Abbas Rezaie is a journalist, author, poet, and documentary filmmaker from Hazara, Afghanistan. Because the Hazaras community is a discriminated Afghani minority, Abbas has directed made five documentaries before and after the collapse of the Afghanistan government by the Taliban. In fact, one of them depicts the status of freedom of speech under the Taliban regime. This documentary shows what Etilaat Roz went through on a daily basis as well as the torture of two journalist colleagues by the Taliban, which happened on September 18, 2021. In his other films, Abbas has shed light on topics such as the the situations of out-of-school girls and their efforts to achieve their education rights as well as the severe poverty struggles of the labor class in Kabul after the Taliban take over.

Charlotte Ducos is a documentary expert at Swiss Films, with 15 years experience in international film distribution, production and audiovisual concepts. Graduated from French National Film School La Femis in distribution, she worked as a programmer in Paris, a project manager in Hong Kong and was head of development at Seppia, a production company in France, with a focus on documentaries and immersive contents, before joining Swiss Films in 2022.

Chloe Genga is an impact producer, scriptwriter, and filmmaker based in Nairobi, Kenya.  Previously, she worked in the film industry as a production manager/Line producer for five years before venturing into Impact Producing. A move she credits to her firm belief that information is not only power but a basic human right. Currently, she is an Impact Producer at LBx Africa and her recent projects under this capacity include the award-winning film No Simple Way Home (South Sudan/Kenya,2022) and What’s Eating My Mind (Kenya, 2023). As a filmmaker, two of her short films titled What About Your Hair? (2021) and Unsee (2021) have been screened and selected in three film festivals across Africa. Chloe was a juror for the International Documentary Awards (IDA) 2022. She is also a recipient of the MOFILM Academy for African filmmakers’ scholarship award and a Some Fine Day screenwriter fellow.

Dea Gjinovci is a Swiss-Albanian director and producer. Her films have premiered in prestigious international film festivals Tribeca Film Festival, Visions du Réel, IDFA, CPH:DOX, Hot Docs, DocNYC, Winterthur KurzFilmTage and many others... She is a Sundance alumna and a 2019 Film Independent Fellow. Her cinematographic style blends poetic narration, magical realism and cinéma vérité. She won several awards including "Best National Film" at 2017 Dokufest, "Best new Talent" mentions at both ZagrebDox 2021 and Biografilm 2020. She has been a member of the Swiss Film Academy since her "Best Documentary" nomination for "Wake Up on Mars" in 2022. Dea has a BA(Hons) in Economics and Politics from SOAS, University of London and a MA in Ethnographic and documentary film from UCL, University of London.

Don Edkins is a South African documentary filmmaker and producer based in Cape Town who has produced documentary film projects that have been broadcast around the world, such as Steps for the Future, Why Democracy? and Why Poverty?, and  most recently Generation Africa, with 25 films from 17 countries across Africa around the theme of migration and youth opportunities He is Executive Producer of AfriDocs, a free-to-view VOD platform and broadcast strand across Africa for creative documentary flms. Currently he is developing Generation Africa 2.0, a documentary project for African filmmakers around climate change and environmental justice.

Elsa is a Senior Legal Advisor for the TRIAL International’s progam in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since September 2015. Before joining TRIAL International, she interned in the mergencies Team at Human Rights Watch, working on the armed conflict in the Central African Republic. A qualified lawyer in Quebec, she started working there as a criminal law trainee on legal aid cases. Elsa holds an LLM in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International Studies and Development in Geneva (Switzerland), a Masters degree in Transnational Law, and a Law degree from Quebec (Canada). She is an expert in the protection of vulnerable populations in armed conflicts. Her working languages are French and English.

Ilyas founded Kamay Film in Afghanistan and later moved its office to Brussels, Belgium, in August 2021. Born and raised in Kabul, he has traveled extensively throughout the country and was involved in various research and media projects. This helped him gain unique access and in-depth knowledge of his homeland and put him on the frontline of Afghanistan’s new wave of cinema. He graduated from the Journalism Faculty of Kabul University in 2014 and has worked as a journalist and researcher since 2011. Ilyas has produced and co-directed Kamay, a feature-length documentary that has received multiple awards and funds from the world’s most prestigious film foundations. He is currently producing two other documentaries in development.

