Industry Jury

Jury

Christine Solomon

Award-winning Canadian actress, Christine Solomon has been a performer since her tender years and has worked in a wide-range of Canadian, American and international productions.

Versatility is a key feature of Christine's body of work, which includes over 20 stage plays, voice-over gigs, television and film roles such as The Score (2001) starring academy award winners Robert DeNiro and Marlon Brando, VH1's Hysteria: The Def Leppard Story (2001), Sony Pictures' Head In The Clouds (2004), HBO Canada's Fakers (2009), hosting duties, music videos, television commercials and endorsement deals. The trained theater actress has also starred in award-winning foreign films such as Basra (2008) and Heliopolis (2009) that have reached regional and international success.

Solomon appreciates the opportunity to work for positive causes. She joined as the lead host for GMC and Josh Duhamel's campaign Building For America's Bravest and #Enlistme.

The multi-talent can be seen next in Hollywood feature comedies The Big Shot (2017) and Kids Can (2018). She is also attached as a co-lead in Gabriel's Gift directed by academy award nominee Roland Joffe.

Christine splits her time between Canada and the United States. When she isn't busy working on a project, she enjoys writing and traveling.
Jury

Hope Farley

Hope Farley is Adolescent Content's Executive Producer. For over twelve years, Farley has been Executive Producer and Producer at major commercial production companies in the industry as well as an Agency Producer at three of the largest advertising agencies in the US. Farley has produced hundreds of commercials and web content for the top production companies, agencies and directors in the business; she comes with an extensive background in both production and brand partnerships and sales. Farley handles new business, logistics and production.
Jury

India Ennenga

India Ennenga is a film and television actress. She starred in A&E's television show, The Returned, as well as David Simon's critically acclaimed show, Treme, on HBO. She has had lead roles in several independent films including: About Scout, Sun Belt Express, Nobody Walks, Multiple Sarcasms, The Women and The Last International Playboy.

India got her start in acting at the age of nine as the voice of Pinky on Nickelodeon's Pinky Dinky Doo. She recently graduated from Brown University, where she studied Comparative Literature.
Jury

Joel Madison

Most recently Joel was a producer/writer on HBO's new hit comedy, Crashing. Joel has spent the last 25 years on just about every form of television and film comedy along with a few dramas.

Starting out as a writer on the show Roseanne Joel also created a show called Malcolm and Eddie and the animated television show Bruno The Kid starring the vice of Bruce Willis.

Joel has worked on many Judd Apatow projects along the way, has a Peabody Award, is a member of the Television Academy, Judges the College Emmy Awards, is a frequent guest speaker at the Columbia College of Chicago's television and production classes  and is very excited to be a part of this film festival.

Jury

Juliet Werner

Juliet Werner is a NY-based filmmaker and segment producer on The Daily Show With Trevor Noah. Other comedy credits include The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, UCB Comedy, The Onion and Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn. Juliet also Produced and Directed the documentary film The Laughter Life which premiered at Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival in 2016. She volunteers with Girls Write Now, a writing and mentoring organization in NYC.
Jury

Kris Meyer

Producer, Owner at BlackEagle

Kris Meyer is the owner of BlackEagle, an Entertainment and Media company, and is an Emmy nominated and award winning producer who has worked for the past 19 years with the comedic duo The Farrelly Brothers under their production banner, Conundrum Entertainment.

He has worked as a creative executive, production consultant and producer on such blockbuster hits as There's Something About Mary, Me, Myself & Irene, Shallow Hal, Fever Pitch, Hall Pass, The Three Stooges and Dumb & Dumber To.

Conundrum's body of work has resulted in over $2 billion in box office sales. Kris continues to work with The Farrelly Brothers on joint ventures. Kris has independently worked on a number of films and TV projects ranging from Emmy nominated ESPN/The Lost Son of Havana and Plimpton! which aired on PBS/American Masters chronicling the life of George Plimpton.

Kris' most recent movie, The Do Over, starring Adam Sandler released on May 27 2016 on Netflix.
Jury

Laurie Weltz

Laurie Weltz's debut feature film, Wrestling With Alligators, premiered at Sundance where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. "Alligators" stars Joely Richardson, Aleksa Palladino, Claire Bloom, Adrienne Shelly, Sam Trammel and Jay O. Sanders and was released theatrically and on video and television. 

Her second feature film, About Scout, based on her award winning script (PAGE and Champion Screenwriting Awards), has recently been released both theatrically and on VOD and DVD. The film stars India Ennenga, Ellen Burstyn, Danny Glover, Jane Seymour, Nikki Reed and James Frecheville.

Her most recent script, The Night Swimmer, which was picked up by Nous Entertainment, was selected for The Stowe Story Labs, where it was awarded the PAGE Screenwriting Fellowship.

