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Talkhouse

New York-based Jessica Kingdon is a Chinese-American director-producer whose debut feature, <a href="https://ascensiondocumentary.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ascension</a>, a striking observational portrait of the “New China” which is nominated for six Critics Choice Documentary Awards and the Gotham Award for Best Documentary, is now streaming on Paramount+. She was named one of “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker magazine and selected for the 2020 DOC NYC “40 Under 40” list. Her shorts include the award-winning Commodity City (2017), It&#8217;s Coming! (2020), and Routine Island (2019), and her producer credits include Tania Cypriano’s Born to Be (2019), Ian Bell’s 808: How We Respond (2019), Nathan Truesdell’s The Water Slide (2018), and Johnny Ma’s Old Stone (2016). She is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective. (Photo by Tomo Saito.)

Jessica Kingdon

Film

Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie, Or How I Found My Family in China

Mattson Tomlin was born in Romania during its revolution and was quickly adopted into the U.S. After receiving his master&#8217;s in directing from the American Film Institute, he began a career in screenwriting and has appeared on the annual Black List six times. Some of his other projects include Project Power (Netflix, directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman), Fear Agent (Sony Television, directed by David Sandberg) and Little Fish (directed by Chad Hartigan), and The Batman (Warner Bros/DC Comics, co-written with director Matt Reeves). His first film as director, Mother/Android, starring Chlo&euml; Grace Moretz, Algee Smith and Ra&uacute;l Castillo, is out December 17 on Hulu. (Photo by Henry Joost.)

Mattson Tomlin

Best of 2021: Mattson Tomlin on The Green Knight

Actress, writer and director Sarah Wayne Callies became known to audiences for her portrayal of Sara Tancredi in Prison Break and followed that up with the even bigger hit, The Walking Dead. She then starred opposite Josh Holloway in the series Colony and most recently was seen in the NBC series Council of Dads. Sarah has taken the leap into directing with an episode of the limited series Unspeakable as well as an episode of the final season of Colony. As a writer, Sarah has several screenplays in development with various motion picture entities. As a film actress, Sarah has appeared in Giancarlo Esposito’s This is Your Death opposite Josh Duhamel and Famke Janssen, Pay the Ghost with Nicolas Cage, and Black November opposite Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger. Continuing her passion for storytelling, Sarah is a producer and the voice of the new science-fiction post-apocalyptic podcast <a href="https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-aftershock-83996090/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Aftershock</a>. (Photo by Nicolas Gerardin.)

Sarah Wayne Callies

I Love Difficult Women

Bryan Wizemann is an independent writer, producer, director and editor of film based in Brooklyn, NY. <a href="http://www.factorytwentyfive.com/you-mean-everything-to-me/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">You Mean Everything to Me</a>, his fourth feature film, stars Morgan Saylor, Ben Rosenfield and Lindsay Burge and is out December 17 through Factory 25. He previously wrote and directed About Sunny, starring Lauren Ambrose, Dylan Baker, and Penelope Ann Miller, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead, and was distributed by Oscilloscope. His feature Losing Ground was adapted from his critically acclaimed New York stage play and features the original cast. It premiered at Cinequest with distribution by FilmBuff. His first film, the experimental 16mm feature Sense, starring Maria Dizzia, was programmed at the Johnson Museum of Art and the Angelika Film Centre. (Image by Jeff Vespa, used with permission.)

Bryan Wizemann

The Long Shadow of Las Vegas

Molly C. Quinn is an actress and producer living in Los Angeles. Molly stars in the new horror/drama <a href="http://www.magnetreleasing.com/agnes/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Agnes</a>, which premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, and is out now through Magnet Releasing. Aside from starring in the film, Molly also executive produced the film through her production company QWGMIRE, which she formed in 2019 with Elan Gale and Matthew Welty. Molly may be best known for starring as Alexis Castle from 2009 to 2016 on the award-winning series Castle, opposite Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic, and she recently appeared in Doctor Sleep, opposite Ewan McGregor and Rebecca Ferguson. Molly currently lives in the LA area, with her fiancé and their two dogs; Piper and Pikachu. (Photo by the Riker Brothers.)

