FUSION FILM FESTIVAL

WITH

FUSION'S WOMAN OF THE YEAR

ANA FABREGA

Writer, Director & Actor, Los Espookys

• 2023 SCHEDULE
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• AWARD LISTING

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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12 • 12PM ET

Fusion Industry Visionary Award Luncheon

Honoring Commissioner Anne del Castillo

Honoring Anne del Castillo for her work as the Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.Dean Allyson Green will present del Castillo with Fusion’s inaugural Industry Visionary Award.(Event by invitation only)

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THURSDAY, APRIL 13 • 6:30PM ET

Sex on the Screen: Representing Female Sexuality & Pleasure

Panel Conversation

Tisch Theater 006, 721 Broadway

A conversation about the representation of female sexuality and desire in new media, with topics ranging from the gender politics of intimate scenes to the ethics of porn.

Eventbrite | NYU Engage

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FRIDAY, APRIL 14 • 3PM ET

Docs in the Works

Pitch Competition

Tisch Theater 006, 721 Broadway

Documentary filmmakers pitch their works-in-progress docs to a panel of top industry executives.

Eventbrite | NYU Engage

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FRIDAY, APRIL 14 • 6:30PM ET

POLITE SOCIETY Screening

Q&A with Director Nida Manzoor

Tisch Theater 006, 721 Broadway

Screening of Manzoor’s debut feature which premiered at 2023 Sundance Film Festival.This boisterous and original film follows a British Pakistani teenager (and aspiring stuntwoman) who attempts to save her older sister from a semi-arranged marriage by performing an elaborate heist.

Eventbrite | NYU Engage

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SATURDAY, APRIL 15 • 12PM ET

Opinionated: Critiquing & Analyzing Media

Panel Conversation

Tisch Theater 006, 721 Broadway

A conversation with critics across literary publications regarding the responsibility of film and television criticism.

Eventbrite | NYU Engage

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SATURDAY, APRIL 15 • 2:30PM ET

WOMAN OF THE YEAR: Ana Fabrega

Screening and Masterclass

Tisch Theater 006, 721 Broadway

Screening of LOS ESPOOKYS, followed by a conversation with Fusion 2023 Woman of the Year.

Eventbrite | NYU Engage

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SATURDAY, APRIL 15 • 6:00PM ET

Finalist Screening and Award Ceremony

Tisch Theater 006, 721 Broadway

Showcase of the finalists in Fusion Film Festival’s 2023 Competition.

Eventbrite | NYU Engage

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Alumni Relations
Fengyi Wang
Hanna Dzaferovic
Eurus MengDesign
Abigail Sun
Claire EnglebienneEditorial
Andrea Nguyen
Tenzing Kai Pixley
Illia Solano
Clara Collins
Carly Burton
Avery HendrickFinance
Avani MoreMarketing
Karen Chan
Chinaza Ajuonuma
Solange Sai

Photo/Video
Adriana Guevara
Jill Verity
Marlie Adamas
Lily Burris
Jordan Winick
Camden Colquhoun
Ally DuaPodcast
Alora Lindsey
Riley Foster
Esther Liu
Isabella LaPlant
Margeaux McCaughey
Carly Lin
Anika BrownProduction Management
Sneha Iyyapillai
Hannah Sperling
Anjali Moorthy
Chloe Rose
Angela Ananya Ramkumar
Alyssa Cross

Programming
Aysu Tziahanas
Alexandra Hillstrom
Farah Qureshi
Rachel SchultzSponsorship
Michelle Andia
Lulu Chen
Tess YanSubmissions
Jesmyn Ji
Lavender Liu
Grace Conley
Caroline Gulledge
Ava CarrascoTech Advisement
Sydney Crawford
Sara Smith

The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment Congratulates Commissioner Anne del Castillo, the recipient of the inaugural Industry Visionary Award at the 21st Fusion Film Festival!

