Filmmaker Info: Award-winning writer/director Taylor Bakken hails from the land of negative sixty degree winters and Prince, although her household was more preoccupied with the likes of Jimmy Buffett and Frank Zappa. She feels this combination answers a lot of questions about her work. Taylor began by cutting her teeth with Robert Downey Jr. working on his development team. A few years later, she became Patty Jenkins’ right hand and, alongside Patty, associate-produced Chris Pine’s directorial debut POOLMAN. These experiences have helped Taylor grow as an artist and hone in on the kinds of stories she wanted to tell: heartfelt, joyful explorations into the central questions: who are we, and why are we the way we are?

Filmmaker Info: Ajuawak Kapashesit is an Ojibwe and Cree actor, writer, and director. His credits include Indian Horse (2017), Bad Blood (CityTV/Netflix), Outlander (Starz/Sony), and Anangong Miigaadiing, the Ojibwe language dub of Star Wars: A New Hope (2024). As a filmmaker, he has been supported by Firelight Media, CAAM, PBS, and the Sundance Institute.

Filmmaker Info: Avery Luthardt is an animator and artist originally from Skokie, Illinois. He earned his BFA in Animation from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2025. Specializing in character, creature, and environmental design, Avery brings worlds to life through thoughtful visual storytelling, imaginative settings, and detailed background layouts and paintings. For the past year, Avery has been working on 2D animated projects for Bill Bruce, a musician and producer based in Minneapolis. You can find more of Avery’s work at averyluthardt.com

My story begins from a place of desire, as all things do. I was seeking answers, certain they would meet me if I searched hard enough. But the silence was vast. And in that silence, frustration rose like a tide, testing the limits of my will. There’s something strangely sacred about discontent. When I’m left to ponder– In the emptiness of being forsaken, is all that remains forgiveness?

I began to attune. I watched how the wind carried the weight of things unseen. How the river never questioned its path, only followed. How the trees yielded to seasonal death, and let itself be undone— each leaf a small offering, every cell in soft surrender. Somewhere in that quiet, I stopped needing to know what came next. I followed what felt true, and it brought me back to where I started. The end, already folded into the beginning.

Filmmaker Info: Taoheed Bayo is a multidisciplinary artist working across dance, performance art, filmmaking, and cultural programming. His practice explores Black diasporic memory, embodiment, and identity, using movement and film as tools for archival preservation, spiritual inquiry, and cinematic experimentation. He is interested in how ancestral memory lives within the body and how performance can serve as both a site of remembrance and a bridge between past and future. He inherited an endowed responsibility to preserve narratives of indigeneity and seeks to contribute to a living archive that reflects collective experience.

Filmmaker Info: Tom has completed nineteen hand-drawn animated films since 1990. IMDb. His films have been broadcast on Independent Lens, the Sundance Channel, Canal + France and Spain, SBS in Australia , CBC in Canada and Pacific Voice in Japan. The films have also played widely on the international festival circuit, including multiple screenings at Annecy, Rotterdam, Sundance, Ottawa and South by Southwest, and have won over forty festival awards. Retrospective programs of Tom’s animated shorts have screened recently in Seoul, Minneapolis and Melbourne.

Filmmaker Info:  Joua Lee Grande is a filmmaker and community educator with a deep commitment to elevating underrepresented voices. Her work has been featured on WORLD Channel, PBS Digital, and the PBS Short Film Festival. Her short film On All Fronts received an Honorable Mention from CAAMFest’s Loni Ding Award for Social Justice Documentary. This film is part of a television series that won a Silver Anthem Award and received a Daytime Emmy nomination in 2023.
In 2023, Joua was selected as a True/False Confluence Fellow and a PBS Accelerator Fellow. Before diving into her filmmaking career, she was a news editor at WCCO TV 4 News. She has also been recognized as a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow (2021-2023), a MediaJustice Network Fellow (2021), and a Diverse Voices in Docs fellow in (2019). As a speaker, instructor, consultant and mentor, she values passing on knowledge and resources to build a robust and diverse filmmaking community both locally and nationally.

Synopsis: A food influencer seeks to uncover the dark history of Minnesota’s favorite home cooked meal.

Filmmaker Info: This film was made in 48 hours for the 2026 Minneapolis 48-Hour Film Contest, taking home Best Film. Writers and Directors, Kevin Noonan & Spencer Knott met when they were freshman roommates together at the University of Minnesota in Bailey Hall, less than a mile away from the State Fairgrounds on the St. Paul Campus. When they’re not working at their full time jobs in media production, they make skits on their social media channel called Strong 7s. Give them a follow if you enjoy a good laugh. 

Synopsis: A camping trip goes wrong.

Artist Bio: ADAM GEIGER is an award-winning producer, editor, and animator for non-fiction film and television.

Filmmaker Info Page

Artist Bio: Lily Berg is a 2D animator with a BFA in Animation from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. They create short films that draw from personal experiences, but are relatable to many people.

