Adnan Khan is a screenwriter, novelist, and journalist. His first feature film, Shook, premiers at this year’s Festival. His debut novel, There Has to Be a Knife, was named a best Canadian novel of 2019 by the CBC. His second, The Hypebeast, will be published in spring 2025. He won the 2016 RBC Taylor Prize for best emerging writer, and was the recipient of the 2022 National Magazine Award for best profile. He has taught screenwriting at the University of Guelph.

Amar is a Mumbai-born, Toronto-based filmmaker whose works include his first feature documentary, The Secret Trial 5, which received a Jury Prize at Hot Docs and was named one of the Best Docs of the Decade by Real Screen Magazine; and Shook, his scripted feature debut which premiers at this year’s Festival and stars Saamer Usmani (Succession, Inventing Anna.) His body of deeply human and richly visual work led to a CSA nomination, and the prestigious Vanguard Award from the DOC Institute. Walahas also produced and directed numerous acclaimed series for CBC, Vice, and Bell Media among others. He most recently created the CBC doc series Witness (Hot Docs, Doc NYC ‘23).

Walais also the founder of Scarborough Pictures, an award-winning production company based in Toronto.

Mark Andrew Bacolcol (born April 23, 1995) is an actor from Toronto. After an extensive athletic-centric adolescence and pursuing a professional soccer career in Sweden, Bacolcol entered a new chapter in his life by finding purpose through storytelling and the craft of acting. He committed to expanding and diving deeper into his craft with the hopes of creating meaningful works by way of meaningful artistic relationships. None of his family members work in or around the entertainment industry, and he dropped out of college after one semester. Mark’s recent screen credits include M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, and Lovely from Serville Poblete. His debut producorial feature, Altar Boy is out on Netflix Canada with further distribution pending within additional markets. Bacolcol strives to tell compelling stories on screen, and perhaps someday on stage. He is repped by Stephanie Bleakley of Amanda Rosenthal Talent Agency.

Serve is a filmmaker hailing from Toronto's Bleecker Street. His debut feature film, Altar Boy, which he directed and independently produced in collaboration with Mark Bacolcol under their production company, New Radio Pictures, is now streaming on Netflix. Currently, he is in post-production for his second feature film Lovely, also with New Radio Pictures, and his short documentary King's Court, produced by the National Film Board.

Ashleigh Rains is a Canadian Screen Award-winning producer, writer, and the founder of C’mon Mort Productions, a film and television production company prioritizing and championing stories about women and by women. Rains produced the feature film Canadian Strain and several award-winning short films that have garnered international acclaim at festivals such as VIFF, Whistler, Newport Beach, HollyShorts, and Seattle. In television, she co-created, produced, and co-wrote the series With a Twist. Rains’ prose writing has been published, and her screenplays have achieved recognition in several US competitions. She is currently developing the drama series Prime and the comedy series The Editors. Rains is an alumna of Queen's University, Canada’s National Ballet School, RADA, NSI Totally Television, Corus Media Management Accelerator, and Stowe Story Labs.

Jen Pogue is an award-winning host, actor, producer, and writer. Recent on-screen credits include Apple TV’s Ghost Writer, Netflix’s I Woke Up a Vampire, CTV’s Hudson & Rex and CBC’s Endlings. As a producer, Jen has worked on many films both independently and alongside production collective Filmcoop Inc. Their films have premiered at festivals including TIFF, Palm Springs, Raindance, and Whistler; and are currently streaming on Crave, CBC Gem, Prime Video, Highball TV, Super Channel, and much more. Pogue is currently the Director of Industry for the Canadian Film Fest and was the co-host/co-creator for the Women On Screen Out Loud podcast alongside Laura Jean Choristecki. Pogue is currently in development for season two of Bell Fibe TV’s County Blooms, of which she is the creator/showrunner/host. She won a Canadian Screen Award for Best Host of a Web Program or Series earlier this year.

