Drew Ayers is a Professor of Film at Eastern Washington University, where he teaches, researches, and writes on the subjects of visual effects, digital technology, visual culture, and nonhuman theory. The author of Spectacular Posthumanism: The Digital Vernacular of Visual Effects (Bloomsbury, 2019), Drew’s work has also been published in Animation, Configurations, Film Criticism, and various edited anthologies. Drew has just completed his next book, Action Bodies: VFX, Identity, and Embodiment in Blockbuster Cinema.
juror for Most Promising Filmmaker
Champ Ensminger is an award winning filmmaker born in Chiang Mai, Thailand, raised in Spokane, and based in Seattle. Previously a staff editor at the creative agency World Famous, he currently works as a freelance commercial and narrative editor. His personal work has ranged from experimental, to documentary, to narrative driven music videos. His award-winning short documentary Yai Nin played at SpIFF 2020 shortly before COVID lockdown. He also serves on the inaugural Seattle Film Commission representing post-production, as well as a teaching artist for high school filmmaking workshops in south Seattle.
juror for Animated Shorts, Shorts
Frances Grace Mortel (b. 1987, Manila) is an artist, filmmaker, and community organizer, working as the Co-Executive Director of the grassroots non-profit Asians for Collective Liberation in Spokane and its affiliated 501(c)(4) Asians for Collective Action. She is a member of Washington Filmworks Equity Committee, serves on the boards of Spokane Film Project and The Root Experience, and programs films at Spokane International Film Festival. She is currently interested in unmaking and mending—exploring the labor in destruction and care through digital and physical archives—often thinking about displacement and mapping out memories through placemaking. Fran completed her MFA at Bard College in New York and currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family.
juror for Shorts, Most Promising Filmmaker
Megan Schuyler Kennedy is a nonfiction filmmaker and the Creative Director at Rogue Heart Media SPC, a B Corp Certified media and marketing company providing creative nonfiction video production and commercial photography services throughout the Pacific Northwest. Megan has over 20 years of video production experience, investing heart and mind into every project, from social marketing campaigns to complex human interest documentaries. She is dedicated to community stewardship and placemaking, and her commitment to projects that make a difference guides Rogue Heart in its growth. She has lived in Spokane since 2005, and proudly operates her studio in the North Monroe Business District.
juror for Documentary
Matt McCormick is a filmmaker, artist, and educator whose work crosses mediums and defies genre distinctions to fashion witty, abstract observations of contemporary culture and the urban landscape. His films, which include The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal, Some Days are Better than Others, and Buzz One Four, have screened in venues ranging from the Sundance Film Festival to the Museum of Modern Art, and have received positive reviews from The New York Times, Art Forum, and many other media outlets. Matt has also directed music videos for bands including The Shins, Sleater-Kinney, and Broken Bells.
An assistant-professor of Art and Integrated Media at Gonzaga University, Matt received a BA in Moving Image Arts from the College of Santa Fe and an MFA in Media Study from the University at Buffalo, SUNY.
juror for Documentary
Zana Morrow is the Arts & Culture Coordinator for KSPS PBS TV, after spending 15 years in local radio broadcast as a local arts show producer/programmer. Born and raised in Spokane by a cinema buff and obsessive reader, she loves what SpIFF delivers; bringing new, interesting, creative, and international film and storytelling to the few locally-owned, independent, and arthouse cinemas we are lucky enough to still have!
juror for Northwest Shorts
T.S The Solution is a Spokane-based Hip-Hop artist, business owner, and cultural leader who uses storytelling to explore identity and navigating manhood without a blueprint. As an artist and founder, he merges art and business to model what it means to build legacy with intention.
juror for Northwest Features
Malcolm Pelles is a writer and director. He was the winner of the Outstanding Production & Outstanding Direction awards at AACTFest 2023. He’s a Humanitas New Voices Finalist. He was a writer for the 2016 CBS Diversity Sketch Comedy Showcase. He’s written scripts for the US Army, NFL, and Ubisoft Entertainment. His stage productions have been performed in Spokane, Off Broadway in New York City, and in Washington, DC at places like the Kennedy Center. Additionally, he’s a member of the Board of Directors and an Equity Committee co-chair with Washington Filmworks. Pelles has an MFA degree from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and an undergraduate degree from Florida State University’s College of Motion Picture Arts.
juror for Northwest Shorts
Tiffany Perez is passionate about film production and has worked on multiple projects, including Train Dreams ( 2025) and Evergreens (2025). Between film productions, she works at Media Credit Union. She is dedicated to creative and authentic storytelling as she continues grow in her career.
juror for Animated Shorts
Dr. Pete Porter is a Professor of Film in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts. He specializes in nonhuman animal representation in film and media, Menippean satire in film, film festival studies, cognitive-analytical film theory, and animation studies. His dissertation From Menippus to the Movies (2003) was one of the first scholarly works to take The Big Lebowski (1998) seriously. He currently serves as Film Review Editor for Society & Animals, an international journal of Human-Animal Studies and he also does applied research as President of the Contemporary Arts Alliance, which oversees the Spokane International Film Festival. Porter is working on the book A Cinema of Persons: From Marching Penguins to Octopus Teachers, which describes how recent films revive and invent strategies for representing ethical and aesthetic matters of concern for both humans and non-humans.
juror for Most Promising Filmmaker
Tate Repp is a Nez Perce journalist, writer, actor, and horror movie enthusiast. He graduated from Eastern Washington University with a degree in Film and now writes for NonStop Local KHQ. He recently performed on stage as Michael in Stage Left Theater’s production of “Be More Chill.”
juror for Shorts, Narrative Features
Reza Safavi’s work explores how the presence of technology in daily life shapes experience. His artistic inquiry spans a range of media including code, video, animation, light, drawing, performance and sculpture. He integrates both analog and digital devices to create interactive experiences that examine the boundaries between consciousness, technology, and the environment. He is a Professor of Art at Washington State University in Pullman, WA.
juror for Animated Shorts
D.S. Schaefer is a WGA Television Writer, IATSE 600 Photographer, and founder and community coordinator of We F.E.W! (Filmmakers of Eastern Washington). Raised half and half New York / Los Angeles, now settles in the woods outside of Spokane Washington.
juror for Northwest Shorts
Alena Schoonmaker (she/her) has been involved in the art and film community of Spokane and Seattle for more than a decade. She is currently a SpIFF programmer, an improv cast member at the Blue Door Theatre, and the office and communications manager for Westminster UCC. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies from Seattle University and participated in a filmmaking workshop at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has worked on independent shorts and features and has programmed for multiple festivals in the US. She is also a board member with Pawsitive Outreach Spay/Neuter Advocates in Newport, WA.
juror for Most Promising Filmmaker
Dan Webster is a former staff writer for The Spokesman-Review. In 1999, he cofounded the movie-review show “Movies 101” for Spokane Public Radio, and since 2010 he has been both the show’s host and the station’s senior film critic.
juror for Northwest Features, Documentary
Nathan Weinbender is a film critic for Spokane Public Radio, where he has also co-hosted the weekly review show “Movies 101” since 2012. He was previously the film and music editor of the Inlander and an entertainment reporter for the Spokesman-Review. He is currently a senior copywriter at DH, a social impact communications agency in downtown Spokane.
juror for Narrative Features
Erin Weller is a fiction and television writer and director with twenty years in the entertainment industry, working with Disney, Marvel, Amazon and many others. Since moving back to her hometown of Spokane, she’s focused on arts integration in education and helping young writers begin their own careers.
juror for Northwest Features
