Since the 1970s Israeli filmmaker and journalist Ada Ushpiz has been writing, directing, and producing documentaries on the ambiguities of contemporary Israel and its social and historical surroundings. In 1970, she received her BA in philosophy and literature from the University of Tel Aviv, graduated with a diploma in Film Direction from the London Film School in 1974, and also holds a doctorate in history. From 1969 to 1999 she worked as a reporter and editor for Israel’s daily newspaper Ha’aretz.

Heddy Honigmann is considered one of world’s best documentary filmmakers. Her films (short & long fictions, short & long documentaries) have travelled around the world receiving major awards and important retrospectives (Toronto, the Museum of Modern Art in NY, Paris, Berlin, Lisboa, Minneapolis, Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Ontario, Utrecht, Grasz, Chicago and Berkeley, among others). She has received many lifetime achievement awards, like the Living Legend Award at IDFA (2013), the Dortmund Honorary Award for Documentary Film (2013), the Hot Docs Outstanding Achievement Award (2007), the San Francisco Films Society’s Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award (2007), the J. Van Praag Award from the Humanist Association (2005) in the Netherlands, the award for her Contribution to the Art of Documentary Filmmaking at the Thessaloniki Film Festival (2004), and the Jan Cassies Award for her whole oeuvre from the Dutch National Fund for Cultural Films for Television (2003) in the Netherlands.

Eszter Hajdú is a film director, scriptwriter and producer based in Portugal and Hungary. She regularly lectures at universities, and holds workshops and masterclasses for film students and human rights activists. Her films cover social and political taboos.

Naziha Arebi is a Libyan/British artist and filmmaker who returned to Libya during the revolution. Naziha works at the intersection of art and activism, and is co-founder of the film collective HuNa. Alongside her first feature Freedom Fields, she is currently producing the documentary feature After a Revolution, and has a fiction film in development. Naziha is a Hot Docs-Blue Ice and Sundance Lab fellow, a WEF Global Shaper and part of the Lumiere d'Afrique collective. Her artwork has been published extensively in print and exhibited globally.