Argo is very excited to announce the incredible jury for its Untold Stories Short Film Awards.
Nina Yang Bongiovi is a USC alumna producer. She is the producer of many critically acclaimed films including Fruitvale Station (2013), Dope (2015), and Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015). All three were selected to premiere at Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival with Fruitvale Station sweeping both the 2013 Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, as well as the 2014 PGA Stanley Kramer Award. Yang executive produced the TV show Godfather of Harlem which has been nominated for Outstanding Drama Series at the NAACP Image Awards. She has also produced Roxanne Roxanne (2017), Sorry to Bother You (2018), and A Kid From Coney Island (2019).
Ross Kauffman is a director, producer, cinematographer whose Born Into Brothels documentary earned him an Academy Award for Best Documentary alongside more than 40 other awards including the Audience Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Kauffman also produced Poster Girl: a nominee for the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short) in 2011. Kauffman was nominated for an Emmy Award for directing and producing the documentary E-team and for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, winning the Cinematography Award. E-team also received the F:ACT Award at CPH:DOX alongside many other wins and nominations. In 2019, he received a third nomination for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for his documentary, Tigerland, which won the One in A Million Award at Sun Valley Film Festival.
Ramin Bahrani is a director, producer and writer. He directed and produced Man Push Cart which had its world premiere at the 2005 Venice Film Festival and was selected at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival amongst many others. He also wrote and directed Chop Shop which premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival; he received numerous nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards for both films. Other films he co-wrote and directed include Goodbye Solo (2008), Plastic Bag (2009), At Any Price (2013), 99 Homes (2015), and Fahrenheit 451 (2018). At Any Price and 99 Homes were both nominated for the Golden Lion. Bahrani is a Columbia University alumnus where he is also a professor of film directing. Bahrani is a recipient of the 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Paula Yoo is an award-winning book author, writer and producer. Yoo has produced and written episodes for the critically acclaimed TV Shows Eureka, Mozart in the Jungle, Defiance, Supergirl, and Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists. She has also written for The Seattle Times, The Detroit News and PEOPLE Magazine. She is a Yale University and Columbia University alumna. Her debut novel Good Enough was a 2009 Honor Book for the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature.
Angga Dwimas Sasongko is a director and producer who founded award-winning Film Production company Visinema Pictures. His film We are Moluccans (2014) won Best Film at the Indonesian Film Festival and at the Maya Awards. He also directed Letters from Prague (2016) which was selected as the Indonesian entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards. His other films include Bukaan 8 (2017), 212 Warrior (2018), and One Day We’ll Talk About Today (2020).
Shola Lynch is a Peabody and Emmy award-winning filmmaker, and a 2016 member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She makes films about audacious women — and in particular black women. She is best known for her documentaries, Chisholm ’72 – Unbought & Unbossed (2004) and Free Angela & All Political Prisoners (2012). Currently she is working on her first scripted film and the lead character is, of course, a woman.
She is also the Curator for the Moving Image & Recorded Sound Division archive at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Through the work of rediscovering this large and unique collection, she hopes to inspire an army of storytellers from students and scholars to artists of all kinds.
Senain Kheshgi is a writer, director and producer. She is the Managing Director of the Media Production Company MAJORITY. Kheshgi wrote and directed the documentary Project Kashmir (2008), and the Emmy-nominated The Diplomat (2013). She directed the series Divas of Karachi. Her other projects as a producer include Moving Stories (2018), and Half the Picture (2018).
Kheshgi has served on panels and juries at Sundance, Hot Docs, ITVS, CAAM, Film Independent, Docuweeks and The International Documentary Association where she also serves on the Board of Directors.
Stacy Ike is an actress, TV host and entrepreneur. She has worked for the Hollywood Reporter, Essence, AT&T, Warner Brothers and more. She was the live show host of OWN Tonight and pre-show host for Fox’s Empire. Stacy has appeared in Dirty Laundry (2017) and the TV series Giants (2018). Stacy is a University of Missouri alumna. She is currently working on her new digital series Table Talk with Stacy Ike.
