Our team is composed of experienced and emerging artists based between Baltimore and Brooklyn, bringing together expertise in education, arts administration, and non-fiction storytelling. Director Fatima Jibril blends over two decades of curriculum design with a renewed commitment to filmmaking, while Producer Kyra Brands contributes extensive experience in fundraising through her work at Women Make Movies and documentary film production. The project is further strengthened by award-winning advisors and collaborators — including artist and filmmaker Elissa Blount Moorhead, editor Toby Shimin, and cinematographer JaMar Jones — whose collective work spans Sundance premieres, Emmy-winning films, and nationally recognized cultural initiatives.

Fatima Jibril

Fatima Jibril is an instructional designer and filmmaker whose creative journey began at the Baltimore School for the Arts and continued at Cornell University, where she studied Theater Arts and Film. She has spent the past two decades leveraging the arts in the design of transformative learning experiences for K-12 students. As a recent Docs in Progress Story Development Fellow and current Saul Zaentz Innovation Fellow, Fatima returns to her filmmaking roots, working on her first documentary, Treasure Child, which blends her expertise in education, storytelling, and cultural relevance.

Director & Co-Founder of Treasure Child LLC

Kyra Brands

Kyra Brands is an arts administrator and filmmaker with experience in nonfiction programming, production, and artist support based in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. She holds a BA in Film from Northwestern University and is the Program Manager of the Production Assistance Program at Women Make Movies. She is currently a NYFA Emerging Leaders Fellow. Kyra has served on the Brooklyn Arts Council panel and is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia. Her production work includes TIME PASSAGES (Cinequest 2024), 8X10 (in prod.), BEAUTIFUL ROOM (Roxy Cinema 2025) and I CAN NO LONGER FIND WHAT NEVER EXISTED (Spectacle Theatre 2024).

Producer & Co-Founder of Treasure Child LLC

JaMar Jones is an accomplished director, cinematographer, and founder of Six Point Pictures. His directorial work spans documentary, narrative, and branded content. His film Breakthrough earned multiple awards for Best Documentary, recognized for its raw, immersive portrayal of resilience and transformation. He has directed work for clients including Disney, META, YouTube Originals, and Amazon, bringing depth and nuance to stories across formats. Through Six Point Pictures, JaMar continues to mentor emerging filmmakers and produce films that ask questions, spark dialogue, and leave a lasting impression.

His entrepreneurial spirit, coupled with a commitment to representation and storytelling, led him to confront systemic inequalities within the industry, propelling him to mentor emerging filmmakers and champion untold stories. Acknowledging his achievements while remaining cognizant of the journey ahead, JaMar sees his career as an ongoing quest for self-expression and narrative exploration. He extends an invitation to join him on his journey, envisioning collaborative storytelling that challenges, inspires, and resonates with audiences in profound ways. In JaMar Jones, a visionary filmmaker, entrepreneur, and advocate for representation, there exists an unwavering dedication to storytelling that transcends boundaries and touches the core of the human experience.

Cinematographer

JaMar Jones

Elissa Blount Moorhead

Advisor

Elissa Blount Moorhead is an artist, producer, and director exploring the poetics of quotidian Black life through film and time-based installation. She co-directed Jay-Z’s 4:44; co-created the four-channel installation Back and Song; wrote and directed a PBS/Firelight Media’s Masters in the Making episode on Damon Davis; and served as a script consultant on Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake (dir. Alma Har’el). Honors include USA Artists, Creative Capital, Baker Artist Award, Rubys, Ford JustFilms–Rockwood, Saul Zaentz Innovation Fellowship, Women at Sundance | Adobe Fellowship, Sundance Episodic Lab, and an Eyebeam residency.

  • Moorhead is the founder of Seven Stories, a production initiative developing a constellation of film, installation, and television projects that use humor and satire to reframe dominant narratives. She also served as a principal at TNEG Studio with Arthur Jafa and Malik Sayeed, advancing their vision of Black cinema as culturally and economically central to the 21st century as Black music was to the 20th.

    Currently, Moorhead is co-developing a major multimedia installation and film about Benjamin Banneker  for the Smithsonian, as well as 55 Flights | Her Daughter, a direct cinema project of 55 one-minute vignettes tracing Black women’s lives from 1968 to the present. Her work remains a sustained act of cultural stewardship — offering portals into Black methodologies for reimagining liberation, and proposing new futures.

Toby Shimin

Advisor

Editor Toby Shimin began her film career as a sound editor and switched to picture editing when she cut THE CHILDREN'S STOREFRONT, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Since then, she has edited numerous films that have premiered at Sundance, including, Peabody Award winning HOW TO DANCE IN OHIO, A LEAP OF FAITH, MARTHA & ETHEL, MISS AMERICA, and EVERYTHING'S COOL. Her Sundance Audience Award winning films include, OUT OF THE PAST, THIS IS HOME, which was also nominated for an Emmy award in editing, and BUCK, which was short-listed for an Academy Award.

  • Toby received the prestigious Documentary Editing Award at the 2018 Woodstock Film Festival for HBO's 32 PILLS: MY SISTER’S SUICIDE. ERNIE & JOE: CRISIS COPS won a Jury Prize at SXSW where it premiered in 2019 and an Emmy for outstanding editing. In 2024, the series ONE SOUTH: PORTRAIT OF A PSYCH UNIT premiered on HBO and in 2025, the Netflix short, THE QUILTERS was shortlisted for an Academy Award. Toby’s most recent film, JIMMY & THE DEMONS, premiered at Tribeca and is currently making the festival circuit. She has served as an advisor for the Edit and Story labs at Sundance, Chicken & Egg, and the Saul Zaentz Story Lab and is on the advisory boards of Full Frame and The Jacob Burns Film Center.