Evaluation Juries

Bachelor of Science in Communication with emphasis on Educational Communication, with professional studies in television, film, script and editing in Colombia and Italy.

Her specialization is the design and development of audiovisual projects, as well as the acquisition and sale of audiovisual content internationally. She has worked in the selection of projects and as jury of markets, festivals and national funds worldwide. Claudia has about 10 years of experience in international relations and content distribution, mainly in documentary and animation. She also advises projects in the area of distribution, financing, co-production and internationalization, conducts workshops worldwide in these areas, in addition to coordinating the AFROLATAM Documentary Laboratories (Miradas Doc, Tenerife, Spain); and the Valencia Platform (DOCsValencia, Spain) and she was part of the team of international tutors of the INCAA Documentary Incubator (Argentina).

Dr. Emilia King (nee Zboralska) is a creator, educator and researcher with a focus on challenging the status quo in Canada’s media system. She has a unique profile that combines professional creative practice with award winning, rigorous research on media entrepreneurship and policy.

Emilia is the co-founder and CEO of Pink Moon Studio, an end-to-end media company that focuses on bold and distinctive storytelling through both its branded and original content divisions. Pink Moon was recently accepted into the Banff World Media Festival Spark Accelerator program. Currently, Emilia also leads Ryerson University’s entertainment media innovation incubator, the Transmedia Zone, and she is the Co-Director of Engagement at the Creative Innovation Studio.

Emilia’s research investigates the political economy of entrepreneurship in the digital-first sector and provides the first benchmark analysis of gender and race across key creative roles in Canadian web series. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, and she has presented at conferences worldwide.

Emilia is the former president of the Independent Web Creators of Canada, and a current board member of the Independent Production Fund. She is a strong proponent of design thinking as a problem solving and audience engagement strategy and leads design jams that bring together a wide cross-section of stakeholders to address social, cultural, technical, organizational, and policy challenges.

Eva completed her bachelor in communication studies, specializing in film at Concordia University in 2016. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in cinema at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU). Her first web series AMOURS D’OCCASION was selected at 2020 Canneseries edition in the Short Series competition, available on Tou.tv. It has won multiple prizes across the world including the Best Foreign Language Web Series at the NYC Web Fest 2020 and the Best Drama at the London Short Series Festival.

A published freelance writer and web content manager with a 20-year career. I have been a content freelancer for Disney, Time Warner, Viacom, News Corporation and various other media sites. I have also been hired by a few independent production companies to rewrite and polish scripts, have worked as press for high profile film festivals such as Toronto International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, NY Film Festival, among others. Also, I was on the 2019 web series jury for the American Black Film Festival, the 2010 AAWIC Film Festival, Ocktober Film Festival, and on the 2020 Jury for NYC Webfest.

Louiselle Roy is a consultant and specialist in multiplatform digital strategy / development for the fields of culture, entertainment and education. She has worked for over twenty-five years in the television and digital media industries. Louiselle began her career in digital media in 1997 at BCE Media and collaborated on innovative projects such as the Red Wich web series and the Insectia game. She continued her professional career and acts as director of business development and producer for various firms, thus contributing to the financing and production of numerous digital projects, in particular, Misogynie2.0, Défi Santé, La guerre des tuques 3D, Apocalypse 14- 18, The Children of TV and Sex Around the World I and II. Several of these projects have been selected or received various awards (Gemini, Webby Award, Rocky Awards, NHK Japan and Boomerang). In 2006, at Télé-Québec, as head of the new media department and supervised the overhaul of the channel portal and the production of digital projects. Previously, she was director of the education sector, at MediaSmart, and developed awareness and education tools on Internet-related issues. At the start of her career, at TFO, she produced more than 500 edutainment programs for the youth sector. From 2010-2016 Louiselle sat on the board of directors of the Regroupement des producteurs d´expérations Numeriques (Xn Quebec) and of Women in Cinema, Television and Digital Media (FCTMN).

Argentinian-Canadian Mara Gourd-Mercado is a cultural manager specializing in film, television, and digital media. For over a decade she put her expertise and energy to work as a publicist, promoting Quebec films around the world. In 2011, she moved into the advertising sector as communications manager at one of Canada’s leading agencies. She returned to the cultural sector in 2014, joining the RIDM team as communications director and then executive director from 2015 to 2020. Mara is currently executive director of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television’s Quebec Division.