Liz Manashil is an independent feature filmmaker who works in artist support. She managed Sundance's Creative Distribution Initiative during its entire tenure and now consults with her fellow filmmakers (independently and through The Film Collaborative) on how best to navigate the labyrinthine-like world of distribution. She is incredibly proud to have contributed to both the Distributor Fact Sheet and the Distributor Report Card and is in the process of making her third feature - a horror comedy called Best Friends Forever - as well as her second child. She lives in Los Angeles with her partner, son, and the fetus slowly growing inside her.

Naomi McDougall Jones is a 15-time award-winning filmmaker, including for Imagine I’m Beautiful (2014) and Bite Me (2019), both of which she wrote, acted in, and produced. Naomi’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Ms. Magazine, and Salon.com and in her first book The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood, which debuted as a #1 Amazon bestseller. She gave a virally sensational TEDTalk, What it’s Like to Be a Woman in Hollywood, which has now been viewed over 1.2 million times, and is the founder of The 51 Fund, a private equity fund dedicated to financing films by female filmmakers. More at www.naomimcdougalljones.com.

Scott Macaulay is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Filmmaker Magazine as well as a producer and president of the New York-based production company, Forensic Films. Among his many producing credits are Kitty Green’s The Assistant and Casting Jon-Benet, Elisabeth Subrin’s A Woman, A Part and, with partner Robin O’Hara, Peter Sollett’s Raising Victor Vargas, Harmony Korine’s Gummo and julien donkey-boy, Alice Wu’s Saving Face, and Tom Noonan’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning What Happened Was…. Forensic has also been a producing partner in many European productions, including Olivier Assayas’s Demonlover and Clean. In 1998, Macaulay and O’Hara were awarded an Independent Spirit Award for their work in independent film, and in 2018 Macaulay was awarded the Cinereach Producing Fellowship. Macaulay has taught, lectured or mentored at numerous institutions, including the Sundance Documentary Film Program, the Venice Biennale College Cinema, CPH:DOX and the Dubai International Film Festival.