42nd Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival - APRIL 13-27, 2023Shorts Competition

Andrea Meller
Andrea Meller is a Chilean-American, Los Angeles based filmmaker. Her most recent documentary film, Hotel USA, about refugees’ first night in America, is being showcased internationally and on the New York Times Op-Docs series. Formerly entitled Port of Entry, the film won the MSPIFF Short Documentary Award in 2017.

Previous projects include Now En Español which follows the Latina actresses who dub Desperate Housewives into Spanish for American audiences and is currently being nationally broadcast on PBS; Emmy-nominated Hard Road Home about formerly incarcerated men and women reentering life in NYC; and 156 Rivington (Sundance Channel) about the artist-run, anarchist center ABC No Rio.

Her films have screened at SXSW, Tribeca, SilverDocs, Big Sky, and NY International Latino Film Festival, among others, and by community groups internationally. Her shorter work has screened at the Netherlands Architecture Biennale, Museum of the City of NY, and Storefront for Art and Architecture. Her work has received support from Latino Public Broadcasting/CPB, California Humanities, & National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. Andrea is a fellow of the Film Independent Documentary Lab, the PBS and NALIP Producers Academies, and an alumna of Swarthmore College.

Dawn Mikkelson
Dawn Mikkelson is an Emmy Award-winning producer, documentary filmmaker and Minnesota resident. Her work has been seen on PBS, OutTV and Free Speech TV, and screened at numerous international festivals such as the Galway Film Fleadh, Cambridge Film Festival, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, DocuFest Atlanta, Leipzig DOK Market, American Indian Film Festival, Planet in Focus, and Washington DC Environmental Film Festival.

Mikkelson’s most recent film, RISKING LIGHT, is screening at MSPIFF this year after its premiere at Cinequest and screening at Cleveland International Film Festival. Her previous feature documentaries include The Red Tail, Green Green Water, THIS obedience, and Treading Water: A Documentary, each of which illuminated larger societal issues while creating understanding through the intimate stories of individuals.

Terence Chotard
Terence Chotard is the co-director of the film Once Upon a Kingdom which won MSPIFF’s Short Doc Award in 2016. The film documented the fragile existence of 82 Catholic nuns confronted by the realization of their advancing age and the absence of committed successors.

A graduate of literature and film studies, Chotard examines the poetry of cinematic language while questioning audience expectations. He lives and works in Montréal, Québec.

Brennan Vance
Brennan Vance is a Minneapolis-based filmmaker and 2017 McKnight Media Arts Fellow. Vance’s feature directorial debut The Missing Sun received a Jerome Foundation fellowship, was selected as part of the 2016 IFP Filmmaker Narrative Labs and recently played at the Sofia Independent Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival and Ashland Independent Film Festival, where it was awarded a special jury prize. Vance served as cinematographer for the feature documentaries Memories of a Penitent Heart [Tribeca ’16, PBS] and Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg [SXSW 2016, STARZ]. His work as a Director of Photography for Twin Cities PBS has earned him three Emmy Awards.

E.G. Bailey
E.G. Bailey is an Ivey award-winning spoken word artist, thespian, filmmaker, and producer. He is the recipient of a regional Emmy and his work is featured in the Target Art Connects commercial, now archived at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC).

Bailey has directed plays for renown theaters, including the Guthrie, Pillsbury House, and Park Square Theatre. Titles include Othello, Amiri Baraka’s Wise Why’s, Juno and the Paycock, The Brother Size, and Sha Cage’s N-Word and U/G/L/Y. He co-founded Tru Ruts and the MN Spoken Word Association. Bailey’s written works have been published in Solid Ground, the millennial issue of Drumvoices Revue, Warpland, and Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota, an anthology.

Bailey’s latest work includes the co-curation of America Now!, a film project which has shown at Tampere Short Film Festival in Finland, Latvia and others. His film, New Neighbors, was selected for Sundance Film Festival (2017) and has since been selected for over 100 other film festivals. Most recently, E.G. directed the world premiere of Khephra: A Hip Hop Holiday Story at Open Eye Figure Theatre and the midwest premiere of Dot at Park Square Theatre.

Sofia Carillo
Sofia Carrillo was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. As a director and stop-motion animator, she has participated in Berlinale Talents, MexiCannes, Talent Motion (Guadalajara) and Talent Lab at the Toronto Film Festival.

Her short film Prita Noire (2012) earned a Silver Ariel award at the Mexican Academy of Film Arts and Sciences. More recently, her short film Cerulia (2017), produced by Imcine/Nahuyaca Films, won Best Animated Short Film at The Guadalajara International Film Festival, Morelia International Film Festival, Mexico International Short Film Festival, Feratum Film Fest, CutOut Fest, Monterrey International Film Festival, St. Louis International Film Festival, and the Havana Film Festival.