International Migration & Environmental Film Festival

Kurt has traveled around the world capturing stories all about the natural environment for the last 35 years. Today he directs the NOAA/Smithsonian Ocean Today Program to produce science videos for students all about the ocean realm.

David Craig is co-founder of Site Media Inc. and a producer of all its films. Prior to Site Media, he worked as an analyst at Telefilm Canada.
In 2005 while at Telefilm, he was awarded the Ajjiit Nunavut Media Association Industry Recognition Award for his work with producers from Nunavut.

He entered the film and television industry working on the feature film Life Classes, produced and directed by William D. MacGillivray. He continued working with MacGillivray’s company Picture Plant Ltd. as researcher and coordinator for the feature documentary I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art. In 1988 Craig was appointed Film, Photography and Video Officer for the Ontario Arts Council. David has produced a number of documentaries including the two latest Strange & Familiar: Architecture on Fogo Island (2014) and Spring & Arnaud (2013).

Willa Carroll is a writer and interdisciplinary artist. Her debut full-length poetry collection, Nerve Chorus (The Word Works), was noted in The Common as a “meticulously choreographed treatment of life as art.” Carroll’s poems have appeared in AGNI, Poem-A-Day, Tin House, The Slowdown and elsewhere. She won Narrative Magazine’s Third Annual Poetry Contest and Tupelo Quarterly’s TQ7 Poetry Prize, judged by Brenda Hillman. Her chapbook, Demolition Suite, was a finalist for the Tomaž Šalamun Prize and selected for the Split Rock Press Chapbook Series. Her poetry videos and multimedia collaborations have been featured in Interim Poetics, Narrative Outloud, and TriQuarterly. Awarded Best Poetry Film at the International Migration and Environment Film Festival, her work has screened at festivals in the US, Canada, UK, and Denmark. Carroll has collaborated with numerous artists, musicians, dancers, and performers. After earning degrees from Bennington and living in NYC for twenty-five years, she’s currently based in upstate, NY.

Conor is an award winning documentary filmmaker and professional cinematographer. His films have been screened at festivals internationally and toured across Canada. His work is meant to start a conversation; ideas and perspectives to challenge the norm and spark transformation as a result.

Roel Swierenga is the founder of the Hansa Green Tour Foundation in The Netherlands and organizer of sustainability events, study trips & trade delegations, and speaker at conferences. As director of the annual Hansa Green Tour event in Europe, an epic road trip with electric and alternative energy vehicles through Northern Europe, he decided to have these inspiring sustainability road trips documented and filmed from the very beginning in 2011 for personal use and to share with all partners and participants.

Over the years these video documentaries have become more professional and nowadays Hansa Green Tour organizes re-union events where these documentaries are proudly presented to participants, partners and sponsors. As event director however Roel Swierenga was mostly guiding the camera crew, busy behind the scenes but not behind the camera himself. Due to the covid pandemic and all events & traveling being cancelled, Roel Swierenga started to train himself in mobile filmmaking, editing and drone flying skills.

In 2021 he started to make a first series of short films, to gain experience and learn the art of mobile filmmaking with smartphones, smartphone lenses and drones. With the ambition to grow as a filmmaker and make impactful productions.

Ciril Jazbec is a Slovenian freelance photographer and film director. His work focuses on communities that are confronted by the effects of globalisation and the climate crisis. In his long-term projects, he aims to raise awareness about the deterioration of our planet and the increasing impact of the climate crisis.

He has seen the rising sea levels in Kiribati, the erosion and melting of permafrost in Alaska, and has spent over seven months in Greenland documenting climate effects on the Inuits.

Jazbec studied Management at the Faculty of Economics in Ljubljana before moving to London to study photography. He gained an MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication in 2011.

His awards include the World Press Photo Award in 2021, Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award in 2013, Photo Folio Review Les Rencontres d’Arles winner in 2013, Magnum 30 under 30 in 2015, PDN’30 New and emerging photographers to watch in 2016, and Pictures of the Year International World Understanding Award
in 2018.

Jazbec has been working as a contributing photographer for National Geographic Magazine since 2014. He is also a National Geographic Explorer.

Jazbec’s works have been exhibited and presented in various venues including Les Rencontres d’Arles, Visa pour l’Image, The Photoville, PhEST, Format Festival, The Annenberg Space for Photography, Newseum, East Wing Gallery, The Royal Geographical Society, and elsewhere.