Project Horizon 2021 – Jury

CHANG Yaosheng

Born in Nantou, Taiwan, in 1975, CHANG Yaosheng is a novelist who has won many literary awards in Taiwan. He is also a screenplay writer whose work, A Sun, was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at Golden Horse Awards in 2019; the film was selected as Taiwan’s entry for the Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards. A Leg is his directorial debut, adapted from his parents’ true story. It was selected to open the 2020 Golden Horse Film Festival and nominated for four awards, including Best Leading Actress and Best Original Screenplay.

LAU Kek-Huat

LAU Kek-Huat is a Malaysian filmmaker based in Taiwan. His debut feature, Boluomi, competed at the New Currents section of Busan International Film Festival in 2019 and was nominated for Best New Director at Golden Horse Awards. The project also won the CNC Cash Award at Golden Horse Film Project Promotion in 2016 and was selected for La Fabrique 2017. His short film, Nia’s Door, won the Sonje Award at Busan in 2015 and competed at Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in 2016. Both his documentaries Absent Without Leave and The Tree Remembers still face censorship in Malaysia. He is an alumnus of Golden Horse Academy and Berlinale & Tokyo Talents.

LI Yifan

LI Yifan is an artist, documentary filmmaker, and main initiator of art projects The Society of an Individual, The 6th Ring Road Has One More Ring Than the 5th Ring Road, and The Youths From Other Provinces. His previous documentary Before the Flood (Yan Mo, co-directed with YAN Yu) won awards at major international film festivals, such as the Wolfgang Staudte Award at Berlinale Forum and the Grand Prize at Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in 2005. We Were Smart, his latest work, has become a cultural phenomenon in mainland China. His past solo exhibitions include Microscopic Narration (Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2008), Illusion Resistance: Ritual of Daily Life (Galaxy Museum of Contemporary Art, Chongqing, 2016), and The Heretical Light (Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou, 2019); all of them showcase his search for new aesthetics within transcendent aspects of reality in today’s China.

Diane QUON

Diane QUON is an Academy Award-nominated producer who worked as a marketing executive at NBC and at Paramount Pictures in LA before moving back to her hometown of Chicago. She produced the Kartemquin Films documentaries: Oscar and Emmy-nominated, Peabody award-winning film, Minding the Gap directed by Bing Liu and Finding Yingying directed by Jiayan “Jenny” Shi. She is also producing the upcoming feature documentaries: For the Left Hand; Wuhan Wuhan; Untitled Sam Project; and The Untitled 19th* News Film. In addition, she is developing a fiction film based on a New York Times best-seller, as well as Bing Liu’s first screenplay. She is an Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences member and a recipient of the 2020 Cinereach Producer Award.

Isabel SANDOVAL

Director, actress, writer, producer, and editor Isabel SANDOVAL is the Filipina filmmaker who made history at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival’s Giornate degli Autori section with the first film directed by and starring a trans woman of color ever to screen in competition. Lingua Franca is nominated for the GLAAD Outstanding Film – Limited Release and the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award. It is Ms. Sandoval’s first feature filmed in the U.S. and her third feature as director. After Venice, Lingua Franca traveled a global film festival journey into 2020 by way of AFI Fest, BFI London Film Festival, Palm Springs Film Festival, Busan International Film Festival, and Bentonville Film Festival — where it won Best Narrative Feature. Theatrical distribution, via Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY initiative, followed and the film is now available on Netflix. She is a graduate of the University of San Carlos in Cebu, Philippines and earned her MBA from NYU Stern School of Business. She currently lives in New York.