Maryse Alcindor was born in Haiti and has been living in Montréal since 1965. Teacher and lawyer, she became in 2005 deputy minister at Immigration and Cultural Communities Quebec, thus becoming the first black woman to accede to the highest hierarchic function in the Québec public service. At the Québec Human Rights Commission she leads very important investigations and then becomes Director of the Education and Cooperation Department. On the international level, she collaborated with the Institut international des droits de l’homme de Strasbourg and associations of Women lawyers from about 20 African countries, among others. Founding member of the Association of Black Lawyers, initiator of the Haiti Show project, she is also a mentor for many young professional women. She is now retired which allows her to be active on the social and communitarian level.

Élie Castiel who works in a library has devoted his whole life to cinema, his passion. He studied French literature, translation and obtained his MA in cinema at Concordia. According to Peter Rist, who supervised his thesis on one take scenes in Theo Angelopoulos’s The Travelling Players “He is this city’s expert on Greek cinema.” Chief Editor for Séquences he is president of the Quebec Film Critics Association (AQCC), member of FIPRESCI (the international federation of cinema press); he is also translator of the official Montreal World Film Festival catalogue (FFM). “Cinema is more than a hobby. It’s my life”, says Élie Castiel.

Filmmaker and journalist, Alexandre Trudeau has been producing and directing documentaries since 1998 through his production company, Jujufilms. His films deal with controversial topics such as civil war in Liberia, daily life of Native peoples in Canada, youth and democracy in Yugoslavia, middle class in Baghdad during the war in Iraq, the Israeli security barrier in the West Bank, the Canadian federal government’s steadfast support of the use of security certificates on the grounds of national security, and the crisis in Darfur. He has also produced radio reportages for CBC and Radio-Canada on the troubled heritage of the Canadian peace-keeping force. His writings and reports have appeared in major Canadian magazines and newspapers. He is also on the executive committee of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.