Jurors & Awards

Emerging Director – Narrative Feature

Emerging Director – Documentary Feature

Excellence in Short Filmmaking – Narrative & Documentary

Excellence in Ones to Watch Youth Category

Excellence in Music Video

Sikay Tang Critical Lens Award

Jury for AAISC Screenplay Competition

From left to right: Jessica Hagedorn, Nathan Ramos-Park, Christina Yoon

Jessica Hagedorn
Jessica Hagedorn is a novelist, poet, playwright, and screenwriter. Dogeaters, her groundbreaking first novel, has recently been reissued as a Penguin Classic. Her work in film includes the screenplay for director Shu Lea Cheang’s innovative Fresh Kill. Prizes and honors include fellowships from the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, the Sundance Theater Lab, and the Rome Prize for Literature.

Photo Credit: Renee Montagne.

Nathan Ramos-Park
Nathan Ramos-Park is a half-Filipino, half-Korean writer and performer from Ohio. He has developed and staffed at Amazon, Netflix, Disney, Sony, and more. A former actor (Off-Broadway/CBS Showcase), competitive jump roper, and award-winning NYC bartender, he’s also a Webby and Queerty nominee. His Amazon rom-com, FIVE BLIND DATES, was adapted into PICTURE THIS, starring Simone Ashley, which topped Prime charts for 6 weeks. He has amassed over 95,000 followers on social media in the last 3 months with his sociopolitical and cultural content.

Christina Yoon
Christina Yoon is an award-winning Korean American writer and director based in Los Angeles, often focused on dramatic films that explore trauma, alienation, and identity. As a TV writer, she has written for the Critics Choice Award-winning Pachinko on Apple TV+. Yoon won Best Director at the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival and Best Narrative Short at the Provincetown International Film Festival for her short film, MOTHERLAND, which became eligible for the 2024 Academy Awards.

Jury for Emerging Director in a Narrative Feature

From left to right: Kimberly Han, Inney Prakash, Ke-Xi Wu

Kimberly Han
Kim J.Y. Han is a writer-director who uses narrative as a vehicle for societal change. Han was a 2025 CJ & TIFF K-Story Fund fellow and a Finalist for the 2025 Inaugural Sundance Cultural Impact Residency. Her debut short film, CHAMPION, screened at over thirty festivals including Hawai’i IFF, Tokyo Children’s IFF, and Busan Youth IFF. Raised in Seoul and San Francisco, Han worked in Hollywood for eight years, where she was most recently a TV development executive at NBCUniversal.

Inney Prakash
Inney Prakash is a film programmer and critic based in New York City. He currently serves as Curator of Film at the Asia Society Museum and is the founder and director of Prismatic Ground, an annual festival centered on experimental documentary and avant-garde film. His byline has appeared in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Comment, Screen Slate, the Metrograph Journal and the Journal of Film Preservation.

Ke-Xi Wu
Ke-Xi Wu is an Taiwanese actress and screenwriter. She was nominated for Best Actress at the Golden Horse Awards for THE ROAD TO MANDALAY (2017 Venice Film Festival). In 2019, she wrote and starred in NINA WU (Cannes Un Certain Regard), which earned a Golden Horse nomination for Best Screenplay. Featured in Variety’s 2020 Women’s Impact Report, she went on to star in BLACK TEA (2024 Berlinale Main Competition) and BLUE SUN PALACE(winner of 2024 Cannes Critics’ Week French Touch Jury Prize), for which she won the Firebird Award for Best Actress at the Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Jury for Emerging Director in a Documentary Feature

Robert Chang

Lailanie Gadia
Raised in Guam, Lailanie Gadia is a Filipina American community builder, producer, and financial professional based in Los Angeles. She founded her film company, Mango Stories, to bring impactful stories to life and currently serves as Operations Director at A-Doc. Her credits include THIRD ACT (Sundance 2025), the Emmy-nominated 2022 Asian American Stories of Resilience and Beyond, and more. Named a 2023 Documentary New Leader, she is a proud Loyola Marymount University API Alumni Association Board Member.

Debbie Lum
Debbie Lum is a filmmaker amplifying Asian American experiences and other unsung stories. Her documentary, TRY HARDER!, premiered at Sundance 2021, earned recognition as a New York Times Critic’s Pick, and received a Truer Than Fiction nomination from the Independent Spirit Awards. Her previous documentary, SEEKING ASIAN FEMALE, became a “fan favorite” on PBS’ Independent Lens, and won Best of Fest (Silverdocs) and Outstanding Director (LA Asian Pacific Film Festival). Editing credits include A.K.A DON BONUS, KELLY LOVES TONY, and TO YOU SWEETHEART, ALOHA.

