2023 Youth, Animation, Documentary Nominations Council

Iranian/Australian filmmaker Faramarz K-Rahber has specialized in producing and directing documentary films since graduating from Griffith Film School in 2000. Nominated for an AFI award for Best Direction in Documentary for his debut film Fahimeh’s Story, he subsequently received worldwide acclaim for Donkey in Lahore which screened at Tribeca Film Festival and IDFA in Amsterdam. During the course of his career he has won a number of awards for his films, which tend to theme around cultural identity and diversity. Faramarz is an associate of Emmy International and a member of AACTA and ASC.

CARL JOSEPH PAPA is a software engineer by profession but filmmaking has always been his passion. He first dabbled in filmmaking by making experimental and animated short films, which have been showcased locally and internationally. His first feature experimental film, The Unforgetting, won NETPAC Jury Prize in QCinema International Film Festival 2014. In 2015 he made his first animated feature film Manang Biring. It was the first animated film to compete and to win Best Film in Cinema One Originals Film Festival 2015. The film was selected for several international film festivals and is the first full length animated Filipino film to be selected in the biggest animation film festival in the world, Annecy International Animated Film Festival. In 2017 he made the stop-motion animated short film Love Bites, a finalist in QCinema International Film Festival 2017 and the Grand Prize winner of Animahenasyon 2018, a Philippines based animation festival. In 2018 he made his second animated feature film The Leaving (Paglisan) which won best film in 2018 Cinema One Original Film Festival and won a FAMAS (Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences Awards) Award.

Zoe Sua Cho is a Korean New Zealanader filmmaker and co-founder of transnational film collective Mass Ornament Films. Her producing and editing credits include award winning South Korean feature House of Hummingbird, feature documentary Drifting Towards the Crescent, and They, an official selection at Cannes Film Festival. She has worked on numerous productions including Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, and is currently producing Between Goodbyes, a US/South Korean feature documentary for release in 2024. As a director, her film experiment Hotel/Transit was nominated for the Critics’ Award at Black Movie Geneve International Film Festival in 2015. In 2021, she produced Gina Kim’s VR film Tearless which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and won the best VR Film Award at Geneva International Film Festival. Zoe is a fellow of the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program, Berlinale Talents, and a BAFTA Newcomer.