Andrea Bussmann was born in Toronto, Canada. She earned an MA in Social Anthropology and an MFA in Film Production. After completing her degrees, she directed He Whose Face Gives No Light. In 2016, she co-directed Tales of Two Who Dreamt, which premiered at the Berlinale Forum. The film was awarded the best documentary at the Festival International de Films de Femmes in 2017. Her latest film, Fausto, which premiered in 2018 at the Locarno International Film Festival, made its North American premiere at TIFF and NYC premiere at New Directors/New Films. The film won the Best Latin Feature at The Mar del Plata International Film Festival. Andrea was awarded the Discovery Award by The Directors Guild of Canada in 2018.  Currently, she is in post-production for the film Skin of the Sky.

Dominique Dussault has been producing films with her company Nemesis Films for the past decade. She has developed a well-deserved reputation as one of Canada’s most promising producers, being awarded the 2022 Vincent Gabriele Emerging Producer Award by the Quebec Producers’ Association (AQPM), the 2020 Kevin Tierney Award by the Canadian Media Producers’ Association (CMPA) and the 2019 Best Emerging Producer Award at Fantasia International Film Festival. Her second feature film, Nadia, Butterfly, directed by Pascal Plante, was an Official Selection at Cannes 2020. She has recently produced the documentaries Sukwan’s Island, presented at the 2022 RIDM in the New Visions competition and Evicted City, winner of the first Jean-Marc Vallée audience award.

Since 2020, Beatrice Fiorentino has been the Artistic Director and General Delegate of the Venice Critics’ Week, of which she has been a member of the selection committee since 2015. A freelance journalist and film critic, she lives and works in Italy where she also teaches Semiology of Cinema and Audiovisual Media as an adjunct professor at the University of Trieste. In 2014 she won the Akai International Film Fest Award for best film critic at the 71st Venice Film Festival. She collaborates with other events and has taken part in numerous international juries. She is a member of the EFA (European Film Academy), the ICS (International Cinephile Society) and the Italian Film Academy - David di Donatello Awards. In 2023, her book Nuova Storia del Cinema - Dalle origini al futuro was published in Italy.

Born in 1981, in Chicoutimi, Quebec, Félix Dufour-Laperrière is a filmmaker, screenwriter and producer. His films, including the documentary Transatlantique (2014), have been screened at numerous festivals, museums and major national and international events, where they have won several awards. Ville Neuve (2018), his first animated feature, entirely drawn and painted on paper, had its world premiere at the Venice Mostra (Giornate degli Autori) and has since been released in cinemas in Quebec, France and Japan. His animated documentary, Archipelago, was launched in 2021 in competition at the Rotterdam Festival, won awards at the Annecy Festival and was subsequently widely distributed internationally. He is currently working on his third animated feature, La Mort N'existe Pas. As a producer, in addition to his own films, he recently produced Miryam Charles' first feature film, Cette Maison, which premiered at the Berlinale (Forum) in 2022.

Hama Haruka has worked for the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF) Tokyo Office since 2001 and has been the director of the Tokyo Office since 2015. She has been a selection committee member of the International Competition program since 2003. She also works for Cinematrix, a film distribution company based in Tokyo, where she produced Takamine Go's Hengyoro (2017). She is involved in coordinating domestic and international screenings including curation for the Film Program at the Aichi Triennale 2016.

Wouter Jansen is the founder of the sales company Square Eyes. The company represents bold, author-driven features and shorts, and, in close collaboration with filmmakers, it devises personalized festival distribution and sales strategies. Wouter also  worked for 10 years as the Go Short ISFF head of program . He is an expert for Locarno Open Doors and First Cut Lab and regularly gives lectures at film schools and festivals.

Paula Astorga is the artistic director of Doclisboa Film Festival. Since August 2022, she has been Head of studies at the Producer's Lab Open Doors, Locarno Film Festival. She is a consultant and international advisor for audiovisual projects, especially in development and exhibition. In 2012, she was appointed and decorated a Knight of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for her work in the audiovisual field. As a producer, she produced the feature documentary Omar y Gloria by Jaime Cohen Ades (2017) and more recently Trigalby Anabel Caso (2022). She is the executive and founding Director of the seminar The Audience of the Future FICUNAM.

Maximiliano Cruz is the current Artistic Director of the FICUNAM — UNAM International Film Festival. He has more than twenty years of experience as a curator and organizer of film festivals, including the Mexico City’s FICCO, Cali, Guadalajara, and Riviera Maya film festivals. In 2010, he founded Interior XIII, a promotion label based in Mexico and Colombia, maintaining an impactful and constant presence in the fields of film distribution and production, curatorship, consulting, and publications. He has produced films by Julio Hernández Cordón, Nicolás Pereda, Yulene Olaizola and Camila José Donoso. Since 2015, he has been involved in the expansion process of the Museum of Modern Art of Medellín — MAMM as an advisor and curator of the film program, establishing guidelines that have consolidated the museum as one of the most important alternative film exhibition spaces in the country. He has been a jury at festivals such as FIDMarseille, Doclisboa, Mar del Plata, Gijón, Miami Costa Rica and FICValdivia, and on the selection committee for Festival del film Locarno Open Doors Consultancy, Mexican Film Institute — IMCINE and Colombia’s FDC . He has written extensively on film and is an editor for various publications.

