2026 JURY

 

                                                                    ALABAMA

Din Blankenship is an award-winning filmmaker based in Birmingham, Alabama. Through intimate observational documentaries, she explores the humanity that persists across our deepest social and political divides. Her debut documentary, REFUGE (executive produced by Katie Couric), premiered at DOC NYC, received a Special Mention in the U.S. Competition, won multiple Audience and Jury Awards, and was named a USA Today “Movie to Watch” in 2023. Her latest film, CARRYING explores pregnancy, parenthood, and the emotional complexity of choice.

Erika E. Wade (she/her), a writer, producer and actor from Birmingham, is dedicated to advancing diversity in the arts. She is a graduate of UAB, and while earning her MFA in dramatic writing at SCAD, she was named one of the nation’s top 22 playwrights by the Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights Workshop. Her work has been performed Off-Broadway and in festivals nationwide. She is the founder of Glenda’s Baby Productions. Her films have screened at festivals nationwide. Erika currently serves as film instructor at The Alabama School of Fine Arts.

Melanie Jeffcoat was born in Watts, Los Angeles, to political activist parents which absolutely shaped the kinds of stories she wishes to tell. As an established film producer-director, she is the writer-director of the film Open Secret which won the audience choice award at the 2010 Politics on Film Festival in Washington, D.C. She is a founding member of Circle X Theatre Co. In LA and Chaotic Good Improv in Birmingham and works as an actor on stage, film and TV.

 

                                                     

                                                                     ANIMATION

Alisa Stern is an animator, puppet builder, filmmaker and screenwriter from New York City. Her professional credits include shows for Nick Jr. and Cartoon Network, commercials, music videos and digital media companies. Her independent films have screened at dozens of film festivals all over the world. The most recent, VHX, a stop motion animated horror pastiche, premiered at FrightFest and went on to win Best Lo-Budget Short Film at the London Short Film Festival.

Bill Plympton is considered the king of indie animation, and is the first person to hand draw an entire animated feature film. Bill began his career creating cartoons for publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, National Lampoon, Playboy and Screw. In 1987, he was nominated for an Oscar® for his animated short Your Face. In 2005, Bill received another Oscar® nomination, this time for his short Guard Dog. Push Comes to Shove won the prestigious Cannes 1991 Prix du Jury; and in 2001, another short film, Eat, won the Grand Prize for Short Films in Cannes Critics’ Week.

Will Johnston-Rutledge is a multimedia artist whose work includes animation, illustration, documentary film, and autobiographical comics. For much of his career, he has worked in the nonprofit space, producing promotional and educational videos for organizations such as Impact America, The Education Trust, The New York Community Trust, and Define American. His current artistic work is inspired by the emergent behavior of birds, fish and other collective species and by the structures trees form while searching for the shortest path to sunlight.

 

                                                                     BLACK LENS

Curtis Caesar John sees cinema as the nexus for furthering our understanding of one another, even within our own cultures, and thus works tirelessly as an arts manager, advocate, and filmmaker. He is the founder and executive director of The Luminal Theater, a nomadic microcinema founded in 2015 that brings Black independent films directly to Black communities through their unique brand of shared audience experiences. He is currently an impact producer of a new documentary on the quilters of Gees Bend, Alabama, and is in pre-production on a film about Dorothy Dandridge.

Daresha Kyi is an Emmy winning director who writes, produces and directs both narrative and documentary films and television in Spanish and English. A graduate of NYU Film School, her films include Battleground Georgia, a documentary about voter suppression in the south for MSNBC Films’ series The Turning Point, executive produced by Trevor Noah. Mama Bears, her second feature documentary about how conservative, Christian mothers are transformed when they decide to accept their LGBTQ children,premiered at SXSW 2022 and has won numerous awards.

Han-‘Naeh Belser (she/her/hers), an African-American film programmer, screenwriter and producer, hails from Montgomery, Alabama. Her Southern roots have inspired fantastical and romantic narratives that spotlight Black women and femmes, often marginalized in mainstream cinema. She recently participated in the 23rd CICAE Arthouse Cinema Training in Berlin, Germany. Her professional journey includes collaborations with The National Film Festival for Talented Youth, The Black Maria Microcinema and Indie Memphis.

 

                                                                   DOCUMENTARY

Christopher E. Holmes is a Birmingham-based filmmaker and documentary pro-ducer with more than 25 years of experience in film, broadcast, and digital media. He spent 17 years at Alabama Public Television, most recently serving as Vice President of Production, where he oversaw documentary and original cultural programming and worked closely with Reel South, the PBS anthology series presenting independent documentaries that tell authentic stories from the American South. His credits include Journey Proud, Monograph, and Shuttlesworth.

