years centers on minority rights, women’s rights through history, LGBTQ rights, antisemitism/extremism/holocaust denial, and counterterrorism.

. (TUNAS Episodes 4 and 7). Alessia holds a degree in Communication Sciences and has worked as a journalist, teacher and communications manager. Since 2016, Alessia has dedicated herself exclusively to cinema. Her filmography includes several shorts: Soli Insieme (2018), L’Aurora (2019) and Neve (2022). Alessia wrote and directed an award-winning pilot for her feature Time & Days (2019), produced by Zetagroup. She is currently post producing a new short film. TUNAS was produced for the Italian Ministry of Education and Culture.

Mark Cabaroy is an award-winning Writer/Director who for over 25 years has been directing, writing and producing various film projects including, but not limited to, short films, commercials, music videos and educational industrials. 

After attending the School of Visual Arts, Mark started off his career as a freelance writer for the Children’s Television Workshop, writing for hit shows such as Sesame Street and The Electric Company.

Aldo Romero, the executive Director of Symbiotic Productions has a BA from Parson School of Design and the NYU Film Program. Mr. Romero worked on television commercials and features in the late nineties and early 2000s, then in the production department for Carlito's Way, Godzilla, Die Hard with a Vengeance, The Professional, A Bronx Tale, and The Siege, as well as television shows like NYPD Blue, New York Undercover, Law and Order and others. Mr. Romero was also a cinematographer, the most notable project being the first Wu-Tang Klan music Video, Method Man.

Meri Dishnica is a screenwriter and director with a background in psychology. Since 2019 she is engaged in search of new intersections between image and sound, movement and space, on the way to visualize her ideas,until altogether they become a scene. Her artworks which include video art, cinematic poems, and experimental films have gained recognition in several international independent film festivals. In 2020 she pursues a career as a freelance writer and script reader. In 2023 she wrote and directed her first short film “BUBBLES”. Her artworks are copyrighted by The U.S Copyright Office. She is the author of two books: THE BEGINNINGS. Poetry, 2009 / MINIMAL NOTES. Pop Journalism, 2023

Antonello Murgia has worked professionally in theater since he was 25 years old, and won several awards. He studied and worked as an actor to consolidate his awareness in directing. He is also a musician and composer. In 2012 he graduated from the Michelangelo Antonioni Academy with high honors. His short film beep was selected at the Venice Film Festival and entered the David di Donatello competition

Award-winning filmmaker and choreographer holds a Ph.D. in Art from Université de Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne, studied dance at Université de Paris IV and film directing at the New York Film Academy. She builds her innovative artistic signature on the union of expressive movements and set atmosphere. Her films have screened at many international film festivals and received many awards, including the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival Awards, New York Movie Award, New York Cinematography Award, European Cinematography Award, Swedish Academy of Motion Picture Award, Singapore International Film Fairs, International New York Film Festival Best Experimental Award, Canada Shorts-Canadian & International Short Film Fest Award among others. Her films have screened at the Brooklyn Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Festival International of Film on Art Montreal, Canada, and have been broadcast by Canal + TV (France), Kanal 4 (Germany), ABC(Australia), Shanghai National TV(China), KBS (Korean National TV), VPRO-TV (Netherlands), No TV & Movies (USA). She was a professor at Keimyung University, South Korea.

Born in what was then Yugoslavia, in an Albanian town located now in North Macedonia.  Growing up in NYC he always felt like he saw things from a slightly different perspective and dreamt of being a storyteller.  Starting in sketch comedy, Roland quickly gravitated to the theater as an actor, writer, and director.  He has always pushed himself to tell stories from his perspective and it was a natural step to tell stories of things that moved him and make an audience think.

 BA, Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. This Director, artist, visual developer, animator. Born in Russia, Moscow. Since 2015 - member of the Moscow Union of Artists and member of the Union of Cinematographers. In 2013, graduated from the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography named after S. A. Gerasimov (VGIK). In 2021, completed an assistant's internship. Directing audiovisual arts. I like working with fairy-tale traditional and mystical subjects. Work in the animation industry. In 2014 - Participant of the Festival de Cannes in the program Short Film Corner.