Laurie has written two other optioned screenplays, Watermoon and Monkey River which won the grand prize in the PAGE Screenwriting Competition. 

Laurie is a graduate of NYU Grad Film School, and her award winning thesis film was picked up by USA Television. She has worked as a freelance director and editor for hundreds of television shows, music videos, documentaries and industrials and her work has twice been nominated for ACE awards.
Jury

Phil Clarke

Phil Clarke (aka philmscribe) is a UK-based script consultant and screenwriter with some twenty years service to cinema.

After years working at the coal face of film on such features as Sleepy Hollow, Enigma, The Beach and two of the biggest box office franchises: Star Wars and Harry Potter, he turned to writing - both for the page and the screen. His screenplays have been optioned both in the UK and Hollywood and his books have been published worldwide.

These days Phil works as a script consultant; his clients have won or placed highly at major script competitions, had their projects optioned, while others have gone on to be produced, the best debuting at Cannes.
Jury

Ramaa Mosley

Ramaa Mosley is the Creative Director for Adolescent and Adolescent.net; she is a filmmaker and activist who directed her first documentary at the age of 16 years old, which won the UNEP Global 500 Award.

Over the past seventeen years, Mosley has directed feature films and hundreds of award winning commercials. Mosley was inspired to found Adolescent when she saw the power of the unique and visionary work that her 11 and 13 year old "mentees" were creating. Starting Adolescent allowed Mosley to connect talented young directors with brands looking to speak to a young audience.
Jury

Sara Shepard

Sara Shepard is the author of Pretty Little Liars, The Lying Game, The Perfectionists, The Amateurs, YA Fiction.

For as long as she can remember, Sara Shepard has been writing. However, when she was young she also wanted to be a soap opera star, a designer for LEGO, a filmmaker, a claymation artist, a geneticist and a fashion magazine editor when she grew up. She and her sister have been creating joint artistic and written projects for years, except they're pretty sure they're the only ones who find them funny.

Sara's bestselling young adult series, Pretty Little Liars, is loosely based on her experiences growing up on Philadelphia's Main Line... although luckily she never had any serious stalkers. The series has also inspired the ABC Family television series of the same name.

Exceptional Young Filmmakers/Jurors

Jury

Isabella Olaguera

Writer/Director Spell, Scout Film Festival 2016 Winner Best Overall Film

Isabella Olaguera is a New Jersey-based filmmaker. During high school, Isabella's short films garnered a total of 115 international acceptances and awards from film festivals including Scout, All American High School, Tallgrass International, Los Angeles International, Chicago International Children's, and the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

After graduating high school, Isabella made the decision to skip college and pursue a career in Assistant Directing right away. She thanks her parents and brother (all professionals in the arts with backgrounds in graphic design, filmmaking and fine arts) for their unending support of her choice. SInce then, Isabella has assistant directed 5 feature films in addition to many shorts, pilots and web productions. Some of her notable projects include: FML: The Movie, directed by and starring vine stars Jason Nash, Brandon Calvillo and Bart Baker; Horror Time (working title) Executive Produced by James Franco; and My Nephew Emmett, a short film about Emmett Till that was featured on CNN and in Time Magazine.

Isabella is a proud (and quite possibly the youngest) member of New York Women in Film and Television, a selective nonprofit organization that supports the success of women in the industry. Assistat Directing is Isabella's full-time job and her main passion; it allows her to be incredibly self-sufficient, travel to distant places, meet other talented crew members and contribute to unique and fascinating projects.

Isabella keeps her age a well-kept secret to most crews she works with and strongly believes that age bears no indication to talent, professionalism and industry experience. Isabella aims to become a trainee for the Director's Guild of America and hopes to one day become a union 1st AD. She plans on submitting the application on her 21st birthday (the youngest a DGA member is allowed).
Jury

Srwsht Abarash

Writer/Director Missing Facts, Winner Scout Film Festival 2016 Best Horror

Missing Facts was Srwsht's first short film. Horror is a new style for Kurdish films. Srwsht says, "I want to make horror movies for my country (Kurdistan) out of the chaos. Filmmaking brings out the creativity that is within me 24 hours a day, I want to blend the current situation in Iraqi Kurdistan and filmmaking itself, to reflect and put a spotllight on the horror that has happened and keeps happening every day here in Kurdistan. With short water and electricity supply in this region due to financial crisis, schools and public places keep closing. Filmmaking is my escape, is the way forward for me. Without it I vanish into thin air like a particle. Filmmaking gives me euphoria."

Srwsht has been busy working on the Slemani Interntaional Film Festival and has just wrapped shooting his latest short film, She Looks Like You.

Scout Film Festival

Scout Film Festival (Scout)—is a 501c3 non-profit organization that produces an annual international event celebrating emerging filmmakers - aged 24 and under - through film.
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