NuWave

Nimco Sheikhaden is a Bronx-based filmmaker. Most recently, Nimco directed Exodus, a documentary chronicling the journey of two women returning to their families and communities following decades of incarceration, executive produced by Geeta Gandbhir, Blair Foster, and Rudy Valdez, which premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival and is nominated for a Critics Choice Documentary Award. She produced a six-part documentary series as a followup to the landmark series Eyes on the Prize for HBO which spotlights the ongoing struggle for civil rights in America, premiering in early 2025. She produced an additional HBO series entitled Black and Missing executive produced by Soledad O’Brien that won a Cinema Eye Honors Award for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Series, the NAACP Image Award, as well as the Television Academy Honors Award, and an Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Series. Nimco directed and produced the Lincoln Center-commissioned short film, profiling award-winning poet and artist Carl Hancock Rux for an experiential, site-specific event celebrating the Juneteenth emancipation holiday. Nimco has been working in documentary film extensively on projects that she hopes will help spark critical conversations. Her work spans major platforms such as HBO, Netflix, Hulu, A&E, and Peacock. Throughout her career, she has worked with acclaimed filmmakers ranging from Sam Pollard, Geeta Gandbhir, and Alex Gibney. Currently, Nimco is directing a short film entitled Mama Fela, executive produced by Shaka King.

Nazila Ahmadi is an Afghan filmmaker, actor, and performance artist with over 15 years of experience in film, theatre, and performance art. Born during her family’s flight from Afghanistan, she grew up navigating life as a refugee in Iran and the United States, experiences that deeply inform her art. She has directed several short documentaries, including Close (on the lives of women in Bandar Abbas and Hormuz Island, screened at WOMEN LIFE FREEDOM Film Festival and UC San Diego) and Shomad (about Afghan child laborers), and created performance pieces in Italy and the U.S., such as Zan. Zendegi. Azadi. / Woman, Life, Freedom.As an actress, she has appeared in films and plays addressing social issues, including Tara (aired on BBC Persian), Medea in Kandahar, and award-winning experimental films such as Flatland. Her first feature-length autobiographical documentary, Kochkashi, is in development and has been selected for Close-Up Initiative (Belgium), DMZ Docs Fund (South Korea), and Kundura DocLab (Turkey).In addition to her creative work, Nazila is an advocate for social change, teaching filmmaking to young women through Women’s Voices Now and documenting refugee experiences as a journalist. Her work seeks to amplify marginalized voices, challenge societal norms, and inspire resilience and empowerment. Her work reflects her journey as an Afghan woman navigating displacement, identity, and resilience, striving to create art that empowers and inspires social change. Her films and performances have been recognized internationally, highlighting the resilience of marginalized communities and exploring themes of identity, belonging, and women’s empowerment. She continues to create art that gives voice to the unheard and inspires change across communities worldwide.Her journey continues to inspire and empower...

Ava Davis is a Sundance Fellow ('21, Trans Possibilities Intensive) and is also known as the Duchess of Grant Park. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her partner, and has appeared on stage in New York City (Pride50) and Atlanta (Alice in Wonderland, Peril, The Odd Couple). She has also appeared in films (Give Me an A, Could This Have Been An Email, The Duchess of Grant Park). She is also an advocate for increasing trans and queer representation, especially that of black and other minorities. She founded her production company, Studio Vosges, in 2019 with the expressed purpose of telling the stories of queer and trans (GSM) black, brown, and beige people. She hosts the talk show, The Ava Davis Show, on you42.com. She has acted in, written, and produced several short films, including Feast, The Decision, and the upcoming experimental horror short, Torn Together. She also created, produced, and acted in the short film The Duchess of Grant Park, about a trans woman who claims the Grant Park neighborhood of Atlanta as her duchy. With her production company, Davis recently signed a deal for this short film to screen and stream on Atlanta's PBS affiliate WABE for the next two years. She is currently working to produce and secure financing for her first feature film, The Waltz, about a single young trans woman who teams up with a reluctant dance partner to pursue her dream of learning the waltz.

Brit Fryer is an artist and filmmaker from Chicago's South Side, currently based in Brooklyn, NY, whose unique approach to nonfiction storytelling centers on gender and queerness through process-forward and collaborative methods. His most recent film, THE SCRIPT, co-directed with Noah Schamus, unpacks the boundaries of language and the role of performance in shaping an expansive and gender-expansive healthcare system. The film was shortlisted for the 2023 IDA Awards and won the Creative Activism Award at the 2024 SIMA Awards. It is distributed on The Criterion Channel and The New Yorker.He is also the director of CARO COMES OUT, which premiered on HBO Max after winning the Knight Made in MIA Award at the Miami International Film Festival. His other films include ACROSS, BEYOND AND OVER and TRANS·IENCE.His films have been screened in theatres and festivals internationally, including Blackstar, CPH: DOX, Newfest, and MIX NYC. He has received generous support from Sundance, the Gotham, and Points North.

Ley Comas is an Afro-Latinx Trans non-binary filmmaker. They were born in Costa Rica and raised in the Dominican Republic. After coming to US in 2013, they received their Associate’s degree in Video Arts and Technology from Burrough of Manhattan Community College in 2015. Ley obtained their Bachelor’s degree in Cinema and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies from Binghamton University in 2017. They received their Master’s degree in Documentary Filmmaking from The City College of New York, Spring 2020. Ley is a production sound mixer by trade. Their work as a production sound mixer has been included in several film festivals and major streaming platforms. As a non-binary filmmaker of trans experiece, Ley’s work is grounded in collaborating on and creating films that highlight and empower the narratives of underrepresented and erased identities. Ley currently lives in the Bronx; they enjoy bike riding, cooking, and spending time with their cat.

