INT’L DOX: FEATURES

Abby Sun is an artist, film programmer, and researcher at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, where she is a graduate student in Comparative Media Studies and edits Immerse. Most recently, Abby being the Curator of the DocYard, has co-curated My Sight is Lined with Visions: 1990s Asian American Film & Video with Keisha Knight. Expanding on the latter’s programmatic urges, Abby and Keisha launched Line of Sight, a suite of artist development activities, in 2021. Abby has bylines in Film Comment, Filmmaker Magazine, Film Quarterly, Hyperallergic, and other publications, has reviewed applications for BGDM, NEA, SFFILM, LEF Foundation, Sundance Catalyst, as well as spoken on and facilitated panels at TIFF, NYFF, and other film festivals.

Gürcan Keltek studied film at Dokuz Eylül University before directing several shorts including Overtime (2012), screened at Visions Du Réel. His medium-length film Colony (2015) was screened at FIDMarseille. His first feature film Meteorlar (2017) won more than twenty awards including First Feature Film Award and Boccolino d’Oro Film Critics’ Award at Locarno Film Festival. It was screened at many international film festivals including Rotterdam, BAFICI, Viennale, Bordeaux, Fajr, Hong Kong and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real. Gulyabani (2018) premiered at Signs of Life of Locarno Festival and was screened at Tate Modern, Reykjavik, Rotterdam and Viennale. His next feature film project New Dawn Fades was selected to L’Atelier of Cannes Film Festival in 2019.

A graduate of the UK’s National Film & Television School, Mahdi Fleifel studied Fiction Directing under Stephen Frears and Pawel Pawlikowski. In 2010 he founded the London based production company Nakba FilmWorks. Fleifel’s critically acclaimed debut, A WORLD NOT OURS, received over 30 awards, including the Berlinale Peace Prize, the Edinburgh, Yamagata and DOC:NYC Grand Jury Prizes. In 2016 Fleifel won a Silver Bear for A MAN RETURNED. His follow up, A DROWNING MAN, was in the Official Competition at Cannes and nominated for a BAFTA. I SIGNED THE PETITION won Best Documentary Short at IDFA and was nominated for the 2018 European Film Awards.