Festival Juries

Karla Badillo is a director, producer, and screenwriter, specialized in production at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, A.C. (CCC). Her debut feature film, Oca (2025), premiered in the Discovery section at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival. It won the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival, the Silver Biznaga for Best Ibero-American Film and the Audience Award at the Málaga Film Festival, and the FIPRESCI Prize for Best Film at the Guadalajara International Film Festival. It has also screened at numerous festivals, including Mar del Plata, La Havana, New Horizons, and La Mostra, among others. As a producer, her credits include Natalia Beristáin’s Ruido (2022), which premiered in the Horizontes Latinos section at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, and Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka (2023, co-producer), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Marya E. Gates is a freelance film historian, writer, and author based in Chicago. She holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature and French Literature from U.C. Berkeley and an M.F.A. in film production from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Before turning to writing full-time, she worked in social media marketing and editorial for Warner Bros./Warner Archive Collection, Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies & FilmStruck, and Netflix Film. In 2010, she founded the movie holiday known as Noirvember, and in 2015, she spent the entire year watching nothing but films directed by women in a project called A Year with Women. Her work has appeared in various film publications including Vulture, IndieWire, Letterboxd Journal, The Playlist, Emmy Mag, LA Review of Books, Inverse, and Documentary Magazine. Her first book, Cinema Her Way: Visionary Female Directors In Their Own Words, was published by Rizzoli in 2025. She also writes a monthly interview column for RogerEbert.com called Female Filmmakers in Focus, and a weekly Directed By Women Viewing Guide for her Substack newsletter Cool People Have Feelings, Too. She currently programs the monthly Must-Watch Indies series at Facets Film Forum.

Nicky Ni (she/her) lives and works between Chicago and Beijing. She writes and curates exhibitions and screenings. She is currently Programmer for Onion City Experimental Film Festival and Program Assistant for the China America Reel Ecology (CARE) program at Northwestern University. Previously, she was Distribution Assistant at Video Data Bank and Assistant Editor at Newcity. Since 2023, she has served on the Selection Committee for London Short Film Festival. She has completed residencies and fellowships at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago Artists Coalition, The Flaherty, IMPAKT Centre for Media Culture, and Momus. Her curatorial projects have been presented at Conversations at the Edge, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Mana Contemporary, the Arts Club of Chicago, Lit & Luz Festival, and other venues. Her writing has appeared in Portable Gray, Impulse Magazine, Chicago Reader, Cine-File, and Newcity. Nicky graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University.

Katy Scoggin is an award-winning documentary film director/producer and cameraperson. Her directorial debut, Flood, won a Special Mention at IDFA in 2025 and launched on PBS Independent Lens in 2026. Previously, Katy worked for Laura Poitras on Oscar-winning Citizenfour (HBO), Risk (Showtime), and The Oath (POV). She lives in Chicago.

Curtis Miller is a Chicago-based filmmaker and artist whose work spans documentary, experimental cinema, photography, and installation. His films have screened internationally at IDFA, Visions du Réel, DMZ Docs, EXiS, and the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, as well as Whitechapel Gallery and numerous artist-run spaces and microcinemas. His feature film A Brief History of Chasing Storms screened at the Chicago International Film Festival. In 2025, Miller was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” He currently teaches darkroom photography at Northwestern University.

Alina Marazzi is a film director of documentaries, films, and theater productions. Her work centers on female subjectivity and memory. Her filmography includes: Un’ora sola ti vorrei (For one more hour with you), a portrait of her late mother made with family home movies; Per Sempre (Forever), a documentary on cloistered nuns; Vogliamo anche le rose (We want roses too), an all-archive feature film about Italian women’s stories in the 1970s; Tutto parla di te (All about you), starring Charlotte Rampling, a fiction film exploring the dark side of motherhood; Confini (Borderland), a found footage short film featuring poetry by Mariangela Gualtieri; Anna Piaggi, a portrait of the fashion journalist; To cut is to think, a portrait of artist Lucia Marcucci commissioned by Maison Dior. Her latest fiction film, The Girl with the Leica, on the photo reporter Gerda Taro, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. She is also the co-artistic director of the UnArchive Found Footage Fest.

Bruno Santamaría Razo is a Mexican director, screenwriter, and cinematographer, and a graduate of the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC). His work explores the boundaries between documentary and fiction through intimate stories in which memory, childhood, identity, and family relationships intersect. He is the director of Margarita, Things We Dare Not Do, and Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. His films have screened at festivals including IDFA, Berlinale, Hot Docs, San Sebastián, Chicago, DOC NYC, and Ambulante, among others. His work has received support from Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte and Jóvenes Creadores del FONCA, as well as from the Hubert Bals Fund, Tribeca Film Institute, Ford Foundation, and Field of Vision. In addition to directing and producing his own films, Santamaría Razo has worked as a cinematographer and camera operator on projects by Ai Weiwei, Manuel Abramovich and other filmmakers. He has also taught and mentored filmmakers at institutions and programs including EICTV, the CCC, and Ambulante.

