Born in Yokohama, Japan, in 1970. Eiji Han Shimizu is a multi-award-winning filmmaker, publisher, and educator, specializing in social change and creative activism. His latest animated film, “TRUE NORTH” about North Korea’s political prison camps has turned thousands of viewers into witnesses of the modern-day holocaust and inspired them to take action. His experience with “TRUE NORTH” showed him that there is great power and range in the stories that can be told via animation. His biography manga series about heroes who fought against human rights abuses is published all over the world and has been adopted as educational material. His next animated feature, currently in the works, seeks to empower citizens to take action against climate change. TED Resident. Producer of highly acclaimed documentary, “HAPPY”. www.latinsamurai.com

Born in 1976, Benoît Philippon grows up in Ivory Coast, then in the Caribbean, and between France and Canada. Graduated in French Literature, he becomes a scriptwriter for the movies and animation TV shows in 2000. In 2009, he directs his first feature film “Lullaby for Pi”(starring Forest Whitaker, Rupert Friend, Clémence Poesy). He writes and co-directs, with Alexandre Heboyan, the animation feature film “Mune, the guardian of the Moon”. Winner for best picture in several international festivals (Tokyo, Toronto, Erevan…), Mune is the 7th highest grossing French production at the international Box Office in 2015. Benoît co-directs, with academy award winner Glen Keane, the short film “NEPHTALI”. Since then, he has worked on the writing of several films for animation studios (Ubisoft, Sony Pictures…). He also writes comic books and novels (including the French best-seller “Mamie Luger”). Two of which are in negotiation with movie studios.

Ross Stewart has been painting, illustrating, designing and working in animation for over 20 years. His primary role of visual development and art direction, he has worked on 4 Oscar-nominated movies: as art director on “Secret of Kells”, concept artist on “Song of the Sea”, in visual development on “Paranorman” with Laika Studios, and more recently moving from art direction into directing, working with fellow artist and longtime collaborator Tomm Moore on “The Prophet” and the latest Cartoon Saloon award-winning feature, “Wolfwalkers”. As a freelance conceptual artist he has worked for many animation and film studios world-wide on award winning projects and has illustrated books and literature for a variety of publishers. His paintings are exhibited throughout Ireland and the UK and held in collections world-wide. He is a nature lover and would gladly sit under an oak tree all day long.

Saito worked at the animation business department of YOMIURI TELECASTING CORPORATION from July 1999 to March 2011 and worked at the Content Business Design Center of DENTSU INC. from April 2011 to December 2021. He involves in a number of animation projects, including TV series, theatrical features, and shorts. His major short animation works include “Gudetama”, “Corocoro Coronya”, “Tono to Issho”, “Tachumaru”.

Born in Kyoto prefecture, Japan on February 27, 1972. Matsukura joined J.C.STAFF Co.,Ltd. in 1992. After that, he was appointed as a producer at an unusually young age in his twenties and has been involved in numerous animations such as theatrical features and TV series regardless of the genre. The number of titles that he produced seems to be the highest in the world. He worked in the game industry before joining the animation industry. There are so many of his works, it is not easy to narrow them down. Please refer to his page on Wikipedia.

Graduated in 1994 from the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD) in Paris, she directed her first short CGI animated film, which was selected at SIGGRAPH 1996 (“”Histoire de crayon””). She then worked over 10 years as a CGI artist on various projects (commercials, music videos, documentaries, series, etc.). In the meanwhile, she developed her educational experience coaching ENSAD students’ projects and teaching CGI at Supinfocom/Rubika (Valenciennes). In 2003, she contributed to the Disney-Salvador Dali “”Destino”” CGI film project, in the Paris Disney company. From August 2003 to April 2010, she set up and managed the digital department of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. From May 2010 to October 2021 she was the head of the Animation department of GOBELINS (Paris). She also held the position of Vice President of the RECA (French Animation School Network). Since November 2021, Moïra Marguin is the head of development at Artline Institut, a very recent school, which is completely dedicated to online training for the Creative industries.

Born in 1990 in Seoul, South Korea. He spent nine years in Sapporo and Okinawa from 1991 to 2000.Graduated from Chungkang College of Cultural Industries, South Korea, majoring in animation.In animation, he was particular about movement and timing, directed short films “Afternoon Class”(2015), “(OO)” (2017), and selected for various international film festivals such as ANNECY, The Clermont-Ferrand, ZAGREB, Stuttgart, and SIGRAPH Asia Tokyo.As an animation artist and director, selected as a guest artist for the Seoul exhibition of Tonko House and exhibited short animation. At the Danish film festival Viborg Animation Festival 2019, he was in charge of film festival trailer director and poster design. And he updating animation on 500k subscribers’ YouTube channel “OSRO”. Currently, while working as a representative of the animation company OSRO, he is co-planning and producing series animations with companies.