From Script to Screen

Josephine Decker is a filmmaker and performer exploring women’s interiority, often blurring imagination and reality. Her feature Madeline’s Madeline, created through a devised process with ten actors, screened at Sundance and Berlinale, earned Gotham and Independent Spirit Award nominations, and was praised as a “mind-scrambling masterpiece” (IndieWire). Her feature Shirley (starring Elisabeth Moss) won Sundance’s U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Auteur Filmmaking, and The Sky Is Everywhere (A24/Apple) was a New York Times Critics Pick; her first two features premiered together at Berlinale 2014. She performs with an L.A. clown ensemble led by Amrita Dhaliwal. Since 2022, she has been making a documentary with teen mothers in Dallas, who improvise, write, and act in short films that form the doc’s backbone. Her dream is to play accordion in your backyard while your friends fish or sing.

Liz Sargent is a Korean-American adoptee and award-winning filmmaker whose work delves into adoption, disability, and family dynamics. With a background in choreography, she brings emotional depth to her storytelling, shaped by her experience as the middle child of eleven in an intersectional family. A two-time NY EMMY winner (2020 & 2021), Liz is also a HALF Initiative Mentee (2022 & 2023), an MSSNG PCES AICP Mentee (2023), and NBCU’s Launch Director (2024-2026). Her debut narrative short, Strangers’ Reunion, (2019), was a personal adoptee film produced by Ritz- Carlton and Hearst under the mentorship of Mike Figgis, released in six languages worldwide. Her proof of concept, Take Me Home, premiered at Sundance (2023), won the Grand Jury Prize at American Cinematheque’s PROOF FF (2024), and was the centerpiece at the White House to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Olmstead Act, where Liz and her sister, the film’s star, shared their stories with key officials.

NB Mager is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker who makes high-concept stories about the things that keep her up at night. She was recently named one of Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch for 2026.Her first feature, RUN AMOK, starring Patrick Wilson, Margaret Cho, Elizabeth Marvel, Molly Ringwald, Yul Vasques, Bill Camp, and newcomer Alyssa Marvin, recently completed production. Other works include the award-winning, Oscar-qualifying short film, RUN AMOK (on which the feature is based), which premiered as a Vimeo Staff Pick. Her web anthology series, QUARANTINE, I LOVE YOU took part in the Beyond Film program of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and starred Ali Wentworth, Denis O’Hare, Michael Chernus, Maria Dizzia, and Jay O. Sanders, among others. The screenplay for RUN AMOK was a quarterfinalist for the Academy Nicholl and FinalDraft Big Break prizes. Her short films have screened and garnered awards at film festivals across the country, as well as Gotham Film Week, and have won awards from the National Board of Review and New York Women in Film and Television. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and Panavision. NB also directed a short documentary film on Gloria Steinem, for which she interviewed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Formerly an actor, NB trained at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and at Rutgers University. She brings her passion and respect for the craft of acting to her work as a writer-director.

Imani Davis is film programmer at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles, and also a producer and writer. At the American Cinematheque, a 501c3 nonprofit boasting over 1,600 film screenings a year, Imani has worked to put on events with A-list filmmakers and talent such as Sofia Coppola, Spike Lee, Sean Baker, Jordan Peele, Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), Damien Chazelle, Christopher Nolan, and many more. Imani is also the founder and lead programmer of the American Cinematheque’s newest short film festival called PROOF, which is the only festival completely dedicated to proof-of-concept short films.