INDUSTRY JUDGES

Ainka Shackleford Turner
Ali Brown
Elizabeth Cuthrell
John Canemaker
Lawrence Mattis
Leah Holzer
Matt Dartnell
Susan Margolin

ALUMNI JUDGES

Adriana Rios
Alicia Louzoun-Heisler
Allison Cavanaugh
Amelia Xanthe Boscov
Andrew Scott
Annalee Walton
Audrey Leach
Ben Eisen
Brittany H. Santiago
Carolina Diz
Chloe Jury-Fogel
Denise Zhou
Dircelene Torres
Dylan Gee
Elizabeth Vrkljan
Elle Rinaldi
Emily Harrold
Emory Parker
Gabriela Alcalde
Gabriella Moses
George Itzhak
Jori Johnson
Julia Blauvelt
Jyotsna Hariharan
Katelyn Rebelo
Katie Ajemian
Kayla Arend
Leticia Bianco
Lucie Pottecher
Marley Jean Fernandes
Natalia Bougadellis
Piera Van de Wiel
Priya Khanolkar
Shaye Davis
Symphony Blue
Tair Shachar
Vanessa Benton
Yuan Yuan

FACULTY JUDGES

Alice Elliot
DB Gilles
David Bagnall
Dean Lennert
Ian Harnarine
Molly Rydzel
Paloma Veinstein
Phil McNagny
Ronnie Kay
Saba Riazi
Susan Sandler
Sylvia Sichel
Tzipi Trope
Zoya Baker

Anne del Castillo

Anne del Castillo has more than 25 years of experience in film production, public media, arts and nonprofit administration. As Commissioner of the NYC Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME), she oversees the city’s investments in the creative economy. Serving under two administrations, del Castillo has launched numerous initiatives, including the creation of the NYC Film and Television Production Industry and Game Development Industry councils, the first-ever bachelor’s program in digital game design at City College, the Freelancers Hub at Industry City, a new Press Credentials Office, and the expansion of “Made in NY” workforce training and educational programs. She received the New York State Senate Woman of Distinction Award for her work in leading the recovery of the creative economy during the pandemic, and she has been recognized in Variety's "New York Women's Impact Report," City & State's "Power of Diversity," Deadline's "Disruptors," the Outstanding Filipinos in America TOFA Award, and the New York Foundation for the Arts’ Hall of Fame.

Amy Northup

Amy Northup is a SAG-AFTRA recognized Intimacy Coordinator, with a background in both Directing and Acting. Recent projects include Mayor of Kingston (Paramount Plus), Bupkis (Peacock), Everything’s Trash (ABC Freeform) and Fire Island (Hulu). She is the Adjunct Intimacy Advisor to NYU’s Kanbar Institute.In addition to her work in the film industry, she works with OutSmartNYC, a non-profit dedicated to ending sexual violence in NYC Nightlife. She was awarded the first ever “Emerging Leader in Sexual Violence Prevention in NYC” by the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault in 2019. currently sits on the Manhattan Sexual Assault Task Force, and is a trained rape crisis counselor.She lives in Brooklyn with her wife Jesse and their pup Sebastian.

Brittany Huckabee

Brittany Huckabee is an award-winning filmmaker with more than two decades of experience as a director and producer of feature-length documentaries that have shown on PBS, Netflix and Showtime and screened at top international film festivals including Sundance and Tribeca. Focused on observational storytelling, her work has often followed the lives of unconventional women and others pushing the boundaries of culture. Her credits include HOW TO FIX A PRIMARY (2020), AFTER FIRE (2016), HOT GIRLS WANTED (2015), SEXY BABY (2012) and THE MOSQUE IN MORGANTOWN (2009). She is currently at work on a feature about the architect Elizabeth Diller.

Enid Zentelis

Enid Zentelis is an award-winning writer, director and podcast creator. Her feature films are distributed worldwide and have screened at many festivals including Sundance, Tribeca and the New York Film Festival. Her film Evergreen starring Mary Kay Place was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and won the Best First-time Director Prize at Sonoma IFF. Bottled Up stars Oscar-winner Josh Hamilton and was nominated for Tribeca's Nora Ephron Prize. Zentelis recently sold her acclaimed non-fiction podcast How My Grandmother Won WWII to North Road/Red Arrow Studio’s Kinetic Content, where she is developing it as a scripted series.

Heather María Ács

Heather María Ács (she/her/Mx.) is a certified intimacy coordinator based in New York City and Los Angeles. Credits include Lady in the Lake starring Natalie Portman (AppleTV), Dead Ringers with Rachel Weisz (Amazon), Partner Track (Netflix), and features such as, Lee Daniels’ The Deliverance, Plan B (Hulu) and gay rom-com, Fire Island.Mx. Ács identifies as queer and mixed-race Anglo-Chicanx. She specializes in authentic representation for LGBTQIA+ communities, BDSM/kink, working with diverse casts, and body positivity.

