The Berkshire International Film Festival is all about filmmakers. We celebrate their films, connect them to colleagues and ideas, and recognize their achievements throughout their careers.
Each year, in the days leading up to our festival, we host our Filmmakers Summit to the benefit of the filmmakers who attend the BIFF. The 2025 Filmmaker Summit will take place on May 27 and 28. Details will be announced in April 2026.
Generously sponsored by Berkshire Bank, the Next Great Filmmaker Award presents a cash prize of $2500 to the winning filmmaker. BIFF and Berkshire Bank created this award in 2010 to support the work of independent filmmakers around the world.
In 2025, BIFF and Love Today Productions launched a new initiative supporting emerging filmmakers. The nexGEN Film Competition is open to US-based college and university students to encourage the work of the next generation of talented young filmmakers. [then click through to nexGEN page]
John Gray is a Brooklyn-born writer, director, and producer known for creating the long-running CBS series Ghost Whisperer and for writing and directing numerous Emmy-nominated and critically acclaimed television films. He served as producing director on the CBS series Reckless and has helmed several studio and independent feature films, including the award-winning White Irish Drinkers, which premiered at the Toronto…
James Wright is an award-winning director based in Los Angeles and a George Lucas Scholar currently pursuing his MFA in Film & Television Production at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. He creates both narrative and documentary work, with films that have been recognized at multiple festivals. Following graduation, he aims to direct feature films. Please List the Title of Your…
Nira Burstein is an award-winning filmmaker based in New York City and one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film as well as DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40. Her documentary debut Charm Circle won the Audience Award at Sheffield DocFest, was named a New York Times Critic’s Pick, and premiered on the Criterion Channel. Her work has been…
Sasha Waters is a moving image artist trained in photography and 16mm cinema, whose work explores ecstatic, metaphorical realism through the materials and relationships of everyday life. Her 2018 feature Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable won a Special Jury Prize at SXSW, screened internationally, and inspired her forthcoming book Garry Winogrand Archive 1948–1984, created in collaboration with Jeffrey Ladd…
Karen Ranucci is a veteran producer with over fifty years of experience in independent video and film production and distribution. She began her career at the Downtown Community TV Center in New York, where she worked on PBS documentaries, led community video workshops, and helped establish both an education program and a documentary distribution department. She later spent nearly a…
Daniel Straub is an award-winning Los Angeles–based director and producer with a recent hyperfixation on pencils. His work reflects a curiosity for process and detail, often finding creativity in unexpected places. Please List the Title of Your Film at BIFF 2026A SHORT DOCUMENTARY ABOUT A GIANT PENCIL What was your first experience with film and how did it influence your…
Alessandro Tonda is an Italian director with a background in creative writing and film, having studied at the Scuola Holden in Turin before graduating in Film Directing from the NUCT in Rome in 2006. Beginning his career as an assistant director, he collaborated on major Italian film and television productions such as Romanzo Criminale – The Series, Gomorrah – The…
Éamon Little is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and radio documentary maker based in County Galway in the west of Ireland. His screen adaptation of John McGahern’s final novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun (directed by Pat Collins), won the 2024 IFTA for Best Film and screened at festivals worldwide, earning numerous awards. His recent documentary Born That Way, about…
Eran Riklis is one of Israel’s most acclaimed filmmakers, known for a body of work that has achieved both international critical acclaim and commercial success. His films—including Reading Lolita in Tehran, The Syrian Bride, Lemon Tree, The Human Resources Manager, A Borrowed Identity, Zaytoun, Spider in the Web, Shelter, Playoff, Cup Final, Zohar, and Vulcan Junction—have been showcased at major festivals…
Brian Gersten is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, non-fiction writer, editor, and educator based in Millerton, NY. His extensive editing work—including Searching for Mr. Rugoff, Radical Wolfe, and Enter the Slipstream—has appeared on platforms such as Netflix, PBS, Amazon Prime, Peacock, HBO Max, and the Criterion Channel. His own short documentaries, including The Great Toilet Paper Scare, Balloon Boy, and The…
Omid Iranikhah is an Iranian-American writer/director whose work explores the complexities of the Iranian diaspora experience. A recipient of the Michael Collyer Memorial Fellowship in Screenwriting and a semifinalist for the Academy Nicholl Fellowships, his storytelling blends humor, intimacy, and cultural specificity to create narratives that resonate beyond their immediate communities. He recently earned his MFA in Film Production from…
