The 18th Beverly Hills Film Festival is simply a powerhouse with a very unique selection of industry professionals as the Grand Jury of 2018.

Frederico Lapenda: 2018 Grand Jury President

With 20 years of experience, award-winning producer, Frederico Lapenda, has built a global career in all areas of the entertainment industry. As a filmmaker, he has produced over 20 films, and his documentary, Kidnapping, competed for Oscar nomination. Lapenda was the founding partner of Mandalay Lone Runner, independent division of Mandalay, a company chaired by Peter Guber, former CEO of Sony Pictures. Mandalay produced Seven years in Tibet,with Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie in Beyond Boarders, Donny Brasco with Johnnie Depp, and others. Lapenda also produced two video games with XBox, Fight Game Rivals and with Sony Ericsson, Fight Game Heroes. Read more here…

Edward Ryan:

Edward Ryan is the founder and CEO of TENAX Media, a new private equity backed entity that acquires international film and TV distribution rights. Read more here…

Alfonso Arau:

A renowned writer-producer-director-actor in theater and film for more than 20 years, Alfonso Arau has had a long and fruitful career both in front and behind the camera. He is one of the most prominent filmmakers of the Latino community in Hollywood. He was a drama disciple of Seki Sano–a Japanese teacher, classmate of Lee Strasberg with Konstantin Stanislavski in Russia–and traveled the world from 1964 to 1968 with his one-man show, “Pantomime Happy Madness”, after studying with Etienne Decroux and Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Read more here…

Pamela Wallace:

Pamela Wallace is an American screenwriter and author. She won an Academy Award for co-writing the screenplay for the movie, Witness, as well as awards from the Mystery Writers of America and the Writers Guild of America. The Writers Guild later named Witness to their list of the Top 101 Greatest Scripts. Wallace also adapted one of her own novels, Straight From the Heart, into a screenplay for Hallmark Channel. The resulting movie became the highest-rated film for the network in 2003. Read more here…

Kirk Shaw:

Having produced 230 films, Kirk Shaw is one of the leading independent filmmakers in the U.S. Kirk has a proven, innovative approach to financing and packaging television and film contentIn September 2017, Kirk Shaw embraced a new film-making adventure by forming the publicly traded company, Wonderfilm, as a founding producer along with Dan Grodnik, Jeff Bowler and Bret Saxon. Wonderfilm has a $60 million slate of production in place for 2018 with one of the first films under this new venture being Moose, with John Travolta, followed by Nicolas Cage in Primal, going to camera in Puerto Rico. Read more here…

Roberta Augusto:

Roberta’s career started at Summit Entertainment releasing movies like Mr. & Ms. Smith, Sahara, among others. She currently works as the Vice President of Marketing, Distribution & Publicity at IDC, a Lionsgate Company, and she is in charge of more than 20 countries in Latin America. She has released over 140 movies theatrically to date. Read more here…

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa:

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa got his first big break as an actor when he was casted in Bernardo Bertolucci‘s The Last Emperor. He has also been coaching the martial artist portraying Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat Live Tour, and in his free time developing his new form of martial arts, called “Chuun Shin.” Read more here…

Katherine Kauffman:

Katherine Kaufman, a Los Angeles native, is a seasoned film and television content distribution executive with over 20 years of experience in both international and domestic markets. Read more here…

Paul Ruven:

Emmy nominated, Paul Ruven, started with a student Oscar for the screenplay, Alaska, and an Academy Award for best foreign student film. Read more here…

Rudy Youngblood:

Rudy Youngblood is a Native American of Comanche and Cree decent. He is very proud of his roots. Prior to making his on-screen debut in Mel Gibson’s Oscar nominated film, Apocalypto (2006), Youngblood worked as a laborer in a variety of fields. For instance, he toured for three seasons with Peter Buffet’s Native American Dance/Theatrical Production, “Spirit-The Seventh Fire”, as a warrior protector. Rudy was also part of the Native American Dance Theatre. Read more here…