Magdalene Taylor

Magdalene Taylor is a writer exploring how desire and digital culture inform identity. Some of her recent bylines include The New York Times, Vice, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, i-D, Vulture, The Face and more. She publishes a newsletter on sex and culture called Many Such Cases.

Nicole Bozorgmir

Nicole Bozorgmir is a documentary producer/director and journalist. She frequently works in conflict zones and covers highly sensitive topics, including the struggles facing transgender youth, child fighters of ISIS in Mosul, and the persecution of China's Muslim Uighurs. Nicole’s work has been honored with four Emmys, a Peabody, a Gracie, and a Front Page Award. Most recently, her work on a series of investigations into the police killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville for VICE News Tonight was recognized with Edward R. Murrow, George Polk and Emmy Awards. Before VICE, Nicole produced long-form documentaries for PBS.

Robert Y. Chang

Robert Y. Chang is the Coordinating Producer of POV, the longest-running independent documentary showcase on American television. Prior to joining POV, Robert Y. Chang was the coordinating producer of America ReFramed, where for five seasons, he facilitated the national broadcast premieres of nearly seventy independent films. Robert has served as programmer, panelist, and reviewer for a range of film festivals, foundations, and funders of the arts. He has also served as juror for festival and industry awards including: the IDA Awards, RTDNA Murrow Awards, and the News & Documentary Emmys. Robert received his PhD in Cultural Anthropology at NYU with research on the intersection of religion and media. As an independent filmmaker, Robert's work has screened worldwide and is distributed by Documentary Educational Resources (DER). In 2020, DOC NYC awarded him a New Leader in Documentary Award and he is a member of the Producers Guild of America, A-DOC and NLGJA.

Wendy Ettinger

Wendy has been producing documentaries and narrative films for over 20 years. In 2005, with Julie Parker Benello and Judith Helfand, she co-founded Chicken & Egg Pictures in order to fund and mentor women and nonbinary non fiction filmmakers whose artful and innovative storytelling catalyzes social change. Over the past ten years, Chicken & Egg Pictures has awarded over $10 million in grants and thousands of hours of creative mentorship. to more than 450 films and filmmakers. These filmmakers and films have a multitude of awards, including Academy and Emmy Awards--but more importantly have created change at home and globally for the issues they address.In 2013 she co-founded Gamechanger Films, the first equity fund to provide equity to narrative feature films directed by women. Gamechanger films have premiered or screened at festivals such as Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, Los Angeles, Locarno, Toronto, and London; have been named on "best of the year" lists; and won numerous awards including The Tale by Jennifer Fox. In 2020 Effie Brown was named Ceo of Gamechanger and the mission expanded. Most recently GC produced and financed with A24 The Inspection directed by Elegance Bratton, I premiered at TFF 2022 to acclaimed reviews. Wendy executive produced The Tuba Thieves, it premiered at Sundance 2023. She serves on the advisory board of Sandbox Films, Jacob Burns Center and Film Fatales . She chairs the board of Imagine Science Film Festival

Docs In The Works Pitch Coach

Emily Harrold

Emily Harrold is a documentary filmmaker from Orangeburg, South Carolina. Her films have screened at festivals including the Tribeca Film Festival, the Melbourne International Film Festival, DOC NYC and the Telluride Film Festival. She is a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Nida Manzoor

Nida Manzoor is a British filmmaker who wrote, directed, and created all the original music for her series We Are Lady Parts, which premiered on Peacock/Channel 4 in 2021. The series is an anarchic and irreverent musical comedy following an all-female Muslim punk band, told through the eyes of a geeky Ph.D. student who is reluctantly recruited to be their lead guitarist. The show was renewed for a second season. We Are Lady Parts has been nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Award, and an Independent Spirit Award, and has won a 2022 Peabody Award and the 2022 BAFTA Award for Best Comedy Writer.Manzoor’s debut feature with Focus Features and Working Title, Polite Society, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. The boisterous and original action comedy follows a British Pakistani teenager (and aspiring stuntwoman) who attempts to save her older sister from a semi-arranged marriage by performing an elaborate heist.

