The SXSW Film & TV Festival is delighted to announce the Jurors for this year’s Narrative and Documentary Feature competitions, Shorts Programs, Music Videos, Poster Design, and XR competitions.
The Films & TV Awards will take place on Wednesday, March 13 at 7:30pm CT at the Paramount Theatre. Follow official SXSW social media channels as the 2024 winners are announced live. Following the ceremony, a complete list of winners will be posted on sxsw.com.
SXSW is an official qualifying festival for the Academy Awards® Short Film competition, as well as BAFTA nominations, and Independent Spirit Awards. Winners of our Best Animated, Best Narrative and Best Documentary Short Film categories become eligible for Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards (Oscars). Any British Short Film or Animation that screens at SXSW is eligible for BAFTA nomination. See more information on Awards eligibility.
2024 FILM & TV JURY
Narrative Feature Jury
Jake Coyle | Jake Coyle is a longtime film writer and critic for The Associated Press. He lives in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, with his wife, two daughters and dog named Wendell.
Robert Daniels | Robert Daniels is an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and regularly contributes to the New York Times, IndieWire, and Screen Daily. He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto. He has also written for the Criterion Collection, the Los Angeles Times, and Rolling Stone about Black American pop culture and issues of representation.
Joanna Robinson | Joanna Robinson is a podcaster and cultural critic for The Ringer appearing on several shows including The Ringer-Verse (covering all things fandom), Trial By Content, The Prestige TV feed, and more. Formerly a senior writer at Vanity Fair from 2014-2021, she founded and co-hosted several prestigious podcasts, including the awards season show Little Gold Men. Joanna has been profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle, IndieWire, and Recode Media as a film and television critic.
Documentary Feature Jury
Siddhant Adlakha | Siddhant is a critic and entertainment journalist from Mumbai and is currently based in New York. His work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Vulture, Guardian and Variety, and he was recently awarded Best Film Critic at the 16th National Art & Entertainment Journalism Awards. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle.
David Fear | Senior Editor + Film Critic at http://RollingStone.com. Obsessive. Compulsive. Disorderly. President of the Chishu Ryu Fan Club. NYFCC, NSFC, NSFW.
Lovia Gyarkye | Lovia Gyarkye is a critic at The Hollywood Reporter. Previously, she was an editor at The New York Times Magazine Labs and a researcher at The New York Times Book Review. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Dissent, Aperture and The Nation. She teaches in the arts and culture program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
Narrative Shorts Jury
Clementine Quittner | Clementine Quittner is Co-CEO of Small Ideas, a production company she founded in 2022 with Cooper Raiff. She most recently Executive Produced Hal & Harper, a 10-episode independent TV series, currently in post-production. Before Small Ideas, she was an executive at Black Bear Pictures, where she developed her passion for independent, artist-driven stories.
Kristian Mercado Figueroa | Kristian is a Puerto Rican filmmaker living in Spanish Harlem whose music-driven short film Palante won the SXSW Jury Award 2019. In 2021, his psychedelic reggaeton futurist short film, Nuevo Rico won the Animation Jury Award at SXSW. Kristian Mercado has rapidly become a distinguished figure in the realm of feature directing, with a dash of whimsical creativity that resonates in his narratives. His feature debut If You Were the Last premiered at SXSW in 2023.
Chris Rosati | Chris Rosati is the Vice President of Development and Production across Film & Television at Monkeypaw. Since joining in 2017, Chris has seen through development and produced the Amazon series Hunters; Weird City for Youtube Premium; The Last O.G. for TBS; and the docuseries Lorena. Chris is currently helping shepherd Monkeypaw’s new iteration of Wes Craven’s The People Under The Stairs, along with multiple television projects across animation and live action.
Documentary Shorts Jury
Loren Hammonds | Loren Hammonds is a Peabody and Emmy® Award-winning producer and curator of Film, Television, and Immersive work. A NYC native who has worked in the film & entertainment industry for over 20 years, he is currently Head of Documentary at TIME Studios. He previously held the titles of Vice President of Immersive Programming at Tribeca Enterprises and Senior Programmer at Tribeca Festival.
Christine Kecher | Christine Kecher is the Senior Commissioning Editor for Op-Docs, the New York Times' award-winning series of short documentaries from independent filmmakers. Recent Op-Docs include 2024 Oscar nominee Island in Between and Oscar-shortlisted Oasis, 2022 IDFA winners Away and Ramboy, and 2022 Oscar winner The Queen of Basketball. Previously Christine worked on the development, production and distribution of features and shorts for A&E IndieFilms.
