2024 AAAFF Jury
For each film festival, AAAFF assembles a Narrative & Documentary Jury of peers from the film and entertainment industry to select awards.
Categories include jury selections for feature and short films.
Narrative Jury
Maria Mealla
Maria Mealla was born and raised in La Paz, Bolivia,on a healthy balance of cultural folklore and Catholic superstition. She later moved to Austin, Texas, where she studied Theater Arts before landing in the Bay Area, where she taught herself filmmaking through work-trade.
Maria is a 2022 Sidewalk Narrative Lab Fellow. Her short film, LA MACANA, won HBO's 2023 Pa'lante Filmmaker Competition. BODY SHOP, her latest project in development, was selected to participate in the 2023 Tribeca Untold Stories competition and the 2024 NALIP Latino Media Market Accelerator. She is a Latino Public Broadcasting grantee for her short JUANA PELOS, which is currently screening at festivals. Most recently, Maria was selected as one of three fellows for COLECTIVO, an inaugural Latinx filmmaker initiative created by Tribeca in artnership with the Miranda Family Fund to bring to life Las Hijas de Rosalía, which will premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. Maria’s stories exist in the magical realism and coming-of-age genres. She strives to bring more films from a Latinx perspective to the big screen
Jeremiah Abraham
Jeremiah Abraham is founder and CEO of Tremendous Communications. With over 20 years in the entertainment industry, he has helped shape Hollywood’s evolving narrative, working on iconic franchises—including Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel, and DC—and serving as part of the marketing team of Crazy Rich Asians. Beyond PR and marketing, he also co-produced acclaimed independent films and was a Broadway co-producer on Here Lies Love, the first Filipino-led musical on Broadway. In 2024, he was named one of Variety’s 8 APIs Up Next in Entertainment, part of the inaugural class of rising industry leaders.
Jim kolmar
Based in Texas, born and raised in Wales, Jim is an independent film consultant and curator, primarily for South by Southwest Film & TV Festival (SXSW), where he has programmed international and documentary features since 2009. Other curatorial work includes Curaçao International Film Festival, Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival, consulting for Adelaide Film Festival, and custom film packages for KINO! Germany Now (Goethe Institute/German Film Office), and PANORAMICA for PLAY Acción Cultural in Spain. Every month Jim curates and hosts the public-facing KINO! Film Salon in partnership with Telescope Film.
Jim has consulted and participated on numerous international festival juries, panels and committees including Cannes Docs, EFM, FICCALI, Locarno Industry Academy (Bogotá), REC Festival, and Sarajevo Film Festival. He has also mentored Latin American students for London Film School, and guest lectured for University of Texas Department of Radio, Television and Film.
Documentary Jury
Jennifer Pelling
Jennifer Pelling is a documentary film producer focused on telling personal stories to generate social impact. Both independently and as a member of Impact Partners and Sundance Catalyst, she has financed, executive-produced, and produced over 30 films, 13 of which premiered at Sundance or SXSW, and one (SUGARCANE) that was nominated for an Academy award. She is particularly interested in narratives related to community, spirituality, identity, and technology. Jennifer is the co-founder of Likewise Directors, which uses innovative research to help filmmakers design impact-first projects, build supportive and aligned partnerships, and sustain their careers in a healthy and meaningful way.
Jennifer is also the president of the Tsuha Foundation, an anti-poverty nonprofit focused on systemic change, transformative relationships, and Asian/Asian American communities.
Amy Bench
Amy is a Sundance-supported, Emmy award-winning, and Oscar-shortlisted director and cinematographer. Her work explores immigration/migration narratives, communication access for the Deaf, reproductive justice, and LBGTQ+ rights, and involves both animation and live action. Her short animated documentary "More Than I Want to Remember" (2022, Paramount+) won an NAACP Image Award, a Social Impact Media (SIMA) Award, an Emmy, and was shortlisted for an Oscar in 2023. "More Than I Want to Remember" won Best Animated Short at the Tribeca Film Festival, Best International Short Documentary at Hot Docs, and is distributed by MTV Documentary Films. Her most recent short documentary, “Breaking Silence,” (2023, Independent Lens) won both the Jury Award and the Audience Award at SXSW, and the Impact Award at DOC NYC.
She is currently developing her first feature documentary, “Walker,” with support from the Sundance Documentary Fund and Catapult. She is a 2024-25 fellow with the Likewise Director’s Fellowship. As a cinematographer, Amy collaborates closely with directors, often working in the cinema verité tradition. She was the cinematographer on the Emmy award-winning short “Trans in America: Texas Strong” (2019, Conde Nast). “Texas Strong” grew into the feature “Mama Bears, (2022, Independent Lens). Amy has collaborated as a cinematographer on “Zurawski v Texas” (2024, Hidden Light Productions), “Every Body” (2023, Focus Features/NBC), and “You Are What You Eat” (2023, Netflix), among others.
kenya gillespie
Kenya Gillespie is a Japanese American filmmaker and composer based in Austin, Texas. His narrative short film JEREMIAH received its international premiere at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival (Cinéfondation) where it was nominated for the short film Queer Palm. It won Best Score at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival and was nominated for the Jury Prize for Best American Short Film at the Champs Élysées Film Festival. He is a 2021 Sundance Institute Uprise Grant finalist for his most recent narrative short GIVE, and he's been a recipient of the Austin Film Society Grant for GIVE, JEREMIAH, and his narrative short MICHELLE. His films have screened at numerous festivals around the world.
Kenya received an MFA in Film & Media Production from the University of Texas at Austin, an MM in Music Composition from Rice University and a BA in Music from Yale University. He is currently a lecturer at Texas State University and is in post-production on a feature documentary REMEDY.