Moderated by

Rehana Mirza

Rehana Lew Mirza is a playwright/screenwriter and an adjunct professor for NYU Tisch. Her plays include: Hatefuck (Upcoming: First Floor in Chicago; WP/Colt Coeur); A People’s Guide to History in the Time of Here and Now (Primary Stages Toulmin commission); Soldier X (Ma-Yi); Tomorrow, Inshallah (Living Room Theater;
Storyworks/HuffPost commission); Neighborhood Watch (NNPN/InterAct commission) and Barriers (Desipina, Asian American Theater Company.)With her husband Mike Lew, she shared a 2016-2022 Mellon Foundation National Playwright residency administered in partnership with Howlround at Ma-Yi Theater. They’ve co-written an animated feature for Dreamworks and the musical Bhangin’ It, with composer/lyricist Sam Willmott (La Jolla Playhouse; Richard Rodgers Award; Rhinebeck Writers Retreat; Project Springboard.)Additional honors include: Kleban Award, NYFA Fellow, HBO Access Fellow, Lilly Award (Stacey Mindich “Go Write A Play”), CCTP Artist Residency, and a TCG/New Georges Fellowship. MFA: Columbia University; BFA: NYU Tisch.

Beatrice Loayza

Beatrice Loayza is a writer and critic who contributes regularly to the New York Times. She writes primarily about cinema for publications like Artforum, 4Columns, Film Comment, and the Nation, and formerly, she was an editor for the Criterion Collection’s online magazine. Her work focuses primarily on European cinema, feminist screen culture, and horror film, though she also dabbles in theater and book criticism.

Candice Frederick

Candice Frederick (she/her) is a New York-based Senior Culture Reporter at HuffPost, where she writes about film, TV and '90s pop culture at the intersection of the sociopolitical landscape. Prior to HuffPost, she was a freelance TV and film journalist for a variety of publications, including Elle, Washington Post, Harper's Bazaar and the New York Times. She cut her teeth as a professional journalist at Essence Magazine.

Devika Girish

Devika Girish is a critic, editor, and programmer based in New York City. She is currently Co-Deputy Editor at Film Comment Magazine and a Talks programmer for the New York Film Festival. She writes regularly for the New York Times, and her work has also appeared in the Nation, The New York Review of Books, The Criterion Collection, The Village Voice, and other publications.

Judy Berman

Judy Berman has been TIME's television critic since 2018. Previously, she covered the arts and pop culture for publications including the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Nation, and Pitchfork. A graduate of NYU's Cultural Reporting and Criticism program, she lives in Brooklyn.

Phoebe Chen

Phoebe Chen is a writer and PhD candidate living in New York. Her work has been published in Artforum, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Criterion, and elsewhere.

Susannah Gruder

Susannah Gruder is a film critic based in New York City. Her criticism has appeared in IndieWire, Hyperallergic, Reverse Shot, MUBI Notebook, and Screen Slate, among other outlets. She participated in Film at Lincoln Center’s Critics Academy at the New York Film Festival, and served as one of Reverse Shot’s Creative Correspondents at the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look Festival. She also runs the newsletter Mood Elevator, which combines film reviews and personal writing to examine representations of gender and power on-screen.

Ana Fabrega

Ana is the co-creator, co-writer, and star of the HBO cult hit comedy LOS ESPOOKYS, alongside Julio Torres. Ana also directed two episodes of LOS ESPOOKYS in season 2, in addition to showrunning. She can also be seen in the Plan B/Warner Bros./HBO Max remake of FATHER OF THE BRIDE, written by Matt Lopez and directed by Gaz Alazraki, starring Diego Boneta and Matt Walsh. Ana previously wrote and frequently appeared on TruTV’s THE CHRIS GETHARD SHOW and Hulu’s HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART II, and she has appeared on IFC’s PORTLANDIA, HBO’s HIGH MAINTENANCE, and TruTV’s AT HOME WITH AMY SEDARIS.

Moderated by

Libby Torres

Libby Torres is an entertainment reporter at Insider. She's known for her coverage of fan-favorite celebrities Brendan Fraser and Keanu Reeves, as well as her reporting on critically-acclaimed TV shows, including What We Do in the Shadows, Yellowjackets, and Los Espookys.In addition to her passion for pop culture, Libby is also a proud Latina who's interviewed notable Latine stars like Harvey Guillén and Diane Guerrero.Before Insider, she wrote for numerous publications, including the Daily Beast and Gothamist. She graduated from New York University with a degree in comparative literature in 2018.