Elizabeth Arnott is a Chicago-based marketing and publicity leader with a focus on independent and international film. As Head of Marketing & Publicity at Music Box Films, she develops campaigns that connect critically acclaimed indie films with North American audiences. Their work includes theatrical and home entertainment releases for Fremont, The Unknown Country, Eephus, Familiar Touch, The Stranger, Remake, and Academy Award-nominee Writing with Fire. She champions emerging filmmakers and appreciates bold storytelling, diverse voices, and queer little indie films. Elizabeth guest-programs the annual lesbian film series Sapphopalooza at the Music Box Theatre. In 2025, Elizabeth was a jury member and panelist for the Nashville Film Festival and NewFest37. She currently serves on the Gotham Awards Advisory Committee.

Annie Howard is a journalist and historian based in Rogers Park. She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Northwestern University, where she is at work on her first manuscript, The City Made Me Trans. Her work has appeared in Pitchfork, the Baffler, Chicago Reader, Chicago Magazine, and elsewhere. She also hosts the radio show City Dreams on Lumpen Radio and Dyke Nite at Bernice’s.

Director Stephen Winter is an award-winning filmmaker, producer, and writer. His debut feature film, Chocolate Babies (1996), was restored in 2021 by UCLA/Outfest and twice featured on the Criterion Channel. Jason and Shirley (2015), Stephen’s second feature film, starring and co-written by Sarah Schulman and Jack Waters, premiered at BAMCinemaFest and the Museum of Modern Art. The new edition Jason and Shirley Revisited premiered at NewFest in 2025 for a 2026 roadshow. Stephen produced Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation (2004) which premiered at Sundance; and directed the series The Space Within (2023-26), starring and co-produced by Jessica Chastain for Audible. Stephen’s third sci-fi series for Audible, Exoplanet, executive produced by Andy Weir, stars Anthony Mackie, John Leguizamo and Ariana DeBose, debuts in November 2026. Stephen has worked on films with Lee Daniels, Allan Hughes, Gus Van Sant, Xan Cassavetes, Jim Lyons, John Cameron Mitchell and Soledad O’Brien. Playwright Jeremy O. Harris has called Stephen “the father of modern Black Queer cinema.”

Malik Bader was born and raised in Chicago. He made his feature directorial debut with Street Thief (2007) which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. His second feature, Cash Only (2016), premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival, where he was awarded Best Director. He wrote and directed Killerman (2020), starring Liam Hemsworth, and Zlatko Burić, which was released by Paramount & Blue Fox. Most recently, he co-directed Broke English, currently in post-production.

Liz Kaar is an independent editor, director, and producer. She was born and raised in Minnesota and cut her filmmaking teeth in the great city of Chicago. She soon discovered her love for small editing rooms, tackling the monster of long-form story structure, and the resulting trail of potato chip crumbs. Her editing projects have received a variety of award recognition, including short-listed for the Academy Award, nominated for Emmy and IDA awards, and winning the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Journalism Award. She’s edited a number of unscripted and scripted films that have had the honor of screening at the Chicago International Film Festival, with Any Given Day winning the Chicago Award, and On Beauty taking home the Audience Choice Award. Upcoming editing releases include feature documentary The Telepathy Tapes, short documentary Mila to Millions, and feature horror film Sheila.

Texas Smith (he/they) grew up in a town without a movie theater. Now, Texas is an often Chicago-based, Arkansas filmmaker whose films have screened across the world – including Seattle International Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Doc NYC – and on culture publications like Pitchfork, The Ringer, and more. In 2023, he were invited to study with the Baltic Analog Lab and attended the Telluride Student Symposium. More recently, he received a True/False Confluence Fellowship, attended the CPH:DOX ACADEMY+, and received an MFA… In his free time, Texas is a Creative Video Producer for the Chicago White Sox. Go Sox.

Blair Barnes is a conceptual artist from South Central Los Angeles. Formerly, he served as Curator at Vimeo. His work ranges in collaboration within moving image and design worlds, and has been supported and presented by Brain Dead Studios, BlackStar Film Festival, the British Film Institute and more.

Joshua Minsoo Kim is a music and film critic, film programmer, and high school science teacher based in Chicago. He’s the editor-in-chief of Tone Glow and has written for various publications including the Chicago Reader, BOMB Magazine, NPR, Rolling Stone, MUBI Notebook, and Cinema Scope.

Fernando Saldivia Yáñez is a Chilean filmmaker based in Chicago. His practice explores the politics and poetics of daily life through an intimate observational style. His work has screened at multiple festivals and spaces including the Chicago International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, Prismatic Ground, and more.