Sofia Alaoui

Franco-Moroccan, Sofia Alaoui grew up traveling the roads of Asia. After studies and an early career in Paris as a script reader and consultant, she directed several fiction shorts (Kenza des choux) and documentaries (Les Enfants de Naplouze).
Today, she has returned to live in Morocco, where she is currently developing her cinematic universe, with a passion for contributing to the renewal of Maghrebi cinema.
Her latest short film (No Matter If the Beasts Die) won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival 2020. She is currently preparing the shooting of a fantastical short film for 20th Century Fox and is in production on her first feature film, Among Us.

Jim Chuchu

Jim Chuchu (1982) is a filmmaker, musician, and visual artist who lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya. Jim’s photographs debuted in the exhibition "Precarious Imaging: Visibility and Media Around African Queerness" at RAW Material Company, a space for art and culture in Dakar, as part of Dak'Art 2014.
That same year, he co-founded Nest Collective, a multidisciplinary artistic collective based in Nairobi, Kenya, which creates works in film, music, fashion, visual arts, and literature, such as the critically acclaimed queer anthology film Stories of Our Lives, which was banned in Kenya for "promoting homosexuality." Despite the ongoing ban in the country, the film has so far been screened in over 80 countries and has won numerous awards, such as the Jury Prize at the Berlinale Teddy Awards 2015.
His photographic and video works have since been exhibited and screened at the MoMA, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Royal Pavilions and Museums, Guggenheim Bilbao, the Vitra Design Museum, and are now part of the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.
Jim co-founded HEVA in 2015, an East African creative enterprise fund based in Kenya that invests in the creative economy sector in the East African region. Since its inception, HEVA has invested more than $3 million in the East African creative economy, fostered innovation in region-specific financial models, created networks, exchanges, training, and opportunities for young entrepreneurs, and seeks to implement policy and legal reforms to improve the sector.
Jim is currently co-founding director of the Nest Collective - a project in partnership with the International Inventories Program, an international research and database project that has so far cataloged an inventory of 30,000 Kenyan cultural objects held in museums and public institutions worldwide – and HEVA, allowing him to reflect on intervention strategies and perspectives he accesses in his role as co-founding partner.

Kantarama Gahigiri

Kantarama Gahigiri is a Swiss-Rwandan filmmaker (writer/director). Her internationally award-winning work delves into explorations of identity, migration, sovereignty, and representation on screen, through diverse film formats shot in Switzerland and East Africa.

C.J. Obasi

C.J. Obasi, also known as "Fiery" or "The Fiery One," has written and directed feature films OJUJU and O-TOWN, both of which have been screened at numerous festivals, including the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, the Shockproof Film Festival in Prague, New Voices in Black Film Festival in New York, Göteborg Film Festival, and the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, praised by Screen Anarchy, IndieWire, and The Hollywood Reporter. He has won numerous awards and nominations, including Best Nigerian Film (OJUJU) at the African Movie Academy Awards (African Oscars) and the Trailblazer Award at the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards (AMVCA).
His short film Hello Rain is an adaptation of a short story by Nnedi Okorafor titled "Hello, Moto." The short film joined competitions at the International Short Film Festival and 30 others, including the International Fantasia Film Festival, where it won a Special Jury Mention, and the BFI London Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Short Film Award. C.J. Obasi is known for participating with the Ouest Group in Less is More (LIM), a development lab, with his feature film project Mami Wata.

Baloji

Baloji is a poet, songwriter/beatmaker, screenwriter, actor-performer, director, and stylist.