F. Javier Gutiérrez is an award-winning Spanish filmmaker whose work has garnered more than 100 prizes worldwide. His first feature, Before the Fall (2008), was scheduled for a Hollywood remake by Wes Craven, and soon Javier was Hollywood-bound. His 2017 instalment of The Ring trilogy – Rings – won the praise of Koji Suzuki, writer of The Ring novels, and was a worldwide hit. Gutiérrez: ‘As a good friend told me once, “one for them, one for me – for my soul.” The Wait belongs to the latter category.’

Mahdi Fleifel is a Palestinian-Danish director who graduated from NFTS in the UK. In 2012, his first feature-length documentary A World Not Ours premiered at TIFF and gathered around 30 awards (Berlinale, CPH:DOX, Yamagata, DOC:NYC). He took part in the Cinéfondation in 2013, and subsequently directed several short films: A Man Returned (Silver Bear 2016, EFA nomination), A Drowning Man (Cannes, Bafta nominated), I Signed the Petition (IDFA award and EFA nomination). To a Land Unknown is his first fiction feature.

Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez are Mexican writer-directors and producers. Through their 15-year collaboration, they have produced two feature length films, The Darkest Days of Us (2017) and Identifying Features, as well as three short films. Identifying Features received awards at the Sundance, San Sebastián, Zurich, and Thessaloniki film festivals, and a Gotham Award for Best International Film. Sujo is their third feature film together.

Together with his producer-brother Silvan, writer-director-editor Ramon Zürcher (born in 1982) has been responsible for three of the most original feature films of the last decade: The Strange Little Cat (2013), winner of numerous awards, including the Audience Award at the Viennale; The Girl and the Spider (2021), winner of the Best Director and FIPRESCI (International Critics) prizes in the Encounters section of the Berlin festival; and now The Sparrow in the Chimney, nominated for the Golden Leopard at the recent Locarno festival. The working title for his next feature is The Young Woman with the Crowbar.

Gazmend Nela was born in 1982 in Kosovo. At the end of the war (1999), he came back from Macedonia, where he had been staying as a refugee, and started to work as a freelance photographer. In 2003 he enrolled at the Faculty of Arts in the Film & TV Directing department.
 In 2017 his first feature film, Rooftop Story, premiered at the World Film Festival Montreal and went on to play other festivals around the world. Silence of Sirens is his second feature. When not making films, he is a lecturer in film studies at University of Prishtina.