Lucy Mukerjee is a queer, non-binary British-Indian community builder and cultural worker dedicated to elevating the careers of underestimated storytellers. Currently the Director of the Documentary Lab fellowship at Firelight Media, Lucy is responsible for connecting a dozen documentaries in progress with the resources they need to get to the finish line. 

With 20+ years of experience producing films, programming festivals, and curating artist development programmes, highlights include being Director of Programming at Outfest and NewFest LGBTQ+ Film Festivals and Senior Programmer at the Tribeca Festival, as well as Co-Curator of the immersive cinematic experience “You Are Here” at the Museum of the City of New York. 

As a co-founder of the Programmers Of Colour Collective, Lucy is a vocal advocate for ethics, transparency and accountability across the film industry ecosystem and believes in the power of storytelling to expand perspectives and change cultural narratives.

Toni Achebe Bell is the creator and host of the “What’s Up with Docs” Podcast and a documentary impact strategist. She has created impact campaigns for many films, including “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales”, “Fruits of Labor”, and “A Woman on the Outside”. She has also served as an Impact Strategist for Represent Justice and Odyssey Impact Partners. She teaches media and impact at Saybrook University. A speaker, mentor, and juror at major festivals, she has reviewed grants for Firelight Media, California Humanities, and more. Formerly at IDA, she managed fiscal sponsorship and global filmmaker initiatives. Toni holds degrees from USC, Naropa University, and UCLA and is entering the Ph.D. programme in Anthropology and Social Change at CIIS.

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Qila Gill is a film programmer. Currently Associate Programmer at London Short Film Festival and serves on the selection committees for the London Film Festival (Experimenta), Berlinale Generation, and Berlinale Shorts and is a programmer for Singapore International Film Festival. Previously, she served on the selection committees for Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg and Sheffield Doc/Fest, was a SXSW documentary screener (2024), and programmed for Aesthetica Film Festival. She also had a stint as Distribution Director at LUX, London, and has produced artists’ films and documentaries.

Sanne Jehoul is an arts and film worker across programming and curation, facilitation and support, festival strategy, and talent development. She currently leads on the talent development programme at the BFI Doc Society Fund, and is commissioning editor at Talking Shorts. Before this she was programme director at Glasgow Short Film Festival as well as managing the short film slate of sales and festival distribution agency Square Eyes. She has worked with multiple international festivals across programming, selection, and production (including Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur and Vienna Shorts), and sat on international festival juries and panels as well as moderating conversations and masterclasses. She sits on the board of Kortfilm.be.

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XR creator, immersive narratives curator, and coordinator of the DOK Exchange XR Programme at DOK Leipzig. Co-curator of Embodied Realms, a festival dedicated to performance art and XR in Poland. Mentors XR projects including Climate Challenge XR for the European Space Agency, and writes XR climate games for the Guest XR research project (University of Warsaw), exploring AI agents and social XR harmony. Conducts research on AI in performance art involving XR. In 2021, served as expert for the Committee for Innovative Film Projects at the National Film Institute.
 
Co-directed and co-wrote the award-winning VR erotic poem “Noccc (Nightsss)”, premiered at Sundance. As a poet, performer, and cultural studies PhD, experiments with interdisciplinary poetry blending artistic practice and technology. Poems published in Romania, Estonia, South Africa, Brazil, and Poland. Sound poem featured in The Liberated Voice – Sound Poetry exhibition at Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Leads workshops in immersive storytelling and creative writing focused on bodily engagement and expanded narrative experience.

Niels Putman (Belgium, 1992) is the artistic director of Kortfilm.be, an online mag celebrating the art of short films. He is also one of the founders and editors of the short film magazine Talking Shorts.

As freelance film programmer and curator, Niels is currently affiliated with Antwerp’s local repertory cinema De Cinema (BE), Filmfest Dresden (DE), Fantoche Int’l Animation Film Festival (CH), Film Fest Gent (BE), and the video-on-demand platform Avila (BE). In the past, he has contributed as a guest curator to festivals in Quebec City, Dresden, and Poznan, and as a pre-selector to Busan Int’l Short Film Festival (KR). Niels holds a master’s in Audiovisual Arts (RITCS, Brussels) and Film Studies & Visual Culture (University of Antwerp). His writing has been published in Belgian outlets such as De Standaard, Etcetera, and Fantômas. He is also a member of VAF’s short film commission (2024-2026), the board of European Short Pitch, the Belgian Film Press Union, and FIPRESCI.

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