Transcendent Futures

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.

Chase Joynt is a non-fiction filmmaker and writer who works at the edges of genre. His documentary feature, Framing Agnes, was named a Best Movie of the Year by The New Yorker after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival where it won the NEXT Innovator Award and the NEXT Audience Award. The film has played more than 100 festivals internationally and is distributed by Kino Lorber. With Aisling Chin-Yee, Chase co-directed No Ordinary Man, which was presented at Cannes Docs as part of the Canadian Showcase of Docs-in-Progress. Since premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, No Ordinary Man has been hailed by The New Yorker as “a genre unto itself” and Indiewire as “the future of trans cinema.” The film has won 9 awards on the international festival circuit, including being named to TIFF Canada’s Top Ten. For the CW, Chase directed episodes of Two Sentence Horror Stories which are now streaming on Netflix; his episode Elliot from Season 2 won a Telly Award for directing in 2022. He is the co-author of two non-fiction books: the Lambda Literary Award Finalist You Only Live Twice with Mike Hoolboom and Boys Don’t Cry with Morgan M Page. At present, Chase is in post production on The Nest, a feature documentary made in collaboration with Julietta Singh, and his next book Vantage Points is forthcoming in Fall 2024 from Arsenal Pulp Press. With Samantha Curley, he runs Level Ground Productions in Los Angeles.

Nyala Moon is a graduate of City College with an MFA in film production. Nyala was also a 2020-2021 QueerArt Film fellow, a TV writing fellow for Hillman Grad, and a Film Fatales director fellow. Nyala’s latest film, “How Not To Date While Trans,” has won audience and best short film awards at Inside Out Toronto’s LBGT Film Festival, Wicked Queer Boston’s LGBT Film Festival, Translation Seattle’s 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival, and NewFest 22. In June 2022, Nyala was selected as a 2022 NewFest/Netflix New Voices Filmmaker Grant winner. Her film, “How Not To Date While Trans,” was selected for distribution through Frameline’s New Voices program. Her latest short film, Dilating For Maximum Results, won the Grand Jury Prize for Outstanding US short at OutFest and Newfest. Filmmaker Magazine named Nyala one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film 2023. Nyala was selected to be a part of the Whitney Museum Biennial 2024.

Abygai Peña is a queer, non-binary Latinx filmmaker who works with traditional filmmaking techniques while telling new queer stories.