Originally from the Republic of Congo, Kellie-Shandra OGNIMBA is a lawyer, an academic and former diplomat. She grew up and lived in different countries including Congo, Ethiopia and France. She has worked with the United Nations for the last 14 years, both in New York and Geneva. Currently she is based in Geneva where she works as a Human Rights Officer for the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) and covers issues pertaining to racism and racial discrimination against people of African descent. Previous to her work with the UN she was working as a diplomat for the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Congo in Geneva. Kellie-Shandra Ognimba completed her PhD on Human Rights with the University of Pantheon-Sorbonne in Paris. She is passionate about fashion and fond of outdoor running.

Michelle is a cultural organizer with more than 6 years of experience in film festival production and impact producer based in Mexico City. She led the first edition of the Good Pitch program in México 2020, as the Outreach and Partnerships Coordinator at DocsMX, a documentary film platform in Mexico City. Regional field building has established positive and productive relationships amongst filmmakers and organizers, which she aims to continue to support through workshops, forums, and overall creating spaces to recognize the power of thoughtful, ethical and fundamental storytelling processes as the social change ecosystem continues to grow in Mexico. She is also part of Impacta Cine, the first film & social impact collective in Mexico directed to work alongside filmmakers to design and implement impact campaigns.

Miriam is an impact strategist and cultural producer based in Nairobi, Kenya. She has over a decade’s experience working at the intersection of art and activism, designing and implementing programs and outreach initiatives within a range of social impact areas and artistic mediums.  She is currently serving as the co-coordinator of the Global Impact Producers Assembly (GIPA). Previously, she worked as the impact strategist/producer for award winning films including Softie (Kenya, 2020), Los Hermanos/The Brothers (Cuba/USA, 2021), and No Simple Way Home (South Sudan/Kenya, 2022). At the heart of her work is a commitment to centering and amplifying under-represented stories and voices. 

Najiba Noori is an Afghan journalist and filmmaker. Najiba began working for media organisations as a volunteer when she was just 15. Alongside her work she has practiced photography and videography since 2015. She has made documentary films and photo stories for various organisations and agencies, including the AFP, Huffington Post, MSF, FMIC, NRC and UN Women in Afghanistan. She joined Agence France-Presse (AFP) as video journalist in August 2019, and in August 2021 she left her country when the Taliban took power in Afghanistan.

Nicole Biermaier has studied many different fields of the art of cinema going from interactive video, film, text, sound at the Media Art Department in Zurich and experimented with 16mm essay film at the Film Department. She then focused on experimental, essayisticdocumentary film and finally on research within the field of expanded cinema. Throughout all of that, Nicole earned her living in a number of well-known international companies with administration work. She used the knowledge gained in such an economic environment for her production work within the arts. Since 2000, Nicole has been developing and conducting many works in the field of art, theatre or film. Her projects have been exhibited and screened internationally. At the same time, she was teaching and mentoring at the Universities in Bern and Zurich. Since June 2015 Nicole is part of the team at First Hand Films. She is happy to say goodbye to a time where earning money consisted of having 7 jobs or projects simultaneously and has many ideas for a fruit- and colourful future at the firm.

Patricia joined StoryBoard Collective based in Geneva, Switzerland as their inaugural Office for the StoryBoard Impact Fund, which invests in partnerships and projects that strengthen the global ecosystem of storytelling for impact.  She founded Story Matters which provides strategy to artists, organisations and funders around nonfiction storytelling and impact.  Previously, she served as Creative Producer, Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program; Director, Silverdocs: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival. She has worked with Doc Society on many doc / impact initiatives, most recently leading the Good Pitch Local program. She was part of the Ford Foundation/Rockwood Leadership Fellowship program and National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Program. She is a graduate of the American Film Institute Producers Program and holds a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University. 

Born in 1974 in Billens, Switzerland. 2004 Federal Diploma SAWI as communication specialist. 2009 Training as a PR journalist. She then worked for ten years for different publications including Femina Fashion, Encore, Le Matin Dimanche, 20 minutes. Also active in the cultural sector, she held the position of communications manager at the Théâtre de l'Octogone for seven years. In 2018, driven by questions related to identity, she created the Instagram account NOIRES with the aim of offering a space of visibility to black women living in Switzerland. BECOMING A BLACK WOMAN is her first film codirected with Juliana Fanjul.

