Behind the Scenes

AJ Schnack is an award-winning nonfiction filmmaker and visual artist based in Los Angeles. His feature films include the ESPN 30 for 30: Long Gone Summer, Kurt Cobain: About a Son, and Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns). While his films cover a wide range of topics (including music, baseball, and journalism), he is especially known for his nonpartisan documentaries that delve into American electoral politics, including Convention, Caucus, and the short form series for Vanity Fair, NomiNation. Schnack’s work in political vérité has been hailed by the NY Times as “a testament to the power of observational documentary,” by the Washington Post as “not just delightful watching, but required viewing,” and by the Daily Beast as providing “a riveting glimpse into the American political process.”

Stephen Maing is an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker. His most recent films, UNION (P.O.V./Criterion Channel) and CRIME + PUNISHMENT (Hulu/IFC), won Special Jury Awards at the Sundance Film Festival and were shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. CRIME + PUNISHMENT also received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary. He was a story producer and editor on the Academy Award–winning documentary ALL THE EMPTY ROOMS (Netflix). His previous films, which he also directed, filmed, and edited—HIGH TECH, LOW LIFE, THE SURRENDER, and DIRTY GOLD—have screened internationally, received numerous awards, and were released on P.O.V., Field of Vision, and Netflix, respectively. Maing has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, United States Artists, the Sundance Institute, and NBC Original Voices, and was a recipient of the International Documentary Association’s Courage Under Fire Award alongside the whistleblowers of the NYPD12 from CRIME + PUNISHMENT. He has worked as an adjunct professor and filmmaking mentor at numerous universities and organizations.

Martin DiCicco is a cinematographer and director whose work includes All That Passes By Through a Window That Doesn’t Open, Here There is No Earth, Girls Got Game, Searchers, The Hottest August, Landfall, and forthcoming films by Angelo Madsen Minax, Timothy George Kelly, and Jem Cohen.

Paula Dupré Pesmen is an Emmy Award®-and Grammy Award®-winning producer who produced the Oscar-winning feature documentary The Cove and produced the 2024 Sundance U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary for Porcelain War. In 2010, she was named Producer of the Year by the PGA. Pesmen launched her film career on the producing teams of such narrative features as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Rent, Mrs. Doubtfire, Home Alone 2, and Stepmom. She produced the renowned documentary features Chasing Ice (Emmy winner, Sundance Cinematography Award, SXSW Audience Award), Keep on Keepin’ On (Audience Award winner at Tribeca and Palm Springs film festivals), and Quincy (Grammy winner). Pesmen was named a “Local Hero” by Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine for her philanthropic work.

Aniela Sidorska is a Polish-born refugee whose love of film began when she first experienced Western cinema in her early childhood. After studying art in San Francisco, she went on to be a visual effects compositor on Captain America: The First Avenger, a compositing supervisor on the 2012 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner and Oscar nominee for Best Picture Beasts of the Southern Wild, and a visual effects producer on such films as Lee Daniels’ The Butler and The Expendables 3. Her small-screen credits include the series Boardwalk Empire, The Blacklist, The Americans and Elementary. Most recently, she was involved in creature development for the Netflix Original Chupa and was a co-writer on the feature film Extra Ordinary, now in development. Upon discovering porcelain artists in Ukraine, Sidorska developed and produced Porcelain War, which won the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. She is a voting member of the Producers Guild of America and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Editor Toby Shimin began her film career as a sound editor and switched to picture editing when she cut The Children’s Storefront, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Since then, she has edited numerous films that have premiered at Sundance, including Peabody Award-winning How to Dance in Ohio, A Leap of Faith, Martha & Ethel, Miss America, and Everything’s Cool. Her Sundance Audience Award-winning films include Out of the Past, This Is Home, which was also nominated for an Emmy award, and Buck, which was short-listed for an Academy Award. In 2020, Toby received an Emmy Award for Ernie & Joe: Crisis Cops. The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile won the 2022 Audience Award at its SXSW premiere, and Pay or Die received the 2023 Cinema for Peace Dove Award in Berlin. Toby is thrilled to have two films premiering at the 2024 DC/DOX Festival – The Quilters and One South: Portrait of a Psych Unit. She has served as a mentor for the Edit and Story Labs at the Sundance Institute and Chicken & Egg and is on the advisory boards of the Full Frame Film Festival and The Jacob Burns Film Center.

Dawn Porter is an acclaimed American documentary filmmaker and founder of Trilogy Films, known for her storytelling on social justice, history, and cultural icons. Her documentaries, including TRAPPED, JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE, and THE LADY BIRD DIARIES, have aired on platforms including HBO, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, CNN, and PBS.

Her recent film LUTHER: NEVER TOO MUCH highlights the life and legacy of Luther Vandross. Produced with Sony Music Entertainment, Jamie Foxx’s Foxxhole, and Colin Firth’s Raindog Films, the film was released in theaters and premiered on CNN/MAX on January 1, 2025. Her recent work, THE SING SING CHRONICLES, won the Best Documentary Emmy at the 46th annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards.

A three-time Sundance Film Festival alum, Porter’s film GIDEON’S ARMY was nominated for an Emmy and an Independent Spirit Award and won the Ridenhour Prize and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award. TRAPPED also earned a Silver Gavel, along with a Peabody Award and the Sundance Special Jury Prize for Social Impact Filmmaking, while JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE won the 2021 NAACP Image Award.

Her work has been widely recognized with honors including the Critics’ Choice Impact Award (2022) and Gracie Awards (2022, 2023). She was recently awarded the National Humanities Medal by Joe Biden, elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and received the IDA Career Achievement Award.

William Jenkins is a bilingual visual storyteller from Nashville, Tennessee. He found his calling in filmmaking driven by an inherent need to shed light on social injustices. With a passion for serving underrepresented people among Black and Brown communities, he has dedicated his career to challenging stereotypical narratives, fostering empathy, and working to improve the lives in his local community. He seeks to encourage an appreciation of different cultures and enrich shared experiences. His work has appeared in Mission Local as a video producer, Oaklandside, and Oakland North. He was also the cinematographer for The New Yorker film To Be Invisible, which premiered at the 40th Sundance Film Festival in 2024.

Maya Tippett is a filmmaker and an Emmy-nominated editor currently living in upstate New York. Her work has screened at Sundance, SXSW, DOC NYC, and Hot Docs and has been featured on HBO, The Wall Street Journal, Paul Kasmin Gallery, and Artsy, amongst others. Her directorial debut, The Magnitudinous Illuminous, screened at DOC NYC and closed the Rooftop Films Festival series in 2019.

Marley McDonald is a filmmaker and painter living in Queens, New York. She primarily works with archival footage and is drawn to projects about time, technology, and mythology. She directed and edited her debut feature-length documentary, Time Bomb Y2K (co-directed with Brian Becker), which premiered on HBO in December 2023. Her recent editing work includes Earth to Michael (Telluride Film Festival 2025) and the generative documentary Eno (Sundance 2024).

Her associate editor credits include Spaceship Earth (Sundance 2020) and the Golden Lion–winning, Oscar-nominated documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. She is currently directing and editing a film based on the archives at the American Museum of Natural History.