Ning Ying is a Chinese film director, screenwriter and producer. Her representative works include “Beijing Trilogy” (For Fun [1992], On the Beat [1995] and I Love Beijing [2000)]), Railroad for Hope (2002), Perpetual Motion (2005), and Police Diary (2013). These works have won many awards at film festivals at home and abroad. In 2005, she was awarded to the Order of the Star of Italy. She was also nominated by The Peace Women Across the Globe Association among 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize. She has been jury member at China Golden Rooster Film festival , and various International Film Festivals, such as Berlin, Locarno, Torino, Tokyo FilmEx, ect.

Tan Chui Mui was born in Kuantan, Malaysia in 1978. Her film Love Conquers All (2006) won the New Currents Awards and FIPRESCI International Critics’ Award at the Busan International Film Festival and won Tiger Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Also, her film Everyday Everyday (2009) won the top prize at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. She was invited to the Cannes Cinefondation Residency, and she was a mentor for many filmmaking workshops. In 2015, she initiated Next New Wave, a brand under NNW Films to design and organize filmmaking related workshop, aims to provide young film talents in Malaysia a platform to learn directly from renowned filmmakers in the region. In 2017, she started SeaShorts, a film festival that focuses on showing Southeast Asian short films. Her recent film Barbarian Invasion (2021) won the Jury Grand Prix of Golden Goblet Awards at the Shanghai International Film Festival.

Martti Helde is an award-winning writer, director and a playwright, born in Estonia. His first feature length period drama In The Crosswind (2014) received a wide resonance in international media and was awarded as the Best Estonian Film by th e Estonian Film Journalists Association (member of FIPRESCI). The same year, the film was selected for the international Toronto Film Festival, making In The Crosswind the first Estonian film included in the festival’s main programme. His film Scandinavian Silence (2019) had its European premiere in Karlovy Vary’s East of the West competition where it won the Europa Cinemas Label Award. Martti Helde is a highly valued young author for his daring ideas and innovative approach to the form and language of the film. His creative handwriting is characterized by tying together complex and diverse mediums; as well as Helde’s passion to play with the dramaturgy and form – attributes that are vividly demonstrated in all of his works. Helde has worked as creative director for museums and exhibitions among them World Expo 2021 in Dubai where he curated the Estonian pavilion.