Filmmaker Info: Joshua Carlon is a filmmaker who tells stories about people searching for lower case “e” enlightenment, which could be a bit of projection. He grew up on the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota and has since traveled to 71 countries and all seven continents, finding stories and creating a few of his own. He’s an Emmy-winning producer, director and editor whose work has been featured by the Tribeca Film Festival, PBS, National Geographic and film festivals around the world.

Filmmaker Info: Rocky Casillas Aguirre is a Latino and LGBTQ animator and comics creator based in southern, Minnesota. In 2020, he founded Rokaturas®: an art studio dedicated to publishing accessible mental health resources for youth in the form of animations, children’s books, and comics. Rocky is most known for his adventure series: “Twitch and the Mystic Weenie™.”

“Stresszilla™” is the latest animated short developed at Rokaturas®. The short debuted during the open house for “U are the Universe,” at the Northfield Arts Guild in Northfield, Minnesota. Stresszilla has since been selected and screened at the Serpentina Film Festival in 2025 and Soft-Time Planetarium in 2026.

Filmmaker Info: Marcie LaCerte is a mixed Chinese-American animator, director, and illustrator based in Minneapolis. She is represented by Jacky Winter Studio and adjuncts at the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where she teaches illustration and animation. Her films have screened at Ottawa International Animation Festival, GLAS Animation, and AFI Docs, and her work has been acquired by The New Yorker and selected by Vimeo Staff Picks. “The Pleasure-Dome” is her latest short film and has received support from the Jerome Hill Foundation, the Jacob Burns Film Center, and Bethany Arts Community.

Filmmaker Info:Nisogaabokwe Melonee Montano is an enrolled member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa where she was raised grounded in teachings from elders, cultural practices, and Indigenous Knowledge. She is a graduate student at the University of Minnesota in the M.S. and PhD Natural Resources Science & Management Program through which she is a student of and advocate for good fire. As a student, Co-Director of the film A Wilderness Act, and other related roles, she co-leads and assists in efforts focused on healing of the lands and people through the return of fire.

Tom Deschenes is a filmmaker and the founder of Old Saw Media, a production company dedicated to crafting compelling, story-driven films that connect people to the places, communities, and causes that matter. With over a decade of experience in documentary and commercial filmmaking, Tom specializes in capturing authentic narratives that inspire action and deepen our understanding of the world around us.

Filmmaker Info:  Bri Dorsey is a Black-Salvadorian 2D animator based in the U.S. They enjoy tense, character-driven narratives, funky magic shenanigans, and bringing characters to life through animation (with a focus on character acting and expression).

They studied at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, briefly at the Chungkang College of Cultural Industries (청강문화산업대학) on a Scholarship, and is currently attending a summer program at the Gobelins L’ecole de L’image.

When not working on projects, they enjoy learning languages, collecting stickers, and walking their dog, Koya!

Filmmaker Info: Sishir Bommakanti is an illustrator, painter and animator from Minneapolis, MN. His work ranges from the surreal, mythological, absurd and experimental. Working in a range of mediums, from painting, drawing animation, 3D, interactive, photography and other experimental mediums.
His work is a commentary and reaction to the overload and burnout of a society that’s been caught in a spiral of endless feed of information and noise. Using mythological characters and fantastical, surreal settings, he builds an entire new world to process and relay our age of informational overproduction.

Synopsis: A collaborative project created for Hellavision’s “Track Attack”, featuring cats and alien invaders.

Filmmaker Info: Anna Taberko is a motion designer residing in Minneapolis. Her past work includes collaborating with top brands like Google, Android, Elf Cosmetics, and more! When she’s not slinging pixels by day, she cozies up with a cup of tea in hand, and a crochet hook by night. https://www.annataberko.com/

Filmmaker info: First-time director Jonathan Presson grew up near Minneapolis, Minnesota, and studied film at Loyola University New Orleans. He founded his production company, Presson Productions, in high school, creating work for clients locally and worldwide. Last of the Shrimpers marks his directorial debut at 23 years old. His goal is to continue sharing underrepresented stories through documentary.

Filmmaker Info: Leah X Rathe is an Asian-American filmmaker based in Minnesota. She holds a B.A. in Digital Media Arts with a Paralegal Certificate from Hamline University. Leah is passionate about the impact of film, especially as a connecting force to understand different perspectives and expanding representation. Growing up, seeing individuals like herself portrayed in media instilled a sense of belonging and purpose, motivating her to expand the space for such representation, especially for transracial adoptees and Asian-Americans.

Filmmaker Info: Ren Curry is an artist and animator currently based in Minnesota. They are interested in character-driven, personal narratives that focus on elements of queerness, and make use of the intimacy of hand-drawn animation to explore subtle movements and character acting and tell stories with emotion, connection and relationships between characters, and about interacting with our (or another) world. They recently graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design with a BFA in Animation, and specialize in 2D traditional and rigged animation.

Synopsis: We’ll show a Film Finale Showcase (without actual fireworks) of films that received the highest ranking from votes cast by MN State Fair attendees on 8/28-29 & 9/4-5.  We’ll post the results in the early AM of 9/6.  Stay tuned!