Mstyslav Chernov is a Ukrainian filmmaker, war correspondent, videographer, photojournalist, and novelist. He is a Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award® winner known for his coverage of the Revolution of Dignity, War in Donbas, the downing of flight MH17, Syrian civil war, Battle of Mosul in Iraq, and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the Siege of Mariupol. Chernov’s work on the Siege of Mariupol for The Associated Press, earned AP the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, Deutsche Welle Freedom of Speech Award, the Knight International Journalism Awards, Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award, Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award, Free Media Awards, CJFE International Press Freedom Award, Royal Television Society Television Journalism Awards, and Shevchenko National Prize. AP video journalism from Mariupol became the basis of the film 20 Days in Mariupol, which was included in the competition program of the Sundance Film Festival in 2023, where the film won the Audience Award in the World Cinema Documentary category. The film later won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary and Best Documentary Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards. Chernov won a Directors Guild of America Award. In 2023, The Associated Press earned the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for Chernov’s work with Evgeniy Maloletka, Vasilisa Stepanenko, and Lori Hinnant. He has both won and been a finalist for the Livingston Award, Rory Peck Award, Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize, and various Royal Television Society awards. Chernov is an Associated Press journalist and the President of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers (UAPF). He has been a member of "Ukrainian PEN" since July 2022.

Michelle Mizner is an Academy and Emmy Award®-winning documentary film producer and editor on staff at FRONTLINE PBS. Films and projects Michelle has cut and produced have broadcast internationally, screened at top tier festivals including Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, DOC NYC and CPH:DOX, and have been awarded by the Peabodys, World Press Photo, Overseas Press Club, Edward R. Murrow Awards and the duPont-Columbia Awards. Michelle's work for the series has spanned many storytelling forms. In addition to films, she has produced podcasts and multiple acclaimed interactive documentaries, including Inheritance (2016), The Last Generation (2018), and Un(re)solved. (2021). All three earned Emmys for Outstanding New Approaches in Documentary. Most recently, Michelle produced and edited the feature documentary 20 Days in Mariupol (dir. Mstyslav Chernov) which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Audience Award. For her editing, Mizner was nominated for an ACE Eddie and Cinema Eye Honor award, and won a British Film Editors award. Later, the film was nominated in two categories for the BAFTAs, winning in Documentary Feature, and won the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature. Mizner is a member of the Producers Guild of America and American Cinema Editors.

Raney Aronson-Rath is the editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, PBS’ flagship investigative journalism series, produced at GBH in Boston. Under her leadership, FRONTLINE has evolved into a multi-platform organization, expanded its reporting capacity, and won every major award in documentary filmmaking, including an Academy Award®, BAFTA Awards, News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Peabody Awards and the Peabody Institutional Award, and, in 2019, the first Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Gold Baton to be awarded in a decade. When Aronson-Rath became Executive Producer of FRONTLINE a decade ago, she began working to expand the storied brand — the diversity of its makers, subjects, and style — and spearhead films more consistently into the theatrical and festival world. During her tenure, the series won an Academy Award® for 20 Days in Mariupol (2024), and received Academy Award® nominations for Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2018), For Sama (2020). In 2021, Aronson-Rath became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. An Oscar-winning producer and recipient of the prestigious 2024 John Chancellor Excellence in Journalism Award, Aronson-Rath is thought leader in both documentary filmmaking and in investigative journalism. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and her master’s from Columbia Journalism School. She joined FRONTLINE in 2007, previously working at ABC News and The Wall Street Journal.

Derl McCrudden is Vice President and head of production at The Associated Press where he oversees the news content that AP publishes to its global customers.  Previously he spent almost two decades working in broadcast news.   McCrudden was in Kuwait and southern Iraq during the 2003 invasion of Iraq; in Sierra Leone when UK forces invaded to end a war in 2000; and steered coverage of the 2004 US presidential election for ITN and 2008 US presidential election for Al Jazeera English.  A producer of the Oscar-winning documentary feature, 20 Days in Mariupol, he is a member of the Producers Guild of America and BAFTA.

Alex Babenko began covering the Russia-Ukraine war for The Associated Press as a visual journalist in February 2023, focusing on video production and photojournalism from the frontline. His work from Bakhmut, Vhledar, Andriivka, Siversk and other cities affected by the war has been published by several news agencies.

Babenko began his journalism career as sports journalist in local Ukrainian media in 2019 and was a field producer for international media at the start of the full-scale invasion before starting shooting still photography on the frontline. While at university, he interned at Radio Liberty and filmed short documentaries, including the film “Men Sevi Senem” about Crimean Tatars, which received over a million views on news outlet Donbas.Realitii.

Born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Babenko has wanted to be a journalist since his teenage years. He graduated from Ukrainian Catholic University in 2021 with a master’s degree in journalism. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the same university.

Sam Slater is a composer and producer working at the intersection of experimental music, sound design, and contemporary storytelling. A two-time Grammy Award winner, his work has shaped critically acclaimed projects including Joker, Chernobyl, and Battlefield 2042. He has also received the SCL Award for Battlefield 2042, the Icelandic Music Award for Producer of the Year, and the Filmfare Award for Best Original Soundtrack for Netflix’s The Railway Men. Across forms and media, Slater treats sound not merely as accompaniment but as a structural and emotional anchor, constantly probing its potential to reshape attention, space, and narrative.

His recent project, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, created with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Mstyslav Chernov, integrates frontline documentary footage from Ukraine with immersive spatial sound design. Quiet yet powerfully affecting, the piece foregrounds listening as a means of bearing witness; an approach emblematic of Slater’s interest in the consonance of sound and story.

As a collaborator and band member, Slater co-leads OSMIUM, an improvisational collaboration with Hildur Guðnadóttir, James Ginzburg, and Rully Shabara. The project, whose debut album is set for release in June 2025, employs augmented, custom-made robotic and electro-mechanical instruments, including Slater’s own self‑oscillating feedback drum, also utilized in the score for 2000 Meters to Andriivka. OSMIUM’s music fuses industrial textures, ritualistic density, and physical performance to create sound environments that resist categorization.

In his broader work, Slater moves fluidly between solo releases, installations, and collaborative scoring. Projects such as Vandals (with Theresa Baumgartner) and I Do Not Wish To Be Known As A Vandal explore decay, interference, and the architecture of listening spaces. His score for Battlefield 2042 (co-composed with Guðnadóttir) reimagined the language of interactive music, drawing on modular synthesis, live processing, and spatial composition to create a dynamic and unstable sonic environment.

Based in Berlin, Slater continues to develop work that challenges fixed categories, composing for orchestras, machines, field recordings, and spatial systems alike; always with an ear toward the edges of the medium.