Current Judges
Thomas Verdi
As Founder and CEO of The Film Fund LLC, filmmaker and producer Thomas Verdi wants to help fellow independent filmmakers secure funding for their projects. He serves as Head of Production at TAV Films and also works as a digital marketer and content strategist. Thomas has been writing and directing films since he was a kid, and his award-winning short film “The Toms” is currently on the festival circuit. He has his Master of Engineering in Technical Entrepreneurship and Bachelor of Arts in English from Lehigh University, where he also studied film studies and creative writing.
Brandon Harrison
Brandon Harrison is a producer, writer and programmer. He is a Feature Documentary Programmer at the Brooklyn Film Festival, served on the review committee for IFP and Tribeca's Pilot Season and has produced multimedia content for a variety of media outlets including Players’ Tribune, Vanity Fair and SLAM magazine. Brandon is a graduate of Morehouse College and received his M.A. in Cinema from UCLA. He loves a good story.
Jason Stefaniak
Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Jason Stefaniak received an MFA in Film/TV Production at New York University. Stefaniak’s work has been recognized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association; featured on “20/20,” MSNBC, and The Huffington Post; screened at the United Nations; and viewed nearly 1,000,000 times online. He is the producer of the award-winning short film, “A Warm Spell” (World Premiere, Clermont-Ferrand), and feature film, “But Not For Me” (Official Selection, Virginia Film Festival), which co-stars Roger Guenveur Smith. Stefaniak is the Feature Narrative Programmer for the Brooklyn Film Festival and a Production Manager at Freethink. Most recently, as an IFP Made in New York Fellow, Stefaniak created and directed the Topic docuseries, “Distressed Real Estate."
Dawn Keetley
Dawn Keetley is NEH Distinguished Chair and professor of English and Film at Lehigh University. Most recently, she has published Folk Gothic (2023) in the Cambridge University Press Elements series and the co-edited collection, Folk Horror: New Global Pathways (University of Wales Press, 2023). She has also edited collections on Jordan’s Peele’s Get Out, The Walking Dead, plant horror, and the ecogothic. She is managing editor of the journal Horror Studies and writes regularly for a website she co-founded, Horror Homeroom.
Eli Hess
With a degree in architecture from Lehigh University, Eli Hess works as a digital designer and fabricator of furniture, sculpture, and public art for Hess Industries, LLC in Baltimore, Maryland. The group responds to public calls for artists to design and build monumental, interactive sculpture for public spaces, including airports, public universities and municipalities. Hess has also been featured in galleries in Baltimore and Allentown, Pennsylvania, and he works as an artist in residence at Saint James Academy in Sparks, Maryland.
Previous Judges
Avi Setton
Avi Setton received a B.F.A. in Film & Television Production at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a minor in Philosophy, and an M.A. in English at Lehigh University. Avi's experience is wide-ranging: he's worked as a filmmaker and project manager at Google, taught documentary filmmaking to graduate students at Lehigh, taught screenwriting at SOCAPA, worked as a story logger on a reality TV show, worked as an editor, script supervisor, and assistant cameraman on films, TV shows, and commercials, among other freelance industry jobs.
