Meet the 2022 'Fine Cut' Judges
Adam Borba
Adam Borba develops and produces movies for Walt Disney Pictures through Whitaker Entertainment. Recent projects include "Pete’s Dragon," (2016) "A Wrinkle in Time" (2018) and the upcoming "Peter Pan & Wendy." He is a graduate of Palm Springs High School, the University of Southern California and the William Morris Agency mailroom. He is also the author of the children’s novels "The Midnight Brigade" and "Outside Nowhere."
Daniela Alatorre
Daniela Alatorre is a Mexican producer and filmmaker with nineteen years of experience in documentary filmmaking and programming. Some of her producer credits include the award-winning feature documentaries "El General" (2009), directed by Natalia Almada, "Midnight Family" (2019) directed by Luke Lorentzen, "Vivos" (2019, as associate producer) directed by Ai Weiwei, "Users" (2021, as co-producer) directed by Natalia Almada and "A Cop Movie" (2021) directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios. "Retreat" (2019), her first feature documentary as a director, received a special mention and the Ambulante Film Festival prize at the XVII Morelia International Film Festival. In 2017 she co-founded the Mexico-City-based film production company No Ficción.
Elizabeth Ito
Elizabeth Ito has been working as a creator, writer, director and storyboard artist in the animation industry since 2004. She’s worked on television, feature and commercial projects. She was both a storyboard artist and supervising director on "Adventure Time," and won an Emmy for directing the "Adventure Time" episode, "Islands Part 4: Imaginary Resources." Elizabeth is the creator of the award-winning short, "Welcome to My Life," the second-most viewed short in Cartoon Network history. Her first series, "City of Ghosts" for Netflix premiered in 2021 and was nominated for a Peabody Award in 2022. She recently co-directed a music video for The Linda Linda's and is working on a project about shopping malls and learning how to use a video game engine to create animated films. Currently, she is living in Los Angeles, staying home with her family, and coming up with new ideas for fun projects to make.
Evan Jackson Leong
Evan Jackson Leong is a sixth generation Chinese American director and documentary filmmaker. Leong is most known for his documentary "Linsanity" which follows the journey of Jeremy Lin from Harvard to the NBA, which made its world premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. He also directed the documentary "1040: Christianity in the New Asia" (2010), PBS documentary "Him Mark Lai: The People's Historian" and the PBS documentary "BLT Genesis" (2002), which tracks the behind-the-scenes making of and trajectory of Justin Lin's film, "Better Luck Tomorrow." In the docuseries space, he was the director of "Uninterrupted" in collaboration with Facebook Watch's "OBJ: I Am More." His first narrative feature, "Snakehead" made its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2021.
Joya McCrory
Joya McCrory is a comedy writer from Detroit. Her work centers on telling sneakily heartfelt stories, full of weird millennial humor about identity and figuring out one’s place in the world. Joya is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where she received a Summer Hopwood fiction award for her collection of short stories, as well as UCLA, where she studied screenwriting. Joya participated in the 2020-2021 WBTV Writers' Workshop as one of three comedy writers and is currently a story editor on ABC's "Abbot Elementary."
Lou Diamond Phillips
Lou Diamond Phillips recently starred in the FOX series "Prodigal Son," having previously starred on the acclaimed Netflix series, "Longmire," based on the Walt Longmire mystery novels by Craig Johnson. Other credits include Amazon's "Goliath," FX's "You’re the Worst," CBS' "Blue Bloods," and recurring roles on Fox's "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and Netflix's "The Ranch." He received an Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Actor in a Short Form Drama or Comedy" for his roles in both Amazon's "Conversations in L.A." and History Channel's "Crossroads of History." Recent film credits include the upcoming Amblin feature "Easter Sunday," (2022) Warner Brothers' "The 33," (2015) "Created Equal" (2020) directed by Bill Duke, and Sundance Festival favorite "Filly Brown," for which he was named Best Actor at the Imagen Awards. As a director, Phillips recently helmed episodes of FOX's "Prodigal Son," AMC's hit series "Fear the Walking Dead," "Longmire," and ABC's Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." Phillips is also an author. His novel "The Tinderbox: Soldier of Indira," with illustrations by his wife Yvonne, was published in October 2020. He has co-written the screenplays for 'Trespasses,' and HBO's "Dangerous Touch." He wrote the Miramax feature "Ambition." He produced his play "Burning Desire," a romantic comedy in two acts. Originally born in the Philippines, Phillips was raised in Texas and is a graduate of University of Texas at Arlington with a BFA in Drama
Lynne Southerland
With 30 years of experience in the animation space, Lynne Southerland has filled the roles of editor, producer, director and showrunner on a variety of content, including "Bebe's Kids" for Paramount Pictures, the acclaimed HBO series "Happily Ever After: Fairytales for Every Child," the Annie Award winning movie, "An Extremely Goofy Movie," (2000) and "Mulan 2" (2004) for Disney, where she became the first African American woman to direct an animated movie. Her recent credits include show-running animated content for Mattel's Monster High and Enchantimals brands, as well as directing the groundbreaking YouTube series, "Super Sema" featuring an African girl who believes she’s a superhero. Currently, Lynne is serving as showrunner on a not yet announced Disney Junior series.
Penelope Spheeris
Penelope Spheeris grew up living with her family in different trailer parks throughout Southern California. She spent her teenage years in Orange County, graduating from Westminster High School with a daunting 'most likely to succeed' label. Working as a waitress at Denny's and IHOP, she put herself through film school. A holder of a UCLA Master of Fine Arts degree in theater arts, she worked as a film editor and a cinematographer before forming her own company in 1974. "Rock ‘n Reel" was the first Los Angeles music video company. She produced, directed and edited videos for major bands through the '70s and '80s, concluding with the Grammy nominated, "Bohemian Rhapsody" for Waynes World. Spheeris' feature film debut was the 1979 documentary on the Los Angeles punk scene "The Decline of Western Civilization" which received stunning and unanimous critical praise. Recently, the film was inducted into the Library of Congress National Film Registry. Subsequently, she directed "Decline II: The Metal Years," "Wayne's World," "Little Rascals" and other studio films.
