JULIA HASLETT is a British-American filmmaker who makes expressionistic documentaries about contemporary and historical subjects. Her films have played around the world at festivals, theatres, universities, and on television. Her first feature, An Encounter with Simone Weil, premiered at IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam), won the Special Founders Prize at Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival, and was a New York Magazine Critic's Pick. She is producer/director of the highly acclaimed Worlds Apart series about healthcare inequities, and producer of the companion documentary Hold Your Breath (PBS). Her work has received support from the Vital Projects Fund, Greenwall Foundation, and University Research Council, among many others. Julia has received fellowships from Macdowell, IFP Documentary Lab, Wildacres, VCCA, and Bogliasco. She was a Filmmaker-in-Residence at the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics, taught in the University of Iowa’s Dept of Cinematic Arts, and is currently associate professor of media production at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

MENGQI JIANG is a visual storyteller from Sichuan province, who splits her time between China and the US. She has made two short documentaries on Chinese immigrants to the US, exploring  their struggles and the cultural shock they experienced. As America's immigration policy changes, she plans to document how that will affect prospective immigrants from China. She joined the Pushed up the Mountain team in 2015, and brings to the film a keen cinematic eye, a deep knowledge of Chinese culture, and a capacity to navigate between and across nations and nationalities. Mengqi earned her B.A. in English at the Beijing Language and Culture University, and her M.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

SHANNON KENNEDY is a documentary editor and consultant whose credits include Esther Robinson’s A Walk into the Sea, which won a Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival, and Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern’s The Trials of Daryl Hunt, which won a DuPont Award. Along with director Kimberly Reed, Kennedy edited Prodigal Sons, which has won numerous awards. Other credits include VLAST (POWER), The Canal Street Madam, and Words of Witness, and co-editor of La Camioneta, which received an IDA award. Kennedy was an additional editor on Natalia Almada's El General, which won the Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and a consulting editor on Almada's film El Velador, which premiered at Cannes. Her most recent film is 3 Days 2 Night, which premiered at Full Frame in 2019.

DANIEL THOMAS DAVIS creates music singled out for its “soul-wrenching” connection to the human voice and its “rich harmonic and textural language” (Classical Voice North America). His recent works for the stage include Six.Twenty.Outrageous, a Symphony Space / American Opera Projects production directed by Doug Fitch, Family Secrets: Kith & Kin with North Carolina Opera, and The Impossible She with Rhymes with Opera at the New York Opera Fest. Beyond his many concert performances at venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Royal Opera House, Dan frequently collaborates with a wide range of filmmakers, writers and choreographers --- including multiple films with Julia Haslett. His work has earned him fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, and Yaddo; he directs the composition program at Binghamton University (SUNY).

Kang-yen Chiu is associate professor at the Graduate Institute for Studies in Visual Cultures, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) Taiwan. He received his PhD in English Literature from the University of Glasgow in 2012 and specializes in the writings of Sir Walter Scott, hospitality and postcolonial theories. He is also an expert on the aesthetic thought of the English and Scottish Enlightenment. He has published in journals such as The Wenshan Review, The BARS Review and Scottish Literary Review. He is working on a monograph, Sir Walter Scott and China.