VIFF 2024 Juries

Chris Chong Chan Fui is a moving image artist who works between Southeast Asia and Canada. He has exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum, Palais de Tokyo, EYE Film Institute, and the Gwangju Biennale, while premiering films at the Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, BFI, and Wavelengths. Chong is a Smithsonian Institute fellow, a Ford Foundation fellow, and a Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Arts Fellow. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Film at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts.

Photo by AGdeMesa

Jamila Pomeroy is a Kenyan-Canadian internationally published writer, screenwriter, director, and host. She has worked with over 20 globally recognized outlets, namely BBC, CBC, Telus, Hypebae & Hypebeast, Network Entertainment, Amazon Prime, Netflix, and more. Her work across all mediums is known to be impact-driven, with immersive worlds that unpack contemporary social issues. Specifically, her work often champions historically underrepresented people and narratives, while generating accessible, intellectually charged and comedic storylines.

Photo by Tyler Scomazzon

Yi-Jung Chen is a Taiwanese filmmaker and cross-media visual artist with degrees from Lumière University in France. Known for blending European aesthetics with Taiwanese culture, her works span documentaries, VR films, and features. Her VR film Dora received international acclaim. Committed to cultural narratives and women’s issues, Chen also contributes as a board member of the Taiwan International Queer Film Festival. Her upcoming projects include Granny Must Die and The Grandmaster’s Gift.

Joella Cabalu is a Filipino Canadian documentary filmmaker based in Vancouver, BC. Her culturally impactful films include It Runs in the Family and Koto: The Last Service. As a producer, her acclaimed documentaries have screened at Tribeca, The New Yorker, and Cannes Docs. In 2022, she produced her first feature documentary back home with support from the Telefilm Talent to Watch fund and celebrated its hometown World Premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

Jorge Amigo is the Head of Cultural Programming for the Vancouver Public Library. He previously worked at the Toronto Public Library and Canada’s National Observer. Jorge has served on the boards of the PuSh Festival and the Indian Summer Festival, has worked as a programming advisor for the Vancouver Latin American Cultural Centre, and sits on the City of Vancouver’s Arts & Culture Advisory Committee. He grew up in Mexico City and has lived in Canada since 2007.

Mila Zuo is an Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is an award-winning author and filmmaker of Vulgar Beauty: Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium (Duke University Press, 2022), Carnal Orient (2016), and Kin (2021), among other works of research and film praxis. Her scholarly and teaching interests include contemporary global art cinemas, film philosophy, feminist and queer theory, and anti-racist and anti-colonial theories and methods.

Hannah Baek is a Seattle-based film programmer and educator. They received their MA in Regional Studies East Asia from Harvard, where they researched gender queerness in the “Dark Ages” of 1970s South Korean cinema. With special interests in Asian cinema, queer cinema, and animation, they teach classes through the Seattle International Film Festival’s education program and have curated for local Seattle festivals, the Seattle Asian Art Museum, and the Harvard Film Archive.

Miryam Charles is a Canadian-Haitian director, producer, and cinematographer. She has produced several short and feature-length fiction films. Her films have been presented at various festivals in Quebec and abroad. In 2022, her first feature film, Cette maison, premiered at the Berlinale, and was named one of Sight and Sound’s best films of the year. That same year, she released the short film Au crépuscule at the Locarno Film Festival.

Originally from Madrid, Noé Rodríguez is a filmmaker and educator currently living on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His films have been exhibited internationally at art institutions, film festivals, community-based organizations, and television networks. He has received several awards, grants, and scholarships, holds an MFA in film from York University, and is currently an Assistant Professor in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.