Team
It’s simple: we love what we do.
We come together as an inter-disciplinary team with a collective ownership of ideas and shared passion for film-driven social impact.
Ruggero Romano - Founder & Creative Director
Incredibly passionate about storytelling, Ruggero is a film director, producer and facilitator with an inter-disciplinary skillset in film, communication and community engagement.
Driven and inspired by the principles of positive social change, he is currently devoted to impact-driven filmmaking to unite, support and empower communities across Europe and North America. His work to support and empower Downtown Eastside Vancouver (V6A) has kickstarted his journey in film-driven social impact, to unite humans in the face of hardship through meaningful interaction.
In 2022, he announced his latest film “Cielo Aperto" at the 79th Mostra del Cinema di Venezia and is currently planning his next project.
He also has a very sharp nose.
Elmira Shahanaghi - Education & Marketing
Elmira is a writer, marketing communications and creative strategist that connects people through curated stories of universal appeal. Her passion lies in using films as an ethnographic tool for the co-creation of projects with a social impact across global communities.
As an award-winning short film producer and educator she believes that films serve as a transformative and lifelong medium to inspire, mobilize, foster community and individual development through building trust with viewers. Her experience in strategic marketing and communications includes multinational companies, nonprofits and start-ups globally.
She holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing and Strategy from IE Business School in Spain and completed her BSc. in Kinesiology at the Université de Montreal.
Arman Kazemi - Outreach & Programming
Arman Kazemi is a Vancouver-based writer and filmmaker. His journalistic work has seen him report from Vancouver to France and Brazil, appearing in print and online in the Globe and Mail, CBC and the Georgia Straight.
As a documentary filmmaker, his work has been screened in Canada, Mexico and Europe. Arman Kazemi cofounded and acts as Director of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Film Festival in Vancouver, the first festival in the city to explicitly work with and highlight filmmakers from the region and its diaspora.
Zack Mullone - Media & Programming
Zack is a Creole-Texan anthropologist, communicator and musician based in Montreal.
His passion and awareness of film provide space for meaningful, empowering projects across communities through his holistic approach to ethnographic research.
He is motivated to provide a platform for unheard under-represented voices and create positive structural changes in North America.
Matthew Broughton - Media & Programming
Matthew is a Canadian Director, Writer, Film Journalist, and Film Festival Programmer. His passion and dedication to film turned into writing articles about the craft of filmmaking and film history. He is always on the lookout for new cinematic voices to discover and promote across communities. He’s a certified film fanatic, driven to share stories that impact audiences around the world.
Ilaria Foroni - Project Manager
Ilaria is a researcher and project manager in the cultural field. Alongside her economic background, she is also a dancer and performer based in Venice.
She is pursuing a Ph.D. in Management and is affiliated with the Ca' Foscari University Centre called "aiku - Art, Industry, Culture". Her work focuses on Art&Business projects and live performance management, with a particular emphasis on cultural policy and territorial development.
After a year of research fellowship, Ilaria Foroni has been a Ph.D. student in Management at Ca' Foscari University since September 2022.
Hedyeh “Hedy” Bozorgzadeh - Project Manager & Outreach
Hedy is an Iranian-Canadian filmmaker with strong interest in socially-conscious impact stories that focus on voices from the margins.
She is an alumna of the UBC Film Program, WFF Writers’ lab, Wet Ink Collective, NSI Business for Producers lab, CFC/Netflix Marketplace Accelerator, WEMW Impact Pyramid lab, and the recipient of grants from Canada Council for the Arts and N.F.B.(Pacific/Yukon). She has eight shorts under her belt, including The Temptation of Mrs. Anderson (Montreal Short Film Festival, 2003, Sendai Short Film Festival 2003) and “The Silent Torch” as part of the anthology series, The Coloring Book: Digital Stories by Artists of Color, a community initiative at the N.F.B. (nominated, Leo Awards 2009). Hedy’s first feature film, “Brother, Man” is currently in development with the CBC, Telefilm (Stream for Black and People of Colour),CMF (PPRC), and Creative BC (Project Development Fund. She won the WFF Power Pitch 2019 for the project and successfully secured funding from the Shaw Rocket Fund. Hedy was part of Telefilm’s RDVCANADA - MEET THE PRODUCERS initiative SXSW 2022 as well as Banff Spark 2022 cohort.
Conor Provenzano - Education & Programming
Conor Provenzano is a film director, editor and facilitator whose work is motivated by a commitment to social justice and worldview expansion. Inspired by the concept of devotional cinema, he believes in the unique transformative potential of cinema as a contemplative language that can inspire transcendent feelings.
Francesco Ranieri - Project Manager & Partnerships
Francesco, hailing from Turin, Italy, excelled academically with a first-class degree in Business with Marketing from Regent's University, London, and deepened his passion for electronic music with studies in Audio Production at SAE Glasgow.
As a director at Sgaia Foods, a leading plant-based meat manufacturer, he played a pivotal role in promoting sustainable business practices. Concurrently, he pursued his love for music under the pseudonym "b.mod" and collaborated on a documentary film with Movies Move Us, set in Venice.
His career uniquely intertwines business acumen with artistic creativity, showcasing his multifaceted talents.
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