Awards
CAAMFest 2025 NARRATIVE COMPETITION
The Narrative Competition Award highlights the diversity and ingenuity of modern cinema and recognizes excellence in narrative filmmaking.
Jury members include: Sanaz Alesafar, Executive Director, Storyline Partners; Zander Kim, Film & TV Assistant, 3AD; Mayuran Tiruchelvam, Marcus Endowed Chair of Social Justice Filmmaking, San Francisco State University.
CAAMFest 2025 DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
The Documentary Competition showcases a dynamic selection of films that fearlessly capture the challenging reality and surprising beauty inherent in the human experience.
Jury members include: Cecilia Mejia, Vice President, External Affairs, American Documentary; Bao Nguyen, Filmmaker and 2025 CAAM Fellowship Mentor; Anuj Vaidya, Communications Director, Imagining America.
LONI DING AWARD FOR SOCIAL ISSUE DOCUMENTARY
The Loni Ding Award for Social Issue Documentary recognizes the film and filmmaker that most reflect the passions of late TV producer Loni Ding. Ding devoted her life to advocacy and played a key role in the founding of several public media organizations, including CAAM.
Jury members include: Don Young, Director of Programs, CAAM; Sapana Sakya, Talent Development & Special Projects Director, CAAM; Czarina Garcia, Media Fund Manager, CAAM.
Audience Awards
The CAAMFest Audience Award lets you, our audience, honor your festival favorite. Vote for the narrative that touched your heart or the most eye-opening documentary, and give the directors much-deserved recognition. Check to see if your favorites won on the CAAM website after the end of the festival.
INSPIRASIAN STUDENT FILM AWARD
Recognizing promising voices in Asian and Asian American media, the InspirASIAN Student Film Award is presented to college students who exemplify the voice of a new generation.
Special thanks to InspirASIAN, a nonprofit and AT&T Employee Group focused on developing inspiring leaders and delivering meaningful events and innovative programs that inspire others to make a difference. Igniting Possibilities.
Jury members include: Erina Alejo, Artist and Office of the Vice President for the Arts Program Associate, Stanford University; Zaha Cheema, Senior Program Coordinator, Juma Ventures; Jerry Dear, Information Strategist, San Francisco Public Library; Delaney Chieyen Holton, Programs Manager, CAAM; Lauren Lola, Distribution and Outreach Coordinator, CAAM.
CAAM Fellowship Ready, Set, Pitch!
The CAAM Fellowship Ready, Set, Pitch! Award winner will receive $10,000 grant supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
About the Jurors
Sanaz Alesafar is the Executive Director of Storyline Partners, working within the intersection of culture and entertainment to promote social justice issues and narrative change. She has diverse experience across corporate media organizations, nonprofit and philanthropic sectors in the U.S., France, and the Middle East. Alesafar also consults for the Film Narrative team at Participant. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and received her MPA from L’Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po, Paris).
Zander Kim is a writer based in Los Angeles. He works in Film & TV development with 3AD and is a member of Gold House Futures. He studied English & Theatre at Brown University and is the co-creator of The Barley Field literary magazine coming soon.
Cecilia R. Mejia is a second generation Filipino-American born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has worked for over a decade in development for nonprofit organizations, including NGOs at the United Nations. Cecilia has a number of producing credits on films focusing on critical social impact issues, including the award-winning feature films YELLOW ROSE (Sony, 2020) and LINGUA FRANCA (Array, 2020), and the documentary feature WHO WE BECOME (Array, 2023).
Concurrent with her work, Cecilia is also an adjunct at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, teaching courses designed for the next generation of social impact producers and filmmakers. She is the founder of Remedias Productions, a production company focused on social impact storytelling and producing. Her documentary and narrative film work have been screened at festivals including Tribeca Festival, Cannes Film Festival and CAAMFest; she has been featured in numerous profiles and has published widely about the impact producer profession. She was one of the 2022-2023 recipients awarded NYU’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award which acknowledges outstanding faculty who exemplify the spirit of Dr. King through scholarship, justice work and who promote his principles in their research, teaching, leadership, and community-building efforts. She is the Vice President of External Affairs for American Documentary and was recently named one of DOC NYC’s New Leaders 2024.
Bao Nguyen is an award-winning Vietnamese American filmmaker whose work has been featured on HBO, Netflix, ESPN, the New York Times, Vice, ARTE, and PBS. He directed BE WATER, an exploration of Bruce Lee’s life, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was selected at Cannes, SXSW, and Telluride. His film THE GREATEST NIGHT IN POP, about We Are the World, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, became one of Netflix’s top global films in 2024, and received 3 Emmy nominations, 4 Critics Choice Documentary Award nominations, a Grammy nod, and won a Critics Choice and PGA Award. His latest film, THE STRINGER, premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. He is a PBS/WGBH Producers Workshop Fellow, a Berlinale Talent Campus alum, a Firelight Media Fellow, and a 2022 BAFTA US Breakthrough recipient. He earned his BA from NYU and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts. He is represented by CAA and managed by Mosaic.
Mayuran Tiruchelvam is a screenwriter and producer of film and television. Their filmmaking is fueled by a vision for a more compassionate and openhearted world. They are the Marcus Endowed Chair of Social Justice Filmmaking at San Francisco State University, where they teach screenwriting, directing, and producing.
Mayuran’s feature screenplay The Girl is in Trouble (2015) was executive produced by Spike Lee and a critics’ pick from the Village Voice and RogerEbert.com. Mayuran’s producing credits include To Be Takei (Sundance 2014), The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin (Audience Award, SXSW 2017), Across The Sea (Audience Award, Slamdance 2015), The Mend (SXSW 2014), and My First Kiss and the People Involved (LA Film Festival 2016). Mayuran is a Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow, Film Independent Documentary and FastTrack Fellow, and a member of the Directors Guild of America.
Anuj Vaidya is a media maker, educator, and curator, who has been working in the contexts of community arts and media, social practice, and arts education, for over two decades. Currently a board member for 3rd i Films, the oldest South Asian media arts outfit in the US, Vaidya was co-director of the organization from 2006-2018. His own eco-media practice pays due attention to the material, social, and intellectual impacts of our storytelling and media technologies, reminding us that we must be attentive to both the footprint and the brain-print of the stories we tell. Anuj currently lives and works in the Sacramento Valley region. He is Communications Director for Imagining America (at UC Davis), and also the co-founder of YoloSol – a media collective telling stories of land and water in the Yolo bioregion.
