Alies Sluiter
Writer and Director
As well as being a filmmaker, Alies is also a composer and performer, who in 2016 received an Australian Academy Award Nomination for Best Score and Best South Australian Film Composer Award for Michelle’s Story and in 2017, an Underwire Festival Best Composer nomination for Garfield. She has performed in over 50 countries and 300 cities at many of the worlds most prestigious venues and musically directed world tours for Akram Khan, Nitin Sawhney, Sylvie Guillem among others. Zero Degrees, musically directed by Alies was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award and Time Out Critics Award (UK) and won the 2007 Helpmann Award (Australia). In 2017, I Am Elizabeth Smart, scored by Alies was nominated for a Critics Choice Award (USA), for Best Made for TV Movie.
After making her first short film Snakes, Sluiter was awarded the 2015 Sir General John Monash Scholarship, one of Australia’s most prestigious postgraduate awards, enabling her to attend Columbia University on full scholarship. She was also awarded the Dame Joan Sutherland Award, a Film Faculty Scholarship, an Alfred P. Sloan Treatment mentorship and in 2017, received the Columbia University Screenwriting Fellowship and became a lecturer for the undergraduate screenwriting lab. In 2018, together with producer, Meng Xiong, she received the competitive Leone Family Film Production Award to make her thesis film, Darya.
In 2013, Alies was selected for the Australian International Documentary Conference Meet Market and Australian Documentary Foundation to develop her documentary, The Monks. She was also the recipient of a mentorship with Fuse Presents to attend the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, and was selected for the Berlinale Talent Campus (Berlin, Germany), which she attended with travel grants from the Australian Film Commission and Australian Embassy. She is currently developing three feature scripts and a television pilot, while completing her MFA in Screenwriting and Directing at Columbia University. She is published by Mushroom Music (Aus) and BMG/Chrysalis in the UK and USA.
Meng Xiong
Producer
Meng Xiong is a NYC based Chinese writer and creative producer who is driven by a need to engage in social issues.
Xiong has produced 12 short films in Mainland China , Taiwan, and the U.S. including Orientation, a 13-minute short about children being left behind in rural China due to insufficient funding for higher education. Chi: The Method of Breathing, a film Meng is currently lead producing, received a production grant from the Ministry of Culture in Taiwan.
She is currently developing the feature film Mom with emerging Chinese director Xixi Wang, about a single mother investigating the truth behind her son’s death on a subway platform in Beijing. The film is set to shoot in 2019 with Lü Liping (The Blue Kite, The Old Well, and City Monkey) attached to play the lead.
Previously Xiong was the Head of Programming and Communications at Bijou Cinema in Iowa City where she programmed a broad range of films, and became renowned for introducing audiences to challenging and confronting subject matter. Earlier in her career, she spent time in Beijing as a copywriter and marketing co-coordinator for brands such as Mercedes, McDonald’s and Microsoft, among others.
Xiong holds two B.A. degrees of Cinema and Communication Studies from the University of Iowa, and is currently completing an MFA of Creative Producing at Columbia University, where she has taught film and media studies as an assistant to Professor Rob King.
Alejandra Canales
Co - Producer
Alejandra is an award winning Chilean/Australian filmmaker and producer. Her work has screened in many major festivals both in Australia and internationally, including the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and the Sydney Film Festival, where she was awarded a Dendy Award. Other awards include the ATOM award for Best Documentary, a special mention from the Film Critics of Australia and a nomination for the IF Independent Spirit Award. Canales was the Co-Director of the inaugural Antenna International Documentary Festival 2011, and the creator and curator of DOC Space. She is currently the Head of Documentary at Sydney Film School.
Jeremy Rouse
Cinematographer
Jeremy is an award-wining director of photography. His latest feature, Burden, starring Garrett Hedlund and Forest Whitaker won the Audience Award in the US Dramatic Competition at Sundance in 2018. Previous awards include the Australian Cinematographers Society, Golden Tripod for Advertising and the Gold Award at Australian Cinematographers Society Awards.