Matthew Hashiguchi is a Peabody award winning documentary filmmaker, director for Film and Industry Engagement and professor of multimedia and film production at Georgia Southern University. His feature documentary The Only Doctor received the 2024 Peabody award for public service, aired nationally on PBS’s Reel South and internationally on Al Jazeera Witness, and was supported by the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund and the American Stories Documentary Fund from Points North Institute and CNN Films.

Molly Murphy is a documentary impact leader with more than 25 years of building partnerships and engagement strategies at the intersection of film and social change. She joined the national nonprofit Working Films in 2001, where over the course of 25 years she helped shape the field of documentary impact and supported hundreds of filmmakers in connecting stories with audiences and action. She is a founding member of the Documentary Accountability Working Group and part of the organizing committee of Indie Media Arts South. With family roots in Tuskegee, Alabama, she is honored to serve as a jury member for the Sidewalk Film Festival.

 

                                                                 NARRATIVE

Amber Benson is the author of The Witches of Echo Park fantasy series for Penguin/Random House. Behind the camera, she co-directed the Slamdance feature film Drones and co-wrote and co-directed the Audible Audio Drama Slayers: A Buffyverse Story. In her previous incarnation as an actor, she spent three years as Tara Maclay on the cult television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Joseph Carr is a Memphis-based film producer and co-executive director of Indie Memphis, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating, championing and exhibiting independent film throughout the mid-South. His work is driven by a passion for bold independent cinema and Southern-rooted storytelling that reflects the people, history and culture of the region. Joseph is currently producing the feature-length music documentary Colour Revolt: Brought To Life, which chronicles the influential indie rock band and their enduring artistic legacy.

Milan Kumar Chakraborty, head of film/TV at Marginal MediaWorks, oversees all of the company’s efforts in independent, studio and streaming. After his career in production finance & accounting at Warner Bros, he has produced and exec produced over 35 independent features in the past 18 years. Films have included My Friend Dahmer, The Killing Of Kenneth Chamberlain and Black Barbie, which all played Sidewalk. Last year, he taught a course at his alma mater, The College Of William & Mary, called A Practical Guide to a Career in Entertainment.

 

                                                                SHOUT LGBTQ+

Justice Obiaya, an Atlanta native, holds a BFA in media arts from the Art Institute of Atlanta and an MFA from the Savannah College of Art & Design. He began his career in art nonprofit management at ASIFA-South. In 2017, he joined the Atlanta Film Society ATLFS as education program coordinator, later becoming marketing & community relations director. He also has a 10-year tenure at Out On Film, Atlanta’s Oscar-qualifying LGBTQ+ film festival. In 2024, Justice assumed the role of executive director for Out On Film.

Matthew Francis Johnson is an American chef, writer, producer and director born in Duluth, Minnesota. Over his 11-plus year career thus far, Matthew has directed over 4,250 recipe videos for major media companies including BuzzFeed Tasty and People Inc’s Food & Wine, EatingWell, Allrecipes, Serious Eats, Southern Living and more. He has always been a deep lover of queer romance and sci-fi/fantasy stories of all mediums. He is working on his first cookbook and his third fiction novel. A feature film of his second novel is currently in pre-production.

Zuri Obi is a Haitian-American artist born and raised in the American South, with deep cultural roots in magical realism. As a cinematographer, her lens has been graced by the likes of Soledad O’Brien, Solange, Lucky Daye and Lizzo. As a producer, her projects have screened at notable film festivals, including Sundance, and have won top awards at New Orleans Film Festival, AFI and BlackStar. Zuri is also a film programmer whose curatorial values are rooted in narrative justice.

 

                                                                       STUDENT

Dr. Kaley Martin is an award winning cinematographer, creative producer, and media educator specializing in documentary filmmaking, cinematography, and digital storytelling. Her work has been recognized with industry awards, including a Southeast Emmy, Telly, and ADDY awards, and her research examines the evolving culture of women filmmakers and digital creators. She is passionate about supporting emerging voices in visual storytelling.

Writer, director and cinematographer Sarah Hennigan grew up on set and backstage, and has been involved in the arts ever since. Passionate about bringing underrepresented voices to life on screen, Sarah focuses on documentary and narrative cinematography with work shown at the Austin Film Festival, SXSW, BFI London, and seen on PBS. She works as a freelance filmmaker based out of Oxford, Mississippi, and serves as the interim chair of the department of theatre & film as an associate professor of film production at the University of Mississippi.

Tyden Rickard is a Birmingham-based filmmaker and founder whose work spans storytelling, talent development and creative infrastructure in Alabama. He is the founder and executive director of AlabamaCreates, a statewide platform built to surface, equip, and showcase Alabama’s next generation of creative talent. Through pathways like Studio Cohort and Film Exchange, AlabamaCreates connects emerging creatives with professional training, mentorship, paid client projects and opportunities to build work rooted in their own communities.