Emmy Award-winning animation director, nominated animator, creator and artist based in Los Angeles and Bangkok. He created Warbie Yama, the original character IP developed from his award-winning animated short film, “Cheez...z”. ‘His first animated short inspired by his own childhood activity, "Rocket Boy", received an award and publishing in Bangkok in 2005. Started as animator and designer on several recognized projects in Thailand. Master’s Degree in Animation in San Francisco. In 2008, Arut had an idea for his new short and started drawing the characters "Warbie" a cheeky bird and "Yama" a smiley grandpa. The short, "Cheez...z" received awards and screenings in film and animation festivals across the United States and overseas, winning praise for delivering good messages to children. In November 2022, he had his first grand-scale exhibition "It's me Warbie!: The Inside World of Warbie Yama" at River City Bangkok, Thailand. The 9-zone exhibition transported  visitors into the world of Warbie filled with Arut's original arts, story, theme park, music, animation and special collaborative art pieces. In 2018, Arut painted Jammam, a chubby boxing boy mural art on Hollywood Boulevard that became a landmark in Thai Town, Los Angeles. In October 2023, Shy won the Crystal Pine Award for Best Music Video at International Sound and Film Music Festival in Croatia.

BA, Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. This Slovenian-born visual artist and filmmaker moved to Los Ángeles on a Fulbright Grant for her MFA at California Institute of the Arts. Her oeuvre encompasses single-channel videos, video installations, short and feature films to prints. She explores innovative strategies in storytelling and visual expression and is known for creative use of non-gallery spaces and large multi-channel installations, while as an artist she explores subconscious worlds and identities in alienating contemporary environments. By layering moving images she has developed a singular visual language that integrates seemingly unrelated spaces and figures, allowing her to explore another favorite topic: The interconnectedness and unity of all things.

 https://www.natasastearns.com/about

ohaila Baluch is an interdisciplinary artist and writer who combines embodied, performative and autoethnographic research methods within a hybrid art practice. Drawing from lived experience, she positions the brown female body as a living archive to analyse emergent forms of (un)belonging among female diaspora communities and conditions of visibility. She is a PhD Candidate at the Royal College of Art, London and a recipient of the LAHP/AHRC Scholarship. Recent performances include Being Seen, Being Heard at Bishopsgate Institute, London (2023), and We Are Here Because You Went There at Beaconsfield Gallery, London (2024). Her film kwhaish developed under mentorship of the Derek Jarman Lab is set for release in 2025. Her writing features in CARE(LESS) A Supplement to On Care, MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE (2021), to be published in “Home: Provoking Conversations on Place and Belonging,” Routledge, 2025 and Re-Evaluation in
Feminism and Contemporary Art, ed. Katy Deepwell, Vernon Press, 2025.

Born in Isfahan, Iran, graduated in Theater from Art & Architecture University. He

has been making animation since 2000, directing more than 20 short animated films, 2 TV series, 2 documentary film and several TV commercials. His films have screened in more than 100 film festivals both domestic and international.

Marta Arjona (Dolors) A graduate of Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Audiovisual Communication and Journalism and a Master’s in Strategic Communications in the Society of Risk. She has trained as a dancer since childhood througout Tarragona. For her thesis she directed Freiheit, a dance film featurette that leads to her founding DansPXL, an audiovisual production and photography house specializing in dance and the performing arts. Her dance films have won awards all over the world. She is currently engaged in studying for a for Ph.D. in dance film.

Jorge Ávalos. (Tough Love) JORGE ÁVALOS. Chilean-Salvadoran writer and director. He produced and directed documentaries in New York in the 1990s. The 1993 “1-800-911-USA” won a national video award, was featured in the Whitney Biennial of American Art and was included in 501, a film program that toured Europe along with work by Spike Lee and Gus Van Sant. He directed the segment “Lila” for the The 90s (PBS, 1992). His most recent short films are: The Shadow Boy (2018); Tough Love (Best Performance Award, San Giò Festival, 2019); Azrael (2020); and Mischief (2022).