True/False Film Programmer Amir George has been appointed as the new Artistic Director of Kartemquin Films. We’re sad to see him go but also incredibly excited to see what Amir does in his new role. Amir was with T/F for four editions of the Fest and is a true champion for nonfiction filmmakers and artists. We’re excited to have reimagined our programming team ahead of the 20th edition of the Fest, and we are thrilled to welcome Khaula Malik and Jonathan Ali to the team as Program Advisors for the Film Program. They will work closely with Film Programmer Kristal Sotomayor and Artistic Director Chloé Trayner to curate this year’s line-up. We are also expanding Eynar Pineda’s involvement to be a Program Advisor on Synapses programming alongside his role as Guest and Industry Manager. The team will continue to be supported by Programming Coordinator Lindsey Arrington.
Team Bios:
Jonathan Ali – Program Advisor, Film
Jonathan Ali is director of programming for Third Horizon Film Festival in Miami. Based in London, England, he is co-founder of Twelve30 Collective, which screens Caribbean cinema to UK audiences. He is a programmer with Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, programme consultant for Open City Documentary Festival and Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors programme, and a peer reviewer for the British Film Institute/Doc Society feature documentary fund. Jonathan began his career at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival (2006-2015) and has been a consultant for Sheffield Doc/Fest and a programmer for Getting Real, the International Documentary Association’s industry conference.
Khaula Malik – Program Advisor, Film
Khaula Malik is a Pakistani American filmmaker and artist whose work explores intersectional identity and concepts of home. Her work is genre agnostic and spans both the documentary and fiction space. Her film How the Air Feels premiered at AFI Docs, won the National Board of Review Student Grant Award, and the Special Jury Award at the Sharjah Film Platform. Her latest film, There Was Nobody Here We Knew, won best short doc at Fayetteville Film Festival and Virginia Film Festival. It was acquired by PBS and is now streaming online. She has served on the review committee for the Peabody Awards and the Gotham Documentary Lab. She is currently in post-production on her first feature doc and which has been supported by DOCNYC and the Catapult/True False Rough Cut Retreat. Her work has been featured on PBS, The New York Times, and Sight & Sound. She is a proud member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and a graduate of the MFA program at the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema.
Eynar Pineda – Program Advisor, Synapses
Eynar Pineda is a Baltimore-based freelance documentary producer and festival professional specializing in guest services and event production. He has worked with True/False Film Fest, Camden International Film Festival, Flaherty Seminar, and DOC NYC.
Kristal Sotomayor – Film Programmer
Kristal Sotomayor (they/she) is a bilingual Latinx festival programmer, film critic, and filmmaker based in Philadelphia. They serve as Film Programmer for the True/False Film Festival, Awards Competition Manager for the IDA Documentary Awards and the Interim Editor-In-Chief of the cinéSPEAK Journal. In the past, Kristal was the Programming Director for the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival and has assisted with curation for SFFILM, “Spotlight on Documentaries” at IFP Week, Tri-Co Film Festival and the award-winning PBS documentary series POV | American Documentary. They are a 2021 Film Festival Leadership Lab Fellow. Currently, they are working on EXPANDING SANCTUARY, a documentary about the campaign led by the Latinx immigrant community in South Philadelphia to limit police surveillance. They are also developing a docu-animation film ALX THROUGH THE LABYRINTH that takes a dive into the nonbinary Latinx Alice In Wonderland-like reality of contracting COVID-19.
Chloé Trayner – Artistic Director
Chloe Trayner is the Artist Director of Ragtag Film Society, working across both Ragtag Cinema and True/False Film Fest in Columbia, Missouri. She is a film and events programmer with a specialism in non-fiction and talent development. Originally from the UK, Chloe is the Founder of Assembly Documentary Development Lab and has worked with organizations such as Bertha DocHouse, BFI Future Film Festival, The Guardian, Wellcome Trust and UnderWire Festival. She was Festival Director of Open City Documentary Festival from 2018 – 2020 as well as the co-director of Overnight Film Festival.
Lindsey Arrington – Program Coordinator
Lindsey Arrington is a Missouri local. After seven years teaching in France & Spain, she returned to Missouri in 2019 to join the True/False Film Fest team as Programming Coordinator. Lindsey holds a bachelor of arts in French and Classical Studies from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.