Lee Marshall is a third-culture kid and producer who celebrates outsiders and complex women on screen. She sold her first feature film — the psychological horror Bleed With Me (2021), which she produced and starred in — to Shudder. Marshall is developing a slate of original projects including Hearing Things, a Telefilm-supported eco-thriller, and Party Girl #3, a half-hour dark comedy that was selected for TIFF’s Series Accelerator this year. Marshall is an alumna of the 2023 Producers’ Lab at the Canadian Film Centre, and also brings a decade of experience in media and marketing to her work as a producer.

Katharine King So is a multi-hyphenate creator with onscreen leads in features Bloodthirsty, The Voyeurs, and television recurrings in The Recruit (Netflix), Transplant (CTV), and Jupiter's Legacy (Netflix). She wrote, directed, and produced The Walk-In Closet, a Queer web series internationally distributed by Revry TV. She is developing half-hour horror-comedy Party Girl #3, selected for TIFF’s Series Accelerator and Inside Out’s Finance Forum 2024. She received CBC’s CRF development funding for her mockumentary sitcom The Buzzkills! in 2020. Katharine has also worked in production and casting in scripted and unscripted, including Family Feud Canada. She trained at Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University, Black Theatre Workshop, BIPOC Film & TV Showrunner’s Bootcamp, and Reelworld’s E20 Program. She founded the 2SLGBTQIA+ committee at ACTRA-Montreal, and her work often explores her half-Asian Queer identity. Rep: PLAY Mgmt (Canada) and Brillstein Entertainment Partners (US).

Louis Taylor’s career in media spans more than 40 years. He has worked as a producer, actor, acting coach, dancer, writer-director, assistant director, and script consultant. His award-winning short films have screened at more than25 festivals, including HotDocs, IDFA, the Venice International Film Festival, the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, and the Tokyo International Film Festival. His shorts have aired on PBS, Bravo, Canadian Reflection (CBC), Zed TV (CBC), and Czech Television.

He is the co-founder of Working the Scene in Colour, a live cold-read event featuring BIPOC writers and ACTRA actors. Featured scenes are performed before an industry audience.

In 2020, he and his child wrote, co-directed, and produced the web series Spawn and Geezer. The series was selected by the IndieFest Film Awards, Miami Webfest, TOwebfest, Baltimore Webfest, and Caribbean Tales Film Festival. It launched in 2021 on Seeka TV.

Katelyn Cursio has worked in film and television since 2013. Over the past decade, she worked closely with producers, most notably on the Telefilm-financed feature film All My Puny Sorrows, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and hit theatres in 2022. Cursio also served as associate producer on the theatrically-released feature films Population Zero, Sundowners, and Trench 11.

Cursio produced the CMF-financed digital series First Person. The inaugural season of the series was selected to premiere at Canneseries, and aired on CBC. Most recently, Cursio produced the short film Redlights which had its world premiere at TIFF in 2023.

Omar Majeed is a Pakistani-Canadian writer, filmmaker, and award-winning editor. His credits include the groundbreaking Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, The Frog Princes, and the poignant short doc Stitched Glass. Majeedhas won multiple awards as an editor and writer. He's a recipient of the Kathleen Shannon Award, and was also shortlisted for the Ontario Arts Council's K.M. Hunter Artist Award in 2016. His editing prowess was recognized with a CSA in 2001, and again in 2018 for The Artists digital documentary series. At this year's Hot Docs, Majeed premiered his new music documentary Disco's Revenge, which also made the festival’s top 20 audience picks. He is currently developing a number of film and TV projects across fiction and non-fiction. Thorncliffe is his first scripted series.

Amanda Pileggi is a Toronto-based producer of Italian and South Asian descent. She produced the feature film Racewalkers, and is a co-producer of Code 8: Part II (Netflix), and Float (Wattpad/Lionsgate/Elevation). She frequently collaborates with the creative duo Lester Trips, and developed their digital series Content Farm (CBC Gem). Pileggiis also a member of Kick Start Arts, and the community-led web series The Regent Park Project. Previously, she worked in development and production at Boat Rocker Media, and film sales at Celluloid Dream. Pileggi got her start at TIFF and Luminato before managing the Regent Park Film Festival and its year-round programming. She holds a BA in Cultural Studies and Urban Systems from McGill University. Pileggi devotes herself to the space where art and community intersect, and continues to push for more equitable practices in every facet of her work.