Molly C. Quinn

Best of 2021: Molly C. Quinn on The White Lotus

Maya Cozier’s debut feature, <a href="http://www.samuelgoldwynfilms.com/she-paradise/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">She Paradise</a>, is out now through Samuel Goldwyn Films. Cozier was raised by artist parents — Irenée Shaw and Christopher Cozier — in the Caribbean twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago. She gained years of experience working as a dancer/choreographer for music videos and television shows (on her own and as part of a champion hip-hop crew that represented the island at the World Hip-Hop Dance Championships). At age 18, Maya had her first international gig when Nicki Minaj flew to Trinidad with Hype Williams to direct the “Pound the Alarm” music video. It was on set as a background model that she became fascinated with the process of filmmaking. After being awarded a national academic scholarship, she enrolled at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, to pursue a degree in film. Her first short film was about a childhood friend, Shan, a limbo dancer, touring the United States with a Circus. Her thesis film, Short Drop, a story in which a recently widowed retiree’s car is mistaken for an illegal taxi bringing together unlikely individuals in Port of Spain, won the NYWIFT student award and has shown at over 20 film festivals worldwide winning best Caribbean short film at Curacao film festival and best short film at Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival.

Maya Cozier

How Entering a Beauty Pageant Helped Me Make My Debut Feature

Joel Cohen, John Frink and Rob LaZebnik are the writers and producers of the animated comedy <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81159137" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Extinct</a>, featuring the voices of Adam DeVine, Rachel Bloom, Zazie Beetz, Ken Jeong, Reggie Watts and Catherine O&#8217;Hara, which is currently streaming on Netflix. Together they have their own production company, Tolerable Entertainment. The trio has worked together as writer-producers on The Simpson for the past 20 years, winning a number of Emmys in the process. They live in Los Angeles.

Joel Cohen, John Frink and Rob LaZebnik

There Is No “I” in Collaboration

Mireille Enos can currently be seen in the third season of Amazon Prime’s action-thriller series, Hanna, opposite Esmé Creed-Miles, Dermot Mulroney and Ray Liotta. She is best known for her role opposite Brad Pitt in World War Z and for her acclaimed role as Detective Sarah Linden on The Killing. Her other TV credits include Good Omens, opposite Jon Hamm, Michael Sheen and David Tennant, Shonda Rhimes’ The Catch, and HBO’s Big Love, in which she played the breakthrough double role of twins JoDean and Kathy Marquart. Her film work includes the Blumhouse-produced The Lie, opposite Peter Sarsgaard and Joey King, Gangster Squad opposite Josh Brolin, the thriller Never Here, opposite the late Sam Shepard, and Atom Egoyan’s The Captive, starring Ryan Reynolds. She was Tony nominated for her role in the Broadway revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, opposite Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Mireille Enos

Three Great Things: Mireille Enos

Isidore Bethel has taught preteens through UC Santa Cruz’s Stone Soup filmmaking workshop, undergraduate and graduate students at Sarah Lawrence College and Parsons Paris, and older filmmakers at La Fémis and UnionDocs. He has edited and produced seven features, including <a href="https://solatesosoon.oscilloscope.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">So Late So Soon</a>(which opens in New York on December 9), and directed two, Liam and Acts of Love.

Isidore Bethel

Play is a Very Serious Thing

Albert Birney is a Baltimore-based filmmaker. He has directed four feature films, The Beast Pageant (co-directed with Jon Moses), Sylvio and Strawberry Mansion (both co-directed with <a href="http://www.kentuckeraudley.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kentucker Audley</a>), and Tux and Fanny. Sylvio was named one of the 10 best films of 2017 by <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2017-in-review/the-best-movies-of-2017" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The New Yorker</a>. He recently finished making a Tux and Fanny <a href="https://abirney.com/Tux-and-Fanny-Video-Game" target="_blank" rel="noopener">video game</a> with <a href="http://gabrielkoenig.com/ghosttime/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gabriel Koenig</a>, which is now available from the Nintendo store and itch.io. He is currently animating part two of <a href="https://www.instagram.com/tux_and_fanny/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tux and Fanny</a>.

Albert Birney

Dr. Mario or: How I Learned to Love Video Games Again and Accidentally Made One

Michael M. Bilandic is a New York-based filmmaker. His first feature, Happy Life, was called the &#8220;poor schlub&#8217;s High Fidelity&#8221; by Variety. His latest film, <a href="https://www.roxycinematribeca.com/blog/micheal-m-bilandic-retrospective-at-roxy-cinema-and-premiere-of-new-film-project-space-13/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Project Space 13</a>, opens on December 3 at The Roxy.

Michael M. Bilandic

reRunning Happy Life

Ryan Spahn is an actor, filmmaker and writer. He has been published by Rotten Tomatoes, Metro Weekly, USA Today, IntoMore, and American Theatre Magazine. As an actor, he can be seen in American Horror Story, Succession, The Bite, Chicago P.D., and Modern Love. Ryan is a graduate of Juilliard and is based in New York City. Go <a href="https://linktr.ee/RyanSpahn" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a> for more info.