Noah Berc (he/him) is a gay Indigenous filmmaker, writer, and performer from Ontario, and a proud member of the Deninu Kųę́ First Nation under Treaty 8. He tells stories that live in the overlap between horror and humour, shame and spectacle, queerness and craving—to be loved, to be seen, even when you're leaking, twitching, or totally falling apart. Noah got his start in front of the camera as an ACTRA actor, working in film, TV, and commercials. That experience taught him how to be watched—how to control the narrative with just a glance or breath—which eventually led him to directing. His work now is where that actor’s intuition meets a writer’s sharp tongue and a filmmaker’s obsession with the awkward, the eerie, and the emotionally exposed. Pimple Patch marks Noah’s directorial debut, and it’s very much a first film in the best way: personal, scrappy, and too honest to be cool. He draws from queer theory, Indigenous storytelling, and the guts of genre filmmaking to create stories that are as heartbroken as they are hilarious. Noah is headed to Queen’s University to pursue an MA in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies, where he’ll continue to explore the weird and tender intersections of queerness, horror, and identity on screen. He makes work for the freaks, the feelers, and anyone who’s ever had a panic attack in a public washroom.

Jan-David Bolt, 1991, studied German and English literature and film studies at the University of Zurich before switching to film studies at the Zurich University of the Arts.

He discovered his fascination for stories that break with narrative conventions through an intensive study of film history and at the same time sharpened his eye for the visual medium.

He is passionate about the portrayal of disgust, human malevolence, and narratives that manage to make us laugh against our will.

Since graduation, he has worked as a director, author, artist and freelancer in advertising.

The films I create are character driven. How do they experience something and how can I completely blow that out of proportion without losing the relatability?
Overexaggerating in image and story is one of my biggest talents.

I like bringing my audience into relatable settings and making them experience them in a completely new way. One they would have never expected.