Frank Calo is an independent producer and director whose film The Believer, starring Ryan Gosling and Billy Zane, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. That film won at many festivals that year, including The Berlin Film Festival. It was shown nationwide and had a great box office run. His film Here & There with Cyndi Lauper and David Thornton won the Best New York Narrative In World Competition 2009 at Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Film Festival in NYC and had its official New York premier played to audiences domestically and overseas. Calo has worked with Robert De Niro (Godsend), Demi Moore, Mike Myers, Shelly Winters, Marlon Brando, and many more. His film The Cookout, distributed by Lionsgate, with Queen Latifah also had a great box office run. He also worked for two years with The Motion Picture Bond Company under Robert Bordiga, as a producer working on films throughout the tri-state area. He was one of the few and only directors who studied privately under Mr. Elia Kazan.

Kevin Bernhardt has had more than 30 very different screenplays resulting in produced films. They range from commercial action to critically and spiritually acclaimed. In the past five years, as a writer he has had four films shot with budgets up to $30 million with casts including Michael Caine, Orlando Bloom, Michael Shannon, Christopher Plummer, and Ben Foster. In addition to those, Bernhardt’s work has resulted in films with Academy Award winners and nominees, including Donald Sutherland, John Lithgow, Nick Nolte, Sylvester Stallone, and Dennis Hopper. Other prestigious notables include Kevin Bacon, Matthew Goode, Patrick Swayze, Chris Rock, Roy Scheider, Lesley Ann Warren, Charlie Sheen, Dolph Lundgren, Peter Weller, Jennifer Beals, Tom Berenger, and Wesley Snipes. While building a career as a writer Bernhardt supported himself as an actor, with multi year contract/lead roles on General Hospital and Dynasty, followed by numerous leads in films such as Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. Most recently, he has a supporting role opposite Michael Caine and Ben Foster in Medieval, which will be released theatrically in the U.S. in September 2022. But screenwriting remains his passion. He is presently co-writing a screenplay with Academy Award winner John Cleese.

Steven Esteb is a versatile filmmaker who has worked as an actor and a Hollywood screenwriter, and director of commercials, music videos, documentaries, and features. His film Hate Crime won both Best Feature and Human Right & Dignity categories in the 2016 Tryon International Film Festival. Other films include Dirty Politics, a dark comedy starring Judd Nelson, Beau Bridges, and Howard Hesseman; and Baller Blockin, a rap film for Universal starring Lil Wayne that hit #1 on the Billboard charts in DVD and video sales eventually going quadruple platinum. Esteb has been represented by top agencies like ICM and Paradigm as a screenwriter and has worked as a script doctor, coach, and screenwriting teacher. He is currently teaching film and screenwriting at Loyola University in New Orleans. He lived and worked at an AIDS hospice for two years while making the feature length documentary Living With… A Film About Love and AIDS. It premiered at the Santa Barbara Film Festival and traveled the world, contributing to the opening of new AIDS hospices, his proudest accomplishment. Esteb studied film production in the graduate program at Boston University and has a degree in political science. He now lives in rural Louisiana, his adopted home, with his wife and two children.

Homayra Sellier is the founder of Innocence In Danger (IID), is an international child protection organization, operating in nine countries (France, United Kingdom, Colombia, Germany, Switzerland, United States of America, Austria, Iran, and Morocco). Because Sellier is multilingual — fluent in Spanish, French, English, and Farsi — she selects all films submitted to TRIFF’s Human Rights and Dignity category. She has devoted her life to human rights issues. Throughout the years, Sellier’s organization has utilized television documentaries, billboard campaigns, and other media platforms to help raise awareness on human abuse. A number of the French, Swiss, and German films and visual works that she and her offices have been involved with have been nominated for the Prix Olivier Debouzy, one of France’s most prestigious awards, and short films/spots at Cannes Film Festival. Sellier was the primary inspiration for Illegitimate Advantage, a 2016 novel written by Kirk Gollwitzer, the cofounder of TRIFF. They are now actively working together to adapt the novel into a major motion picture.