Fatales Forward Showcase

Brit Fryer is a Brooklyn-based queer and trans filmmaker, originally from Chicago’s South Side. He has directed several films, including The Script (co-directed with Noah Schamus), which premiered at 2023’s CPH:DOX, and Caro Comes Out, which premiered on HBOMax after winning the Knight Made in MIA Award. His other films include Across, Beyond, and Over, and Trans·ience. In addition to his work as a director, he produced Crystal Kayiza’s Rest Stop, winner of the 2023 Short Film Jury Award for US Fiction at Sundance. He is grateful to have showcased work at Indie Grits, NewFest, BFI Flare, Inside Out, Blackstar, and more. Brit and his work have been supported by the Sundance Ignite Fellowship, Creative Culture, GLAAD, and HBO / Gotham’s Documentary Development Initiative.

Nava Mau is an award-winning filmmaker, actress, and cultural worker. Nava wrote, produced, directed, and starred in Waking Hour, a short film that screened in festivals around the world. She was selected as a Production Fellow for the Netflix documentary Disclosure, and worked as a producer on the short film Work, which premiered at Sundance. She appeared next as a series regular in the HBO Max series Generation. Nava received her BA in Linguistics & Cognitive Science from Pomona College, after studying in Paris and conducting research in Guadalajara, Mexico. For 8 years, Nava worked in the fields of healing justice and culture change with community-based service providers, student organizations, and survivors of violence. She has been awarded the NewFest Audience Award and the YoSoy Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation.

Rey Tang got her start in making short films with her friends in high school. In her senior year, she won the National Medal from Scholastic Arts and Writing. Graduating Northwestern with a degree in Radio/TV/Film, she pursued a concentration in Creative Writing for Media and Advanced Directing for the Screen. Her short films have screened in festivals such as NFMLA, Asian CineVision, CineYouth, Chicago OnScreen, and many more. In 2022, she was selected as part of the Warner Bros. Discovery Early Career Bootcamp. Later that year, she also premiered LDR Season 1 Vol. 1, a web series about queer long distance relationships that Rey wrote, starred in, and produced. Currently, she performs improv throughout Chicago and loves making portraits of people on 35mm film.

Raven Two Feathers (Cherokee, Seneca, Cayuga, Comanche) is a Two Spirit, Emmy award winning creator based in Seattle, WA. Originally from New Mexico, they spent their childhood moving and exploring Indigenous cultures across the continent and Pacific with their mother and grandmother. They returned to New Mexico to attend Santa Fe University of Art & Design, graduating magna cum laude with a BFA in Film Production. They are currently in production for their premiere feature, Indigenous Genders, an experimental Indigiqueer documentary. They grow and explore their practice through the people they meet, and the stories that guide them.

Ryan Rox is a Director, Writer, and Actor of Trans Non-Binary experience, living and working in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Besides making films, Rox also works as the Artist Support Manager at the film organization Femme Frontera, supporting marginalized Femme and Non-Binary filmmakers of color from border regions, with an emphasis on those in Las Cruces, El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico. In 2022, Rox received Femme Frontera’s annual Filmmaker Grant, with which they used the in kind support to predominantly fund Shipping Them – an autobiographical dramedy short film that explores the struggles that come with growing up queer and navigating one’s gender identity; while being raised by parents dealing with divorce, alcoholism and generational toxic masculinity. The film screened in festivals across four countries, winning Best NM Short (2022 Albuquerque Mindfield Film Festival), Best El Paso Film(2023 El Paso Media Fest), and Best Locally Made Short(2023 Santa Fe Film Festival). Their primary filmmaking focus is telling queer stories from a queer perspective, while creating jobs for LGBTQIA+ individuals, bringing awareness to our humanity, and sparking empathy in those unfamiliar with and possibly misinformed about the community.

Silvia Del Carmen Castaños is a Boston-based filmmaker and transit planner born and raised in Laredo, Texas. In 2018 Silvia’s short film Ocean won a jury prize at the Laredo International Media & Film Festival. Silvia’s debut feature film Hummingbirds is a collaborative self-portrait directed by them and Estefanía Contreras. Their work is supported by Ford Foundation JustFilms, Field of Vision, Arts2Work, Threshold Fund, Sundance Documentary Fund, SFFILM, and Chicken & Egg Pictures, among others. Silvia has represented Hummingbirds as a 2021 NBCU Original Voices Fellow, a 2021 Sundance/WIF Financing Intensive Fellow, a 2021 Points North/LEF Fellow, a 2022 BAVC MediaMaker Fellow, and a 2022-2024 Firelight Documentary Fellow. They have pitched Hummingbirds at forums including Visions du Reel Works in Progress and CMP’s Great Chicago Pitch and presented at the 2022 True/False-Catapult Rough Cut Retreat.