Our 2024 Film Jury Panel is developing!

Renowned Cultural Trailblazers
Kathleen Brennan & Tom Waits join the film jury

In a career that spans over four decades, singer-songwriter Tom Waits has adventurously delved into recording, literature, film and theater, as both actor and composer. His music, recognized for its distinctive orchestrations and arrangements, has ranged from country, blues, cabaret, waltz and field hollers to gospel, polkas and marches. He has recorded over 20 albums including Bad As Me and appeared in well over 20 films including, Ironweed, Dracula, Down By Law, Short Cuts, Book of Eli and The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, working with such maverick directors like Jim Jarmusch, Terry Giliam, Francis Ford Coppola, Hughes Brothers, Hector Barbenco and Robert Altman. Waits and his long-time collaborator and wife, Kathleen Brennan, were named number four in a list of the “100 Best Living Songwriters” published by America’s Paste magazine. Paste said “In literature only a handful of writers have pulled off the near impossible. In music, it happens on every Tom Waits recording”. Tom and Kathleen were also awarded the PEN Award of Literary Excellence for their songwriting.

Film Jury: Emerging Cinematic Luminary Ellie Foumbi

Ellie Foumbi is an award-winning Cameroonian American filmmaker whose debut film, Our Father, the Devil, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It went on to screen at over 50 international film festivals where it won several prizes, including the Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival. It received universal critical acclaim, including Independent Spirit Award and Gotham Award Nominations. She’s an alumna of Berlinale Talents and a BAFTA Breakthrough USA Fellow. Ellie was also named one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine.

Rising Star Editor, Kristina Motwani, Joins Our Esteemed Film Jury

Kristina Motwani is an award-winning film editor, producer, writer, and story consultant working in San Francisco.  With Homeroom (2021), 1-800-ON-HER-OWN (2024), Home is a Hotel (2023), Ayenda (2023), Fruits of Labor (2021), First Vote (2020), Midnight Traveler (2019) After Tiller (2013) and more, Motwani’s verité documentary style strives to give intimate portraits of real people. These films were honored with Peabody, Emmy and festival awards. Other personal recognitions include the 2021 Sundance Jonathan Oppenheim Edit Award, 2021 IFF Boston Karen Schmeer Excellence in Documentary Editing, 2024 Sundance Adobe Mentorship Award winner for nonfiction, 2023 Karen Schmeer Fellowship mentor, 2019 DOCNYC 40 under 40 honoree, 2018 SFFilm FilmHouse Resident and a 2017 BAVC National MediaMaker Fellow. Her work has screened at the Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca, SXSW, SFFilm festival and has been seen on PBS, Netflix, Hulu and the World Channel.

Six Degrees of Ed Begley Jr.: Hollywood Veteran Joins Our Film Festival

Inspired to be an actor by the works of his Academy Award-winning father, Ed Begley, Jr. caught audiences’ attention for his portrayal of Dr. Victor Ehrlich on the hit TV series “St. Elsewhere,” for which he received six Emmy nominations.

Begley has moved easily between feature films, television, and stage productions.

Ed has recently appeared in “Amsterdam” with Christian Bale and Margot Robbie, “Book Club” with Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen. He can also be seen in a number of Christopher Guest films, such as “A Mighty Wind,” “Best In Show,” and “For Your Consideration.” He has also appeared in the Seth Rogen/Judd Apatow film “Pineapple Express.”

Begley can be seen on “Young Sheldon,” “Modern Family,” “Better Call Saul,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Bless This Mess” (with Lake Bell, Pam Grier, and Dax Shepard), “Six Feet Under,” “Arrested Development,” and “Portlandia.”

On stage, Ed starred in David Mamet’s “November” at the Mark Taper Forum and has appeared in several other works by this amazing playwright: “The Cryptogram” in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, as well as “Romance,” also at the Mark Taper Forum.

He has written several books, the most recent being “To The Temple Of Tranquility, And Step On It.”

Eclectic Man of Culture and the Arts, Daedalus Howell, Joins the Film Jury

To appreciate the multi-hyphenate talents of Daedalus Howell, combine the moxie of an indie filmmaker, the grit of a journalist, the insouciance of a novelist, and the trickster-heroism of a conceptual artist — add ice and shake. The result — cold, wet, and bitter — belies Howell’s biting wit, easy charm, and stridently independent spirit as a writer, filmmaker, performer, and media personality. Inescapably Gen X, Howell’s work is a postmodern tapestry of interconnected narratives realized in feature films like Pill Head and the upcoming Werewolf Serenade and books like Quantum Deadline and I Heart Sonoma. Howell’s byline has appeared in local and national outlets, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Men’s Health, the Sonoma Index-Tribune, and dozens of other regional publications. He is more recently associated with The North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun, for which he has been editor since 2019. Howell blogs humorously and candidly about the vicissitudes of working in the creative industrial complex and life as a cyclothymic wineaux. He has a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. For the past decade, Howell has lived in Petaluma, California, the wine country locale often the backdrop for his work.