Festival Jury Panel

Kristy Breneman currently serves as the Creative Manager for Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Raleigh, NC where she uses her non-profit and festival background to lead the theater as a community hub and resource. She is the former Creative Director of the Atlanta Film Festival and spent 5+ years shaping the overall artistic vision and direction of the festival. In addition to working her full-time gig, she actively serves on planning committees and boards for a number of non-profit arts and neighborhood organizations.

Valerie Temple is a film professional who directed programming at Bryn Mawr Film Institute for nine years after receiving an MFA in Film Production from Boston University in 2008. She has served on a jury for the Philadelphia International Film Festival and was a judge for the Derek Freese Documentary Fund prize, given out annually by the Greater Philadelphia Film Commission. She now works in administration at Cleveland State University's School of Film & Media Arts.

Gabriel Wardell is a Senior Editor for Development Communications at Emory in Atlanta. He has served as the Executive Director of the Atlanta Film Festival and Athens Ciné, and also co-produced the Atlanta 48 Hour Film Project for eight successful seasons. His other film experience includes producing the first edition of SILVERDOCS (now AFI DOCS), programming at the AFI Silver Theatre, the Maryland Film Festival, the Sonoma Valley Film Festival, Fringe Atlanta, DecaturDocs, and Cinema Sundays at the Charles. Gabe's festival experience began in the celluloid era as a projectionist of 16mm and 35mm films for Slamdance. He has served on grant review and nominating committees for the Fulton County Arts Council, Georgia Council for the Arts, United States Artists, and Creative Capital, and juried film festivals including the Georgia Film Festival, WIFTA, Macon Film Festival, MicroCineFest, Slamdance, Sidewalk, and IndieMemphis. A regular speaker at the Landmark Theatre's Midtown Cinema Classics series on Tuesday evenings, Gabe has been published in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Threat, The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore City Paper, IndieWIRE, and Creative Loafing. His essay about A.I. in cinema was a finalist for the David Carr prize at the 2017 SXSW Conference.