Mary Evangelista is a filmmaker born in the Philippines and raised in California’s Bay Area. Mary received an MFA from NYU Tisch for Writing and Directing. Their short film, Fran This Summer, is an LGBTQ summer love story that has screened in over 30 festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival. Mary co-created Water Melts, a Tribeca Film Institute and Google-supported VR rom-com which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and screened at Rotterdam International Film Festival. Mary was a Project Involve Fellow with Film Independent where they directed the short La Gloria. Mary’s debut feature film, Burning Well, received a 2020 Tribeca All Access grant.

Rey Tang is a Chicago-based writer, photographer, filmmaker, and performer. She believes that, through an intersectional understanding of media, she can one day achieve her dream of writing for television. Rey 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. Likewise, 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. In 2023, her feature in development Back to Sixteen was selected as part of Femme Fatales fellowship Fatales Forward. Currently, she performs improv as part of Stir Friday Night and loves making portraits of people on 35mm film. No stranger to the hustle, Rey is excited to strike out on her own and work with other like-minded passionate creatives. She’s especially excited about work that is related to trans*, queer, and POC narratives. It’s her dream to one day tell stories that honor the communities she’s a part of.

Sepand "Sepi" Mashiahof is a second generation Iranian-American immigrant and trans-femme filmmaker, screenwriter, and musician. She holds a BA in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she wrote her senior thesis on Horror Film, using a feminist lens to explore the queer signifiers of canonized monsters throughout film history. After graduating, she moved to Oakland, CA where she cultivated relationships with the queer underground arts community through her work as Executive Director at Bay Area Girls Rock Camp, host of the cult Scream Queens Radio program, and member of industrial no wave band SBSM. These connections allowed her to pursue her passions as a filmmaker, where she directed a plethora of music videos before making her short film debut with Love You Forever, a psychological arthouse horror film which she wrote, directed, acted in, and composed the soundtrack for. Currently, Sepand is keeping a nest of nine feature screenplays warm while pursuing relationships with producers who love horror films and want to see queer/trans stories through them. As part of her own empowerment journey, she utilizes genre storytelling to create worlds of nuance in which trans protagonists can experience their arcs without the pressure of cissexist expectations.

Paige Henderson is a queer director, writer, producer and actor based out of LA and New York. Her experience as Production Designer (THANK YOU COME AGAIN, ENTITLED) and award-winning actor (DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS, EAGLE ROCK) brings a unique perspective to her directorial work, mixing playful visuals with raw vulnerability. Her debut short RUN OUT GROOVE premiered at Outfest Film Festival and featured a 100% queer women and non-binary cast/crew. She is co-founder of Svelte Dog Productions, a production company dedicated to pushing the boundaries of genre and advancing representation in the film industry. Their films have screened at Film Independent’s Undocumented Filmmaker’s Showcase, HollyShorts Film Festival, FilmQuest and more. Paige is Fundraising Chair for Film Fatales, a non-profit dedicated to achieving gender parity in film and holds a B.A. in Cinema Studies from the University of Washington.

Nicole Murray is a queer producer, writer and actor currently based in Los Angeles, California. She has produced and acted in various productions including feature film, TIM TRAVERS AND THE TIME TRAVELER’S PARADOX, where she acted alongside Felicia Day and Danny Trejo, feature film DEATH PERCEPTION and award-winning short, ENTITLED. She is co-founder of Svelte Dog Productions, who’s short RUN OUT GROOVE premiered in the Platinum Showcase at Outfest and consisted of a team of all queer and marginalized gendered cast and crew. Nicole’s most recent film, 3 EASY STEPS consisted of an entirely woman and non-binary cast and crew. Nicole is an avid supporter of greater representation in film and volunteers for Film Fatales, a non-profit that advocates for film parity. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Washington, with years of research experience in the addiction and individual differences fields.

Kyle Casey Chu (AKA Panda Dulce) is a Filmmaker, Author and a founding queen of Drag Story Hour. She is currently a 2024-2025 FilmHouse Resident at SFFILM.In 2022, far-right extremists stormed her reading in San Lorenzo, making global headlines. Based on the incident, her short screenplay, "After What Happened at the Library" won WeScreenplay, Titan Awards and SF Indie's Short Screenplay Competitions. With support from Sundance, SFFILM, Talon Entertainment, the SF Arts Commission and Skywalker Sound, the screenplay was produced and will premiere at Florida Film Festival and SF International Film Festival in April 2025.  This short is a proof-of-concept for her debut narrative feature film. The script is in an advanced draft and was workshopped at Sundance’s Trans Possibilities Intensive, Lambda Literary’s Writers Retreat and Film Fatales. Kyle's debut novel, "The Queen Bees of Tybee County" (HarperCollins, 2025), was recently optioned by Lambur Productions into a UK TV show.

Roberto Fatal [they/them/ellos] is a Meztize Chicana filmmaker and storyteller. They come from Rarámuri, Genízaro, and Spanish ancestry. Their Queer, gender fluid, Mestize/Mixed identity informs the sci-fi, films they make. Their work centers on humans who sit at the intersections of time, space and culture. From this unique vantage point, these characters can bridge divides, see all sides, find new paths forward and recall multiple histories long forgotten. The mixed people of Fatal’s stories can connect us deeply to an undercurrent of humanity that we often overlook in a world that is increasingly divided. Survival, intersectional identity, perseverance, love, empathy, community, connection and creation are at the heart of their characters and films. Fatal is a Sundance Film Institute Native Film Lab Fellow Alum and an Imagine Native Director's Lab feature film fellow alum. Their debut feature script, ELECTRIC HOMIES, was awarded the 2023 SFFILM Rainin Screenwriting Grant and the 2025 Sundance Institute screenwriters lab fellowship. their newest short film, EN MEMORIA, was selected to screen in competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival Shorts film program.