Antoine Thirion has been a programmer at Cinéma du Réel since 2018. He has also worked at the Berlinale and Locarno festivals, designed a dozen monographic retrospectives at the Jeu de Paume and FID Marseille and written for Cahiers du Cinéma, Trafic and Cinema Scope.

Émilie Serri is a Montreal-based filmmaker, installation artist and curator. Distributed by LightCone in Paris and Funfilm in Montreal, her films have been screened at international festivals (The Netherlands, Switzerland, Brazil, etc..) and in artist centers and galleries throughout Canada. In 2018, she won the Bronfman award in contemporary art. Her first feature documentary Damascus Dreams premiered at the IFFR in 2021 and won the International Critics Award (FIPRESCI) at the FNC. She is currently working on her first fiction film, which won the Netflix award for Best Pitch during La Forge.

Shahab Mihandoust is an Iranian-Canadian filmmaker based in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal. Inspired by ethnographic approaches in the arts, his documentary practice stands at the intersection between cinema and anthropology, and his work often addresses the entanglement of identity and labour in everyday life practices and how they relate to natural and built environments. His films have been screened and received awards at various international documentary and ethnography festivals, and his latest documentary Meezan (2023) was selected as part of the New Directors New Films program in 2024 at MoMA and the Lincoln Center.

Aylin Gökmen, a filmmaker from Turkey and Switzerland, has had her short films Spirits and Rocks: An Azorean Myth and Ever Since, I Have Been Flying featured at festivals including Toronto, Locarno and Sundance. They are currently pursuing a PhD in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University in Montreal.

Helgi Piccinin is a Quebec filmmaker who, since 2005, has been developing an intimate approach to filmmaking characterized by great sensitivity to the themes of identity and difference. Curious by nature, attentive to the poetry of everyday life and inspired by a desire to help people discover unusual or little-known worlds, he has produced a dozen independent films for festivals, cinema and television, as well as various digital projects for museums, universities and institutions. Trained in cinema in Quebec (Université Laval and INIS) and France (Université de Provence), he has acquired a wealth of experience in the field, first travelling the world, then shooting films in Quebec, Canada and the United States. Over the past five years, he has devoted himself to creating an increasingly personal body of work inspired by the ghosts and heroes of his family history. 

Born in Mauritius, Vincent Toi is an award-winning filmmaker and designer. His work as a filmmaker tackles the theme of power structures governing colonized communities. His films have been screened at festivals such as the Berlinale, the Toronto International Film Festival and Hot Docs. He has also worked with the Artist Institute in direct partnership with communities in Haiti to create pathways out of poverty by widening access to education and providing training in creative industries.

Marie-France Laval has over 14 years' experience in documentary filmmaking in Quebec and abroad. She focuses on the development of high-impact, on-the-ground projects on subjects related to human issues. The aim is to provoke thought and give a voice to people who are often less heard. Among her achievements are Marchés sur Terre, an international documentary series, and JENNY, an award-winning children's fiction series about leukemia, broadcast in many countries. More recently, she produced, directed and scripted Pères en lumière, a series of short films highlighting positive fatherhood. She is currently working on KAPsur, a documentary series for young people that she is co-producing with Kavalo Productions, co-writing and directing 16 of the 20 episodes.

Raised and educated in Montreal, Adèle Foglia has been working as a technician in the Quebec film industry for several years. She has also directed two short films, Les Granges (2021) and Surface (2022). She is currently completing her Master of Fine Arts in Studio Arts at Concordia University, and will be defending her research-creation project on the politics of memory and the manipulation of archives in documentary cinema in December. Her next short documentary, Celle qui tue les insectes à mains nues, is currently in production.

Jocelyne Clarke has been working in the documentary film industry for 30 years, in all aspects of documentary creation. She taught cinema at Concordia University, worked as an analyst for SODEC and submitted articles on documentary cinema to various magazines. A founding programmer of the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal, she now coordinates the Magnus Isacsson jury.

Ryan Akler-Bishop est un cinéaste expérimental, musicien, critique de cinéma et coordonnateur de la programmation de Cinema Politica, un réseau montréalais d'arts médiatiques à but non lucratif qui diffuse des documentaires politiques. Il est également co-rédacteur en chef, avec Vicky Huang, de Big Toe Magazine, une série de zines batailliens célébrant l'art transgressif.

The RIDM student jury was inaugurated in 2014. The jury of five students from cegeps in the Greater Montreal area will present an award to a film from the official competition. 

This initiative is part of the RIDM’s Youth Program, which includes a variety of outreach and awareness activities.

The women inmates’ jury is composed of inmates of the Joliette Institution, the only federal women’s penitentiary in Quebec. They will name their favourite documentary from among five to seven films in this year’s festival.

Given to the audience's favorite documentary from all the films in the official selection.