Tina Nguyen | Tina Nguyen is the VP of Documentary Programming at HBO, and oversees the development and production of documentary feature films and series. Her projects have garnered prestigious industry awards and nominations such as the Emmys, Peabody, Spirit, Critics and IDA. Before joining HBO, she was a journalist, producer, showrunner and ran Vox Media’s content studio.
Animated Shorts Jury
Bryan Dimas | Bryan Dimas is an award-winning animation and live-action Producer, and advocate for DEI initiatives in the animation industry. He is the Line Producer, Development at Warner Bros. Animation and Cartoon Network Studios where he oversees the production of projects in development. He began his career at DreamWorks Animation where his contributed to projects that include The Boss Baby: Family Business, Trolls World Tour, and Guillermo Del Toro’s Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia.
Angeline Izquierdo | Angeline's career has been defined by her role as the creative force at Shadowmachine, an Oscar-winning animation studio. With a growing and eclectic list of creatives, she curates and directs pitch decks that bring artists', writers', and storytellers' dreams and ideas to life. Her ability to craft compelling narratives and visually stunning pitch presentations has led to successful partnerships with major streaming companies and studios.
Ivana Kvesić | Ivana Kvesić currently serves as the director of the Fantoche – International Animation Film Festival in Baden, Switzerland. With a rich background in film curation and festival management, Ivana is significantly contributing to the Swiss film landscape. Her journey includes her role as the former Co-Director of the Schweizer Jugendfilmtage, a youth film festival in Zurich, where she demonstrated her passion for fostering young talent in the industry.
Midnight Shorts Jury
Mariama Diallo | Mariama Diallo is a Brooklyn-based writer-director. Her debut feature, Master, from Amazon Studios, was released in March 2022 after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. Previous work includes the short films Hair Wolf (Sundance 2018) and White Devil (TIFF 2021) as well as Hulu's The Other Black Girl and HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness. She has been featured in Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch and Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.
Alex Kim | Alex Kim is Monkeypaw's Vice President of IP Scouting and Acquisitions. Since joining the company in 2017, Alex has been integral to building Monkeypaw’s expansive TV and feature slate, working on the development and production of Hunters, Lovecraft Country, Lorena, Weird City and The Last O.G. Most recently, Alex served as a Producer on the second season of The Twilight Zone and is currently developing and producing several unannounced projects.
Nick Romano | Nick Romano is a Creative Executive at 18Hz, Walter Hamada's horror production company with an overall deal at Paramount Pictures. He previously worked in feature film development at New Line Cinema after getting his start with two motion picture literary agents at ICM Partners. A Queens native with a life-long passion for horror, Nick has also served on short film juries for the Fantasia International Film Festival, Palm Springs International ShortsFest, and Telluride Horror Show.
Music Videos Jury
Oualid Mouaness | Oualid Mouaness is an award-winning director, writer, and producer. His work includes narrative and documentary features, music films, music videos, and commercials known to be impactful and resonant. He’s produced music videos for artists such as David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift and Rihanna, among others. His multiple award-winning feature film as director, 1982, premiered at TIFF and was Lebanon’s Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.
Kimberly Stuckwisch | Kimberly Stuckwisch is an award-winning film, commercial, theatre, and music video director and producer whose work blends magical realism with everyday life. She built a career as a vocal supporter of bold creative ideas, with her work often bringing awareness to timely social issues and breaking conventional expectations. Her works have been showcased at Cannes, Sundance, TIFF, Camerimage, SXSW, Ciclope, The Clios, Kinsale, and around the world.
Brittany Spanos | Brittany Spanos is a staff writer at Rolling Stone, where she covers music, fandom and pop culture. Her most recent cover stories featured Janelle Monae and Cardi B. Her favorite genre of music is boy band.
Texas Shorts Jury
Cat Cardenas | Cat Cardenas is an Austin-based writer and photographer, who primarily covers entertainment and Latinx culture. She’s interviewed drag queen activists, ghost hunters, and pop stars; covered festivals like SXSW and ACL, and served as Texas Monthly’s Selena correspondent. Her work has appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, Dazed, and SPIN, and been featured in New York Magazine, Variety, Vogue, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, and others.
