Opal H. Bennett is an Emmy-winning senior producer at POV and executive producer at POV Shorts. Under her leadership, POV Shorts broadcast the 2021 NewsDoc Emmy Winner for Short Documentary, The Love Bugs. Previously, Opal was Shorts Programmer and Director of Artist Development at DOCNYC and Senior Programmer at Athena Film Festival. She has also worked with Nantucket Film Festival, Aspen ShortsFest and Tribeca Film Festival. Opal is a member of the AMPAS Documentary branch and is a board member of the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC). She has participated on various festival juries and selection committees for film grants.  A Columbia Law grad, Opal holds a Masters from the LSE and received her B.A. from NYU.

Nainita Desai is a multi-award-winning composer and sound designer for television, film and videogames who has scored acclaimed non-fiction titles including the Oscar-nominated and Cannes-winning For Sama, the Sundance Audience Award-winning The Reason I Jump and the Emmy-nominated Body Parts. Most recently, Desai scored The Deepest Breath (A24, Netflix), which earned her a Critics Choice Documentary Awards nomination. Her score for 2022’s 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Music Composition. She is an RTS winner, a double BIFA nominee, a Cinema Eye Honors nominee, and the 2022 winner of The Gravity Media Creative Technology Award at the Women in Film and Television Awards, UK. Upcoming 2024 projects include the landmark natural history series Earthsounds for Apple TV,  an upcoming James Cameron series for the BBC and Nat Geo, as well as premium feature docs for Netflix, and Universal.

Brigid O’Shea is a documentary consultant, helping projects and filmmakers reach their full international potential and professional goals. Her network spans the globe, working on all continents with both emerging talent and industry veterans. She’s worked on festival strategy with ARTE on projects like Generation Africa and Generation Ukraine. She serves on the boards of B2B Doc, Circle Women Doc Accelerator, and Dokufest in Prizren, Kosovo. She is an intersectional queer feminist. She founded the Documentary Association of Europe, a member network and support system for documentary filmmakers that has grown to 700 members in just three years. She currently serves as the co-director of this organization. She was head of DOK Industry Programme at DOK Leipzig and worked for the Berlin International Film Festival for more than 10 years. She is an internationally-respected curator, and tutors across the globe on festival strategy, international co-financing and pitching as well as cultural management.

Jean-Jacques Peretti is in charge of the editorial line at Sunny Side of the Doc, the internationally renowned market place for documentary and factual content. Working with the rest of the team on the organization of the schedule of events, panels, case studies, pitch sessions with the main international players, Jean-Jacques also works as an expert with many international festivals and markets. Born in France, Jean-Jacques studied films and literature in France and the US. He has worked many years in documentary production for companies such as Les Films d’Ici, 2nd Vague Productions, etc, before joining Sunny Side of the Doc in 2002.

As Head of Content, Ally leads local content efforts and is responsible for the design and execution of Prime Video’s local content slate, including TV and film licensing, for the Prime Video service in Australia and New Zealand. Ally joined Amazon in September 2016 as legal counsel supporting Prime Video in the US before moving on to other roles covering international expansion of the Prime Video Channels business, including leading the content acquisition function for the launch of Prime Video Channels in Australia. Prior to Amazon, Ally spent 7 years as a lawyer with Bauer Media (now Are Media) and in private practice. She holds a Bachelor of Laws (Hons) from Monash, and currently resides in Melbourne, Australia.

As Executive Producer at Boardwalk Pictures Australia, in addition to overseeing all Australian projects, Hilliard consults and produces on Boardwalk’s global slate of studio content, originals, line production, and brand storytelling.  Focused on authenticity and collaboration, Boardwalk partners with a diverse community of storytellers, creating mainstream entertainment across a variety of genres, including Welcome to Wrexam, Pepsi’s The Show, The Goop Lab, Val, Last Chance U, and Cheer. Best known for the documentary series Chef’s Table and Robert Redford’s Iconoclasts, Michael’s career began on-tour with The Rolling Stones in 1997, capturing live concerts.  Since then, his work with award-winning actors, musicians, artists, and sports figures often features a bit of rock and roll, a human truth, and something unexpected.  Michael is a member of the International and US Television Academy, the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts, and Screen Producers Australia. 

Oscar Raby is a multimedia artist, co-founder and creative director at VRTOV, the Melbourne-based virtual reality studio behind the projects A Machine for Viewing, The Turning Forest, Easter Rising: Voice of a Rebel and Assent. VRTOV has been commissioned by the US, UK, and Australia. In 2013 he completed a Masters degree in animation and interactive media at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology where the subject of his research was portraiture in new media. His graduating work, the autobiographical virtual reality documentary Assent, has been part of Sundance New Frontier, IDFA DocLab and Sheffield DocFest as well as festivals in Australia, Canada, USA, Mexico, the Netherlands and the UK. Assent received the Audience Award for Cross-platform at Sheffield DocFest 2014. Oscar is currently working on a PhD at SensiLab, Monash University, that examines the underlying technical and poetic affordances of XR authoring software.