Jury for Excellence in Short Filmmaking – Narrative & Documentary

Marissa Carpio

Frank Yan
Frank Yan is the Director of Programming at the CineCina Film Festival. He’s also the co-founder of the boutique distribution company Crescendo House, as well as the China-based soundtrack record label, Soundtrack Magazine.

Christina Yoon
Christina Yoon is an award-winning Korean American writer and director based in Los Angeles, often focused on dramatic films that explore trauma, alienation, and identity. As a TV writer, she has written for the Critics Choice Award-winning Pachinko on Apple TV+. Yoon won Best Director at the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival and Best Narrative Short at the Provincetown International Film Festival for her short film, MOTHERLAND, which became eligible for the 2024 Academy Awards.

Excellence in Ones to Watch Youth Category

Wentao Ma
Wentao Ma (He/Him) is a PhD Candidate in Cultural Studies at the Department of Literature, UCSD. His scholarly writing and translation have been published in several journals, such as Chinese Literature and Thought Today, the Journal of Chinese Cinemas and Contemporary Cinema. In addition to his academic career, he is dedicated to film curation. He is Film Programmer for the San Diego Asian Film Festival and has worked at the CineCina Film Festival in New York.

Ria Tobaccowala
Ria Tobaccowala is an award winning writer director whose short films have premiered at major festivals like Tribeca and have been acquired by HBO. Ria’s written work has been published by New York Magazine, and she’s also written on television shows for FOX and Apple TV+.

Grace Tran

Michael Yu

Michael Yu is a writer, director, and producer currently working in creative development with RISE Entertainment Group, a new studio founded by the former Head of Asia at HBO. His focus is on creating and championing globally appealing English-language film and television. He was born and raised in Hong Kong and is of Chinese and Scottish descent.

Jury for Excellence in Music Video

From left to right: Fig, Leon Hinata, Sally Oh

Fig
An artist seeking self-expression with a DIY attitude, FIG turns everyday activities and emotions into creative output. An indie pop/R&B artist from Malaysia living in NYC, the 24-year-old singer-songwriter has been building a dedicated community around her music through creative content, social engagement, touring, and her own Cob Stand event productions.

She has been on North America tours supporting grentperez and Peach Tree Rascals, dhruv and Sarah Kinsley. She released her project, FITS, last fall and dropped her new single, “Questionnaire,” following her tour with Lyn Lapid.

Leon Hinata

Sally Oh
Sally Sujin Oh is a Korean American writer and producer raised in L.A.. She produced narrative indie feature, BLUE SUN PALACE, starring Ke-Xi Wu and Lee Kang Sheng, which won the French Touch Jury Prize at Cannes 2024 and was named a NY Times Critics’ Pick. Additionally, she collaborated with NDLON to produce the short film, TROKAS DURAS, a Jury Award winner for U.S. Fiction at Sundance 2025. In 2020, Oh received a Grammy for her work on BLACK IS KING. Past work includes co-founding the production company, Field Trip. Oh is now an Independent Producing Fellow in Women in Film’s 2025 cohort.

Jury for Sikay Tang Critical Lens Award

From left to right: Scott Greenhaw, Rea Tajiri, Michael Uys

Scott Greenhaw
Scott Greenhaw has worked as director, cinematographer, editor, assistant editor, sound recordist and mixer for 30 years. His credits include: Women, War and Peace; Hillary; BLACK ART: IN THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT, and THE JANES. He received his M.F.A. in Film Production from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Greenhaw assisted Sikay Tang on the weekly series, Moyers & Company, from 2011–2015, later collaborating on several projects including AGAINST ALL ODDS: THE FIGHT FOR A BLACK MIDDLE CLASS WITH BOB HERBERT, #MeToo, Now What?, and RISING AGAINST ASIAN HATE: ONE DAY IN MARCH.

Rea Tajiri
Rea Tajiri is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. Her work situates in poetic, non-traditional storytelling forms to encourage dialog and reflection around buried histories. Her recent video assemblage, History, Memory, Vertical Stack, 2024 was included in exhibit at 80WSE Gallery. Her documentary feature, WISDOM GONE WILD, won the Audience Award at Blackstar for Best Documentary. Tajiri received a NorthStar Fellowship for residency at the 2024 Camden International Film Festival and was honored with USA Artist’s Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowship in Film and Video.

Michael Uys
Michael Uys is an award-winning filmmaker and television commercial director, known for his extraordinary ability to elicit funny, honest, and emotional performances. His documentaries—RIDING THE RAILS and THE GOOD SOLDER, edited by Sikay Tang—have won numerous awards, including an Emmy Award for Long Form Documentary and Best Documentary from both the DGA and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

He graduated cum laude from NYU with a double major in Film and Journalism. He is currently working on a digital series and recently produced his first narrative feature, 72 HOURS.