Moderator: Julian Carrington

Managing Director, REMC

Julian Carrington is a film programmer, a creative analyst, and a racial equity advocate based in Toronto. He is currently Managing Director of the Racial Equity Media Collective (REMC), a non-profit organization committed to equity for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) creators in Canada’s film, television, and digital media industries. Julian leads REMC’s advocacy and research initiatives, which aim to remove structural barriers and increase the production, export, and sustainability of BIPOC content and BIPOC-led production companies. Julian is also the founder and curator of For Viola, the Hot Docs Cinema’s BIPOC-focused community screening series, named in honour of Viola Desmond.

Panelist: Cornelia Principe

Documentary Producer

Cornelia Principe is an independent producer whose documentary films have collectively screened at well over 100 national and international film festivals, been broadcast all over the world, and garnered numerous awards and distinctions, including: an Academy Award® Nomination for Best Feature Documentary; Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Coverage of a Current News Story; Peabody nomination for Documentary; Best Documentary Feature, Jury Award Winner, Tribeca Film Festival; Best Canadian Documentary, Hot Docs; Audience Choice Award, Hot Docs; TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten; Ted Rogers Best Feature Documentary, Canadian Screen Awards; Sundance Film Forward Program.Cornelia is currently releasing the feature documentaries SHAMED and Russians at War. Russians at War had a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival 2024, followed by the North American premiere at TIFF. Other credit hi-lights include To Kill a Tiger (2022), which premiered at TIFF 2022 where it won the Amplify Voices Award for Best Canadian Feature Film, and more recently a 96th Academy Award® nomination, Peabody nomination and the CSA Ted Rogers Best Feature Documentary; the award-winning feature PREY (2019); the Emmy-nominated documentary The World Before Her (2012); and the award-winning documentary series Diamond Road (2008).

Panelist: Anthony Truong Swan

Impact Director, Story Money Impact

As the Impact Director of Story Money Impact, Anthony Truong Swan works with social justice and environmental documentaries to develop partnerships across all sectors of civil society, helping to put relevant issues-based films on the front lines of creating social impact. Anthony has more than a decade of experience organizing film screening events across Canada both virtually and in-person. In addition to directing the impact of the 17 films in SMI’s STORY TO ACTION program, Anthony has also impact produced The World is Bright, The Magnitude of All Things, No Visible Trauma, and Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy.

Panelist: Leena Manimekalai

Filmmaker

Leena Manimekalai is a leading Tamil poet and a multiple award winning filmmaker. Her strong repertoire of films with an impressive exhibition record covering over 100 International Film Festivals includes the acclaimed ‘Maadathy-an unfairy tale’ (Feature Fiction), ‘the Sengadal-the Dead sea’ (Cinema Verite), ‘White Van Stores’ (Feature Documentary), ‘Is it too much to ask’ (Mockumentary), ‘Goddesses’ (ShortDocumentary) and ‘My Mirror is the Door’ (Cine Poem). She is an interventionist and her forte is participatory filmmaking. Her tryst with censorship, both constitutional and extra constitutional, as a brown queer female body, as a poet and as a politically unapologetic filmmaker is in itself a meta narrative in her journey as an Artist. She was recently chosen as a BAFTA India Breakthrough Talent (2022-23), named Artist in Residence by the Jackman Humanities Institute - University Toronto(2023) and Centre for Free Expression - Toronto Metropolitan University (2023), profiled as one of the twenty artists who inspire change globally by PEN America(2023). She has a Master of Fine Arts(MFA) in Film from York University and is currently developing ‘Saracura’, a participatory climate film with the Afro Indigenous Quilombola community at Brazilian Amazon Rainforest.

Panelist: Samantha Curley

Documentary film producer

Samantha Curley is an award-winning documentary film producer and creative entrepreneur based in Los Angeles. She is the Co-Founder of Level Ground, which is both a 501(c)3 nonprofit artist collective and production company. Her most recent film UNION (dir. Stephen Maing, Brett Story) won a Special Jury Award for “The Art of Change” at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. She also produced FRAMING AGNES (dir. Chase Joynt) which won the NEXT Innovator Award and Audience Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary. She’s held fellowships with the Producers Guild of America (2022), NBCU Original Voices (2022), and Impact Partners (2023). In 2023, she received a Cali Catalyst grant awarded to California changemakers whose bold actions are impacting the arts and culture sector. In 2024, she was named to DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 list which spotlights young creatives that are making an impact on the field of documentary. And in 2025 she won a Cinema Eye Honors award for Outstanding Achievement in Production for her work on UNION.