Jury President | Ryan Krivoshey
Ryan Krivoshey is the Founder & President of Grasshopper Film, a distribution company dedicated to the release of acclaimed and award-winning independent cinema. Launched in 2015, the company features a library of over 250 titles, including Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary, Last Men in Aleppo, as well as films from Hong Sangsoo, Bi Gan, Bertrand Bonello, Claire Denis, Asghar Farhadi, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Matthew Barney, and Pedro Costa. Previously, Ryan led the Cinema Guild as its Director of Distribution for thirteen years. He is also co-founder/executive producer at Grasshopper Production Company.
Jury Member | LU Qingyi
The director Lu Qingyi was born in a multiethnic town. He lived on a mountain in the southern part of Guizhou. At 15 years old, he left his hometown due to teenage rebellion. After that, he did oily painting, became an athlete, and took up various kinds of occupations. And now he is an independent documentary producer.
His famous work, Four Springs (2017), was awarded Best Documentary of the 12th FIRST Film Festival, nominated as the Documentary of the Year of 13th Chinese Young Generation Film Forum, the Best Documentary and Best Film Editing of the 55th Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards.
Jury Member | Patrick Wang
Patrick Wang (王沛智) is a Taiwanese American director from Texas. He is the author of the books The Monologue Plays, Post Script, and Four Shooting Scripts. His first film In the Family was hailed “an indie masterpiece” by Roger Ebert. His second film, The Grief of Others, premiered to critical acclaim at SXSW and Cannes. His films A Bread Factory (Parts One and Two) were nominated for two Independent Spirit awards. He was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine, and the New York Times remarked, “This is a career to keep an eye on.”
Jury Member | Simon Liu
Simon Liu is from Hong Kong and now lives in Brooklyn, USA. Liu’s films and 16mm projection performances have been presented at film festivals and institutions globally including the New York, Toronto, Rotterdam, London, Hong Kong and Edinburgh International Film Festivals in addition to the Sundance Film Festival, M+ Museum, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Parrish Art Museum, and “Dreamlands: Expanded” with the Whitney Museum of American Art & Microscope Gallery. Liu is a 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and a recipient of the NYSCA / Wave Farm Media Arts Assistance Fund in 2018. He is an Adjunct Instructor at the Cooper Union School of Art and a member Negativeland, an artist-run film lab in Brooklyn. Liu is currently in post-production on his first feature film, Staffordshire Hoard.
Jury Member | Jun Li
His short film My World was nominated for the Best Short Feature at the 55th Golden Horse Award, and Liu Yang He won the Best Film Award and Best Director Award at the 11th Freshwave Short Film Competition. His directorial feature debut, Tracey, premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival and won the Best Supporting Actor at the 55th Golden Horse Award, and both Best Supporting Actor and Actress at the 38th Hong Kong Film Awards. Li himself was nominated for Best Screenplay and Best New Director. His second feature Drifting will be completed in 2020.
Jury Member | LIAO Xi
Liao Xi is a director, producer, screenwriter, and actor from Chengdu, Sichuan Province. He graduated from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Southwest China Normal University, and later dropped out of the MA program in International Political Economy, University of Birmingham. As a poet, Liao Xi is the primary initiator who gave name to Chinese “Third Generation Poetry.” As a director, his film Defenders (2017) was nominated in several film festivals such as Shanghai International Film Festival, Macau International Movie Festival, and so on. As a producer, he establishes long-term cooperation with directors like Zhang Ming and Sonthar Gyal. He helped produce and create many Mainland China and Hong Kong film projects, which won many important worldwide awards. The Pluto Moment (2018) was selected in Directors’ Fortnight of the 71st Cannes Film Festival. Ala Changso (2018) was awarded Jury Grand Prix and shortlist for Award for Best Feature Film of the 21st Shanghai International Film Festival. And Lhamo and Skalbe (2019) was on the shortlist of Official Selection of the 67th San Sebastian International Film Festival.
Jury Member | A Mei
A Mei is a Chinese screenwriter, novalist, and a former professional in media. She has published a novel collection The Endless Night of Beijing, and is the screenwriter of films including Knitting, Under the Hawthorn Tree, The Law of Attraction, A Wedding Invitation, Bitter Flowers, and So Long My Son.