Barak Epstein | Barak has produced feature films that include Wuss, Earthing and Cornman American Vegetable Hero that have all screened at SXSW. He also runs the legendary Texas Theatre in Dallas, co-founded the Oak Cliff Film Festival and consults with filmmakers on production equipment via Texas Film Gear.
Chelsea Hernandez | At the heart of Chelsea Hernandez’s storytelling are themes of community, representation and social justice. Named as one of Texas Monthly’s “Texas filmmakers poised to usher in a new Golden Age of Texas cinema” and DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40” class of 2021, Chelsea has directed and produced Emmy-nominated and award-winning feature and short documentaries and produced television docuseries for El Rey Network, Paramount+ and PBS.
TV Pilot Competition
Kat Candler | Kat Candler’s award-winning feature Hellion starring Aaron Paul and Juliette Lewis, played in competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Her short films Hellion and Black Metal both premiered at Sundance. Candler's work in television includes directing nine episodes of Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey's highly acclaimed Queen Sugar. She’s directed numerous episodes of 13 Reasons Why, Sorry for Your Loss starring Elizabeth Olsen, and many other popular shows.
Christine Dávila | Christina was Head of Development & Production at Ojalá and before that, Director of Development at Warner Bros’ Stage 13, developing three seasons of Two Sentence Horror Stories created by Vera Miao for the CW, and the Emmy nominated series, It’s Bruno created by Solvan Naim for Netflix. Dávila is currently producing and programming, with a decade programming films for many festivals including Sundance Film Festival and Curaçao Rotterdam.
Caroline Vanstrom | Caroline Vanstrom is the Director of Development and Production at Fifth Season. Caroline has worked at the studio for over four years and oversees several of the studio's first-look and overall deals. Prior to Fifth Season/Endeavor Content, Caroline worked as the TV Coordinator at Searchlight Television and started her career as Nancy Utley's assistant when she was the Co-Head of Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Poster Design Jury
Oliver Barrett | Oliver Barrett is a Clio-award winning artist and designer residing in Austin, Texas, primarily working in illustration and art direction with film studios, marketing agencies, and musicians on the occasional concert poster. His clients include A24, Apple, Hasbro, Nike, Playstation, and he may or may not have drawn a portrait for a snack found in gas stations across America. Oliver has also recently joined Vinyl Me Please as Creative Director.
Jenny Jacobi | Mutant CEO Jenny Jacobi brings two decades of leadership in the entertainment space with industry-defining, world-class organizations including Mondo, Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, Drafthouse Films, Valve (Steam), SXSW, Sundance, and the Telluride Film Festival. She currently serves on advisory boards for the SXSW Film Festival, Vidiots Foundation, and the Overlook Film Festival.
Kevin Tong | Kevin Tong is an acclaimed artist renowned for his intricate illustrations and captivating designs, spanning mediums from concert posters to movie art. With a unique blend of technical skill and imaginative storytelling, he has solidified his place as a prominent figure in the contemporary art scene. Tong's work has garnered widespread recognition and admiration from both art enthusiasts and industry professionals alike.
XR Jury
Jimmy Cheng | Focusing on XR distribution, representing contents from over 170 XR studios (City Lights / Atlas V / Sandman Studios / etc.), and servicing different online platforms / offline locations to find suitable distribution opportunities. Jimmy is leading the distribution conversation between Atlas V / Karman Line / Sandman Studios and different international film festivals / XR studios. From November 2018 till today, Jimmy has signed over US$ 10M as royalty fee to support the XR ecosystem.
Jacqueline Lyanga | Jacqueline Lyanga is the founder and Executive Director of Global Cinematheque and the US Delegate for the Berlin International Film Festival. As the Director of AFI FEST (2010-2018) at AFI, Lyanga launched the first LA-based festival exhibition of XR in 2014. She has also been the Artistic Director of Film Independent (2018-2020) where she produced and curated the immersive storytelling showcase THE PORTAL for two years.
Landon Zakheim | Landon Zakheim is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Overlook Film Film Festival, a four day celebration of all things horror with an expanded focus on immersive and experiential projects, held annually in New Orleans. He is the XR curator for the Denver Film Festival, a short film programmer for the Sundance Film Festival and has programmed many other festivals. He is a passionate advocate for the art of immersive storytelling and is always up for an escape room.
