TEAM
Xinyan Yu
Co-director, Co-producer
Xinyan is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker based in Washington DC. Born and raised in Wuhan, China, Xinyan started her journalism career in 2012 as a producer for BBC News in Beijing. She has covered major breaking news across Asia and North America for a decade, and won a White House News Photographers Association award, an ONA Digital Storytelling award and a WAN-IFRA Asian Digital Media award. Now an independent filmmaker, Xinyan has directed content for international broadcasters including BBC, NHK, PBS NOVA and PBS Frontline. She is a New America National Fellow, a Firelight Media Doc Lab fellow, a Brown Girls Doc Mafia Sustainable Artist fellow and an alumnus of the Yaddo Residency.
Max Duncan
Co-director, Co-producer, DoP
Max Duncan is an award-winning filmmaker, cinematographer and journalist whose work has appeared on platforms including the BBC, PBS, The Guardian, The New York Times and Al Jazeera. He worked for a decade in China, first as a video journalist for Reuters news agency in Beijing and then independently, exploring the country’s meteoric rise from many angles. He has since reported widely across Asia - including multiple trips to North Korea - Africa, Europe and Latin America. He has won a World Press Photo Award, been supported by organizations including Pulitzer, and is an alumnus of Yaddo and Logan Nonfiction programs.
Tamara Dawit
Co-producer
Tamara Dawit, an Ethiopian-Canadian filmmaker and alumna of Berlinale Talents and EAVE, has produced notable films such as GIRLS OF LATITUDE (2008), GRANDMA KNOWS BEST (2014), FINDING SALLY (2020), and ALAZAR (2024) through her company, Gobez Media. Currently, she's actively involved in producing a diverse range of dramatic and documentary projects. In 2021, Tamara was a TIFF Producer Fellow and won the Doc Institute Vanguard Award and the Gordon Parks Award for Black Excellence in Filmmaking. She's also a Chalmers Arts Fellow (2023) and a MacDowell Fellow (2024).
Biel Andrés
Editor
Biel Andrés is a film editor originally from Barcelona based in Copenhagen. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Audiovisual Communication from University Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). He has worked with the internationally acclaimed director Bille August, and the Danish film editor Janus Billeskov Jansen in The Kiss (2020), Ehrengard (2022), and The Count of Monte Cristo (2024). He has edited documentary films such as Balomania (2024), Attacked - The Copenhagen Shootings (2020), The Reformist - A Female Imam (second editor and tv editor, 2019), Oliver’s will (2018), or War Dance (2017). He is a member of the Danish Film Academy and the Society of Danish Film Editors.
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Ali Helnwein
Composer
Ali Helnwein is a Los Angeles-based composer who has worked on multiple Emmy- and Grammy-winning projects. Films he has scored have gone to festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, TIFF, and appears on Netflix, HBO and other platforms. Several projects he composed for Netflix made it to the streamer’s Top 10. In 2010 his “Rain” Violin Concerto was commissioned by Kat Von D and premiered in LA’s historic Million Dollar Theater. He previously founded the Traction Avenue Chamber Orchestra, premiering new works and playing to new audiences. His work has also been performed by orchestras around the world.
Jeppe Bødskov
Editor
Jeppe Bødskov is a Copenhagen-based film editor, educated at the National Film School of Denmark. His documentary credits include Democrats (Best Documentary Feature, Tribeca Film Festival 2015) and President (World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award: Vérité filmmaking, Sundance 2021), both directed by Camilla Nielson, and the documentary series Cash, directed by Eva Muldvad. He has worked on many fiction series, including Follow the Money (Best TV Series, Danish Film Awards 2019). He is currently editing a documentary series on 30 years of Danish military history for national broadcaster DR.
Siyi Chen
Editor
Siyi Chen is a documentary filmmaker and editor based in New York. She holds a dual degree in World History and Chinese Literature from Peking University and an MA in News and Documentary from NYU. Siyi’s feature documentary debut Dear Mother, I Meant to Write about Death premiered at the Busan International Film Festival in 2022 and was selected for IDFA 2022. Siyi is the winner of the SFFILM’s 2019 New American Fellowship and, in 2023, joined the first cohort of PBS’s Ignite Mentorship for Diverse Voices Initiatives. Inspired by her cross-cultural background, Siyi’s work explores migration, identity and family dynamics, with a focus on lyrical and poetic portraits of women in the diaspora.
Sura Abera Amayu
Field producer
Sura Abera Amayu is a producer and researcher from Oromia, the region where Made in Ethiopia takes place. Having studied philosophy and social anthropology, he works on news reports and documentaries across Ethiopia for a broad range of international media including German TV and Expressen. A member of the Oromo ethnic group and fluent English speaker, he provides cultural and linguistic interpretation and conducts surveys for academic, policy, non-profit organizations and private consultancy firms.
Goush Fissehatsion Girmay
Field producer
Goush Fissehatsion Girmay is an entrepreneur, researcher and business liaisons specialist from Tigray, Ethiopia. He holds an MA in Sociology and an IMBA from the University of Lanzhou, China, where he won a major scholarship to research the corporate social responsibility of Chinese companies in Ethiopia. He has also contributed to publications on the digital divide in Ethiopia. A fluent Mandarin and English speaker, Goush has almost a decade’s experience working with Chinese and other foreign businesses in Ethiopia, and has unique insight into the dynamics of Chinese international investment.