Josiane is a writer, director, producer whose creative work often speaks on everything related to social justice. In 2020, Tales of Ordinary Fatphobia, her short documentary produced by the NFB regarding the impact of fatphobia on the mental health of kids and teens, premiered on Radio-Canada. In 2021, Ainsi va Manu, her 7-part short form scripted series telling the story of a 16-year-old teen girl whose family is about to be evicted from their apartment in Toronto, was broadcast on TV5 & TFO and was selected for several international festivals winning a total of 15 awards, including five for best director. In 2022, Josiane was also selected as one of Playback's magazine 10 to watch in the film and TV industry. More recently, her short documentary Loud & Here showcasing a collective of 23 teen girls advocating against sexual violences in high schools across Quebec premiered at Hot Docs & season 2 of Ainsi va Manu was released in May 2024. Some of Josiane’s upcoming projects are, her feature documentary Words Left Unspoken and Hôtel Beyrouth, a half-hour scripted dramedy series that she co-wrote and co-directed.

Born and raised in Manhattan, New York City, Lanette Ware-Bushfield is an actor, published writer, and producer who will next be seen as Coach Carter in MGM’s 2024 film The Fire Inside opposite Oscar-nominee Brian Tyree Henry, and written by Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins. She also features in the upcoming Netflix limited series The Madness. Ware-Bushfield is a Lifetime Member of the Actors Studio, the Academy of Cinema and Television Arts, and the Canadian Media Producers Association. She produces stories that challenge old ways of thinking by threading innovative stories through a non-monolithic lens. Ware-Bushfield starred in her first commercial at age three, studied piano at six, and violin at 13. Although a music major at the High School of Music and Art in New York, she discovered her passion for writing and theatre through her BA programs in Drama at Marymount College, and the Polytechnic of Central London.

Cole Vandale is a neurodiverse, Métis filmmaker who has worked in film and TV for more than a decade. He has produced award-winning shorts that have screened in such festivals as VIFF, imagineNATIVE, Maoriland, American Indian Film festival, and many more. Recently, he worked with Mosaic Entertainment as an associate producer on the television series Bears’ Lair, and the interactive feature film Inheritance. Vandale participated in the 2023 NSI Access BIPOC Producers program, and IM4 Virtual Production Micro-Credential program. Currently, he is a participant in the Filmmakers in Indigenous Leadership & Management Business Affairs course at Capilano University. As a writer, director, and producer, his short film Starlight was nominated for Best Live Short at the 45th American Indian Film Festival, and was a finalist for the Sundance Ignite Fellowship. Recent projects of note that Vandale produced include Terror/Forming, and Mily Mumford’s sci-fi short A Void. He hopes to make filmmaking sustainable, diverse, and welcoming.

Mily Mumford is a queer, non-binary, and disabled writer-director for theatre, film, and new media with a focus on social justice-oriented science fiction and horror. They have written and directed more than 20short and full-length works including the short films Gemini (Cannes Short Film Corner), First Bite (winner of Best Film at Circus Film Contest), and Operation Gingham (Vancouver Queer Short Film Festival). Upcoming projects include the short film A Void, and the queer horror feature Terrible Thing, which is currently part of GEMS’ Genre Film Lab. Mumford is currently a Playwright Associate at Playwrights Theatre Centre developing their immersive horror play It Lives in My Bedroom and Maladaptive. They recently developed their sci-fi series Nostalgica with the Warner Brothers Discovery Writer’s Program. In addition to creative work, Mumford holds a BSc. in Neuroscience and an MSc. in Interactive Technology. Their scientific research greatly informs their creative work, and vice versa.