Serge Michel, 54, grew up in Yverdon-les-Bains. In 2019, He became the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the young Swiss media outlet Heidi.news. He was deputy director of the editorial offices of Le Monde and editor-in-chief of Le Monde Afrique. He published his first reports in 1989 in the Journal de Genève. In 2001, he was awarded the Albert Londres prize for his reports in Iran, where he lived for four years as a correspondent for Le Figaro and Le Temps. In 2005, while working for L'Hebdo, he founded the Bondy Blog in the Paris suburbs. Serge is the author of several books on Iran, the Chinese in Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tiny Mungwe is a filmmaker and arts manager. She works at STEPS, producing Generation Africa, a collection of 25 documentary films from 16 African countries. She produced and directed Akekho uGogo a documentary, wrote Evelyn and directed, Daddy’s Boy. She was a writer on the TV series Muvhango and Matatiele and director on Uzalo. Mungwe was programmes manager at the Centre for Creative Arts (UKZN) organizing their festivals Time of the Writer, the Durban International Film Festival, Jomba! Contemporary Dance Experience and Poetry Africa, as well as Durban FilmMart  and Talents Durban.

Zhanna Maksymenko-Dovhych is a director and producer from Kyiv, Ukraine. After graduating from the Institute of Journalism at Kyiv State University, she worked mainly on television. As a documentary filmmaker, she focuses on social issues. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she has been working as a journalist and local producer for international media, combining this activity with her own documentary projects. Zhanna is the Head of the Directors Guild of Ukraine, a member of the Board of the Ukrainian Film Academy and a member of the Documentary Association of Europe.

Beadie Finzi is one of the founding directors of Doc Society, a non-profit film foundation supporting filmmakers globally. Having worked in documentary for the past 20 years, Beadie is in heaven in her role at Doc Society – whose mission is to befriend independent filmmakers, fund great films, broker new partnerships, build new business models, share knowledge and develop audiences globally. In addition to Executive Producing a number of films at the foundation, Beadie is also responsible for global programmes including Good Pitch, the Impact Field Guide and the Doc Impact Award. As part of the Good Pitch mentorship team, Beadie has helped brainstorm impact strategy and potential partnerships with many of the 500+ filmmakers who have now been through the global programme. For more information go to www.goodpitch.org.

With a background in television, Farah holds a B.A in audiovisuel studies. Her 8 years in television were equally split between entertainment and news channels. In 2012, Farah shifted her career into the film festivals’ industry and worked with the Dubai International Film Festival for its last 6 editions managing their Cinetech, a digital library for the sales and acquisitions of films. Farah also worked with the Malmo Arab Film Festival, moderating its film market’s pitching sessions. In 2019, Farah joined the team of Beirut DC, the association for Development and Cinema where she is currently the director of programs with a special attention to the impact program. Beirut DC’s impact program includes regional and local impact labs, an Impact Fund and the Impact Producers’ Fellowship among other intersectional programing.

Hollie is currently the Director of Australian Programs at Doc Society and Director of the arts not-for-profit Schoolhouse Studios in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. As a documentary filmmaker, Hollie’s films have screened at festivals and broadcast within Australia and internationally. THE OPPOSITION is Hollie’s debut feature documentary produced by Media Stockade that world premiered at Hot Docs and IDFA in 2016 before winning the Grand Prize at FIFO, screening at the UN Human Rights Council, winning Best Documentary Feature at the Oz Flix Independent Film Awards and screening in over 35 countries. Hollie’s latest short film UNBALANCED recently premiered on Australian newspapers The Age/Sydney Morning Herald’s Vox Dox series. Hollie serves on the Board of the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) and the Castlemaine Documentary Festival (CDoc). In her previous work she has been a freelance tutor in Documentary Directing at NIDA and AFTRS, Co-Director of The Artists Guild and selected for MECCA Shark Island M-Power Program.

Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala co-founded the film production company Storytellers International Inc. and is the President of Filipino Documentary Society (FilDocs). As a Filipino producer, she’s produced a verity of renowned documentaries such as Delikado and Call Her Gand (Call Her Beautiful) that were screened across the world at different famous film festivals such as the Human Rights Watch Film Festival or the Los Angeles Pacific Film Festival. Kara has also produced award-winning television specials and documentaries like “Batas Militar” (Martial Law). To date, it has been the highest rated documentary broadcast on Philippine Television and has swept all major awards in the Philippines. She is a contributing producer for ARD German TV, ARD German Radio, Cable News Network (CNN) Hong Kong and Atlanta bureaus. She is a member of the Good Pitch2 Southeast Asia Team in Jakarta. She has produced documentaries for the History Channel, and the Australian Broadcasting Company. She has reported for the Public Broadcasting Service and Voice of America.

Coming from a background of journalism, Khadidja is vice-president of the IMPACT SOCIAL CLUB, the Think Tank of impact in France, and impact strategist at BIM – Best Impact Movies. She trains film industry professionals and students in impact strategies in France and internationally among others, Dixit – Le film français, FOCAL, and MIGROS STORYLAB. She also acts as a panellist and supervises impact labs in international film festivals such as FIPADOC, DOK LEIPZIG and MOVIES THAT MATTER. In 2021 she joined the pool of mentors of the Pour-cent Culturel Migros Story Lab (Switzerland). She has designed the impact campaigns for several award-winning documentaries: The Zimov Hypothesis by Denis Sneguirev (Arturo Mio,13 Productions, Arte), Le Dernier Refuge – The Last Shelter by Ousmane Samassekou (DS productions, Les Films du Balibari Point du Jour, Génération Afrique, Arte), the French campaign of Shadow Game by Eefje Blankevoort & Els Van Driel (Witfilm, KRO-NCRV, Prospector)… Khadidja is also coordinator of the FIFO Tahiti overseas program at the International Oceanian Documentary Film Festival. In 2019, FIFO Tahiti hosted the first Good Pitch Impact Lab in France.

Louise is a Grants Officer for the Climate Story Unit at Doc Society, working on fundraising, grants management and impact. She has worked in local and international NGOs and philanthropic organisations with themes ranging from climate justice, human rights, youth participation and sustainability reporting. Her background is in International Development and Public Policy and she is currently enrolled on a Cinema post-graduate degree.

As one of the coordinators of (GIPA), Naomi helps impact practitioners connect with each other, and spark conversations around the issues in the field of Impact Producing. Previously, Naomi served as Executive Director of the Southern Documentary Fund; she worked with Doc Society as Outreach Director for Good Pitch Chicago in 2013 & 2015, and again for GPNY in 2016. Naomi spent nine years in Chicago as Engagement Consultant for ITVS, hosting over 80 documentary film screenings, followed by discussions, workshops, expos and performances.

Rodrigo Antonio is from Amazon, Brasil. Graduated in History (UFPA) and Audiovisual Production (EICTV). He has produced feature and short films – fiction and documentaries -, web series, video clips, institutional videos and educational documentaries. He has experience as a curator and a reviewer of film labs, funds and festivals. He has worked as a professor of Film and Audiovisual arts at UFPA and he is currently doing a Master’s Degree in Art at this very institution. Rodrigo coordinates the social impact labs in Brazil and is the current president-director in the Association of Black Audiovisual Professionals.

Cultural organizer, dancer & impact strategist working across art, activism & social justice. Vanessa connects the world of human rights defenders with the spheres of art & film to promote social change. With DOCCO LABS she designed a virtual training program for Colombian Impact Producers, creating an online community called !ACCION! At Doc Society she leads programs across Latin America, building strong partnerships with local host organizations in Colombia, México and Brasil, supporting documentary filmmakers designing impact campaigns and creating a strong network of doc allies in the region. Through Skylight SolidariLabs she supports grassroots activists and storytellers to shift cultural narratives. As part of the peace process in Colombia, she supports the ongoing work of the Colombian Truth Commission as an advisor for Historias en Kilometros co-creating shorts with Afrocolombian teams, in order to come to terms with decades of conflict in their regions and contribute to the national historical memory.