Marialuisa Ernst (she/they) is a New York–based queer transcultural artist originally from Bolivia and Chile. For the past decade, she has created intimate, political cinema shaped by her background in performance art. Her work explores personal loss, memory, and the invisible threads that connect humanity beyond nationality and borders. As a queer, non-binary mother and feminist, she challenges dominant power structures and amplifies the voices of those who are often silenced.
A PLACE OF ABSENCE is her feature debut, premiering at DOC NYC and supported by the Tribeca Gucci Fund, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the NYC Women’s Fund. The film has been selected for the DOC NYC Forum, the Gotham (formerly IFP) Lab, the Tribeca Film Network, Visions du Réel Industry Network, DCTV’s WIP Lab (with Yance Ford), and the BGDM Feedback LoopMafia (BGDM).

Cecilia Aldarondo (she/her)is a director-producer from the Puerto Rican diaspora who works at the intersection of poetics and politics. Her feature documentaries MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART (2016) and LANDFALL (2020) premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and were co-produced by the PBS series POV. Her third feature YOU WERE MY FIRST BOYFRIEND had its World Premiere at the 2023 South by Southwest Film Festival and is now streaming on HBO. Among Aldarondo's fellowships and honors are the 2024 Borderlands Visionary Fellowship, the Guggenheim, a three-time MacDowell Colony Fellowship, the IDA Emerging Filmmaker Award, the New America Fellowship, and Women at Sundance. In 2019 she was named to DOC NYC's 40 Under 40 list and is one of 2015’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Her newest co-directed film DEAR MS: A REVOLUTION IN PRINT premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival and airs on HBO Max in July 2025. Cecilia teaches at Williams College and is currently in development on her debut fiction feature.

Brenda Avila (She/her) is a filmmaker and educator from Mexico City, currently based in California's Central Coast. Her films mostly focus on transnational stories, spaces and identities. Brenda is a recent Sundance Documentary Producers Lab Fellow and a Points North Fellow. She was in the inaugural cohort of DOC NYC’s “Documentary Industry New Leaders,” a 2021 Rockwood/Just Films Fellow and a 2019 BAVC National Mediamaker. She recently produced Emergent City (Dir. Kelly Anderson/Jay Sterrenberg- Tribeca ‘24/POV). Brenda received an M.A. in Social Documentation from UCSC, where she teaches courses on storytelling practices connected to social justice and identity.

Anita Zelaya is the Founder of COFAMIDE, an NGO in El Salvador that advocates and searches for missing migrants from her country. She became a single mother when the father of her four children migrated to the US and did not return. In 2002, Anita’s youngest child disappeared trying to cross the US border. She has been searching for him for twenty years. Anita credits her Catholic faith with the strength to keep looking for her missing son and fighting for the human rights of all migrants, who suffer at the hands of organized crime, corruption, human trafficking, and the hardships of the environment. She has made 7 trips with the Caravan of Mothers. Anita uses her powerful voice to persuade lawmakers, government workers, and the Mexican people in general to take action around this humanitarian crisis and relieve the mothers’ frozen grief.

Editor María Luisa Santos is a Costa Rican director, editor and writer. She’s interested in stories dealing with place, memory, and personal loss. Her latest short documentary DIRECCIONES won Best Short Documentary at SFFILM 23’ and is available to stream at The New Yorker. She produced and edited the feature film STAY HERE AWHILE which was acquired by PBS as part of the ReelSouth 2023 Series. Her work has been shown in The New Yorker, SXSW, PBS, Slamdance, New Orleans FF, SFFILM, Big Sky and others.  María Luisa is a Karen Schmeer Documentary Editing Fellow 2023-2024

Ricardo Acosta is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and an internationally renowned Film Editor, Story Editor, and Creative/Editorial Consultant. He has been awarded with an Emmy and has been nominated for a Genie, Gemini, CCE, and CS Awards. Ricardo came to Canada from his native Cuba in 1993, where he studied and worked at the world-renowned Cuban Film Institute in Havana. He’s been a fellow of the Sundance Institute (as alumnus, teacher, and adviser) for several years for the Documentary Editing and Story Lab and the Composer and Sound Design Lab. Most recently he was one of the two principal editors on Silence of Others which premiered at Sundance in 2019 and went on to win Spain’s highest film award, the Goya.

Miranda y Tobar is a duo of musicians, composers, and music producers, composed of Chileans José José Miguel Miranda and José Miguel Tobar. Together they have created soundtracks for films such as Nostalgia for the Light, The Nacar Button,(Patricio Guzman) My Best Enemy and Violet Went to the Heaven, obtaining numerous international awards. They have worked for the films of Peter Greenaway and the musical Melancholy of Angelo Badalamenti, in his soundtracks for the filmmaker David Lynch.