Yvan Iturriaga is an Oakland-based writer/director who spent his childhood border crossing through Latin America, living in the extended Chilean exile community. Constantly moving in the undefined space between exile and return, Yvan grew up surrounded by people with silenced, clandestine stories. His desire to make those stories known and remembered inspired him to become a filmmaker. His documentary work includes production of The Storm That Swept Mexico and episode six of the Peabody-award winning series Latino Americans; and co-directing A Photographer’s Journey for the PBS American Masters series. Yvan also wrote and directed the narrative shorts Sui Generis and Beep playing in over thirty festivals worldwide. Most recently, Yvan directed seasons one and two (fourteen episodes) of the original series The North Pole, executive produced by Rosario Dawson. His feature screenplay American Babylon won a 2018 SFFILM Rainin Screenwriting Grant and 2019 SFFILM FilmHouse residency. Yvan was also selected to attend the Cine Qua Non Lab screenwriters lab with the same project in August 2019.

María José Calderón is a producer and editor with a degree in Film and TV from ARCIS University and a master’s degree in journalism and documentary film from the University of California, Berkeley. María José has produced documentaries for the past 20 years. Her works have been disseminated in Latin America, the United States and Europe, at film festivals and sites such as HBO, The New York Times, PBS, ESPN, AJ + and The Climate Reality. She is currently producing several fiction and documentary projects in the development stage and is a co-producer of the Chilean/U.S. documentary in production, Troubled Water.