2025 Jurors

  • Ryan Ali is a Canadian actor best known for his leading role in the Canadian Screen Award-nominated QUEEN TUT (2023), as well as his standout turn as Reese in CBS and Paramount+'s acclaimed SKYMED. His performances, praised for their nuance and authenticity, have established him as a captivating voice in Canadian cinema.

    Having immigrated from Syria to Canada twice—first as a child, then again as a young adult—Ali draws on his international background to bring depth and dimension to his work.

    His first major break came when he was cast opposite Salma Hayek and Alexander Skarsgård in Kim Nguyen's THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT, which premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. Since then, he has built an impressive body of work on acclaimed productions including The Handmaid's Tale (Hulu), Foundation (Apple TV+) and The Detectives (CBC).

    Fluent in English, French, and Arabic, Ali combines lived experience with a powerful screen presence, making him a distinctive and important storyteller. A versatile actor and a symbol of cultural diversity, he is undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with in the entertainment industry.

  • Jill Bennett is an award-winning producer/writer/actor dedicated to creating opportunities for underrepresented filmmakers. Her viral hit We’re Getting Nowhere, regarded by the press as “the video blog that started it all” for LGBTQ new media, led to a development deal with Viacom and a string of roles in television and film. In addition to serving on the Screen Actor’s Guild LGBTQ National Board, she has spoken on LGBTQ media issues in over two dozen cities worldwide, including on the mainstages at San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Munich Gay Pride. Her producing experience ranges from charity events to live specials, theatre, radio, new media, and film. She has produced three award-winning micro-budget projects that played in the international film festival circuit and went on to acquire worldwide distribution. Jill’s comedy series Second Shot won picture of the year at London’s LFest. She won two Audience Choice Awards at Logo's NewNowNext Awards, and three Curve Magazine Awards for her two-season ensemble comedy We Have to Stop Now. Her most recent feature, Under the Influencer, has taken home best feature prizes at four festivals in 2024 and a fifth during its ongoing 2025 festival run. She recently relocated to Atlanta to produce a full-length horror comedy feature alongside her brilliant multi-hyphenate wife Lauren Neal, and Oscar winning producer Karen Toliver. More at jillbennett.com.

  • With a lifelong passion for film and a taste for bold visions, subversive art, and unique voices, Joe Bowman (no pronoun preference) has traced that cinematic devotion through their entire academic and professional life. Like one of the great screen sirens (Nomi Malone), Joe hails from "different places!!" "back east," namely Saint Louis and Chicago, receiving a BFA in Film Studies at Webster University (with a minor in French) before going west. Currently the Programming Manager at Frameline, the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, Joe has worked the film festival circuit across the U.S., in the programming, public relations, marketing, and publications arenas of such festivals as the Mill Valley Film Festival, SFFILM, and the Chicago International Film Festival. Other celluloid endeavors include serving as the Head of Virtual Festivals for MUBI’s global platform in the early 2010s, in addition to roles in exhibition and distribution, and production credits which include James Franco and Travis Mathews’ Interior. Leather Bar.

    They provide accessibility inclusion consulting to a variety of arts organizations. They have spoken about creative approaches to distribution at festivals/markets around the world such as Sundance, SXSW, Outfest, Hot Docs, Bogota Audiovisual Market, and Doc Edge.

  • Murtada Elfadl is a culture writer, critic, and film curator. Born and raised in Khartoum, Sudan he currently resides in New York. His work about cinema lies at the intersection of documentary and fiction with an emphasis on the work of filmmakers in the diaspora and from the Global South. Additionally he has a keen interest in films that highlight the queer experience in its many forms. His work has appeared at Variety, The A.V. Club, SEEN, Backstage and the Museum of the Modern Image, among others. He’s a programmer at NewFest, New York’s LGBTQ Film Festival and at the documentary festival, DOC NYC.

  • Lauren Neal is an award-winning actor, filmmaker, and data scientist. She is a graduate of Brown University’s Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies and the University of Virginia’s School of Data Science.

    Lauren's work interfaces with nascent technologies and mental health matters: where neural networks meet neurodivergence meets NeRFs. She won the Hyundai Emerging Director Award for her short Healing Me at Outfest Fusion 2020 and went on to direct an LGBTQ-centric spot for Hyundai.

    Lauren is a two-time Commercial Directors Diversity Program semifinalist and a graduate of Warner Bros. Discovery’s inaugural VFX Coordinator training program. Her Ivy League-set race satire Spicy Wit—which she wrote, directed, & produced—was featured in Ebony, Indiewire, and Huffington Post.

    Under the Influencer—a groundbreaking microbudget film on which Lauren served as technical director, editor, VFX producer, post production supervisor, executive producer, and lead performer—was named Panavision’s Outstanding Feature at the 2024 Micheaux Film Festival. The project has collected three additional Best Feature prizes during its ongoing international festival run.

    Lauren was the founding data scientist at Castability, a start-up devoted to providing actors with actionable feedback and quantitative analysis of their work. Her acting credits include Westworld, 9-1-1, and Dexter: Original Sin.

    Lauren is developing several narrative and experimental multimedia projects. She has been tapped to direct the romantic comedy Ex Life for Story Mill Entertainment in 2026.

  • Asad Muhammad is an impact strategist, public media executive, and father. As VP of Impact & Engagement Strategy at American Documentary | POV, Asad extends the impact of nonfiction films beyond their public broadcast date through community engagement, education, and event production work with noncommercial television stations. From orchestrating impact campaigns to organizing film screenings, Asad engages educators, cultivates inclusive spaces where folx can exercise agency over their own learning.  His newest project as co-producer is Talking Walls,an audio-visual film and archive project canvasing the narratives and personal spaces of “seasoned”, Black queer and SGL-identified people.

  • Neil Landau is an award-winning screenwriter and bestselling author of seven books, including 101 Things I Learned in Film School (Penguin/Random House/Crown) and The TV Showrunner’s Roadmap (Focal Press/Routledge). His credits include Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (1991) and the 2024 remake; Melrose Place, The Magnificent Seven, Doogie Howser, M.D., The Secret World of Alex Mack and MTV’s Undressed. His animated movie projects include The Adventures of Tadeo Jones, for which he earned a Spanish Academy Goya Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (Paramount, 2014), Mummies for Warner Bros. (2023, sequel currently in development), and Buffalo Kids (Atresmedia/Warner Bros.). Forthcoming projects include the live-action movie Idols (premieres in November 2025) and the animated feature film Dreams (2026), both distributed by Warner Bros.

  • Lu Linares is a festival programmer and arts administrator. Born in Peru and based in Toronto, their work is shaped by their experiences as a queer immigrant. They have programmed and collaborated with festivals including imagineNATIVE, JAYU’s Festival of the Arts, aluCine Latin Film + Media Arts Festival, Toronto Queer Film Festival, Vancouver Queer Film Festival, Urbanworld Film Festival, and Breakthroughs Film Festival. In 2021, Lu received the Queer Emerging Artist Award from Buddies in Bad Times Theatre for their contributions to film and theatre. They are currently the Programming and Industry Manager at the Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival, where they spotlight new queer and trans talent in film and create opportunities for filmmaker development.