2025 Jury

Lowell Hall is a longtime animation executive working with Nelvana and since 2023 is responsible for marketing, communications, brand and corporate partnerships and DEI initiatives for the festival.

With over 20 years of experience in public relations and corporate communications, Lowell has developed a core expertise in community and stakeholder relations management, with the development and management of community investment programs.

Originally from Quebec, Nadine Samuel is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and production director who has been working for over twenty-five years at the crossroads of visual arts, digital media, and collective participation.

Producer of the international Art Battle Canada events, Montreal division, for the past 11 years, she helps promote the local art scene and brings creative communities together around live performance.

Based in Studio #305 at 135 Van Horne, in the Mile End (former Red Bird Building), she leads Les Productions Rekréativ, a creative studio active for 25 years, dedicated to production, 360° filming, and artistic residencies. This space acts as a living laboratory, where artists, collectives, and audiences explore together the intersections between visual arts, storytelling, and new technologies.

Elisa Schaeffer is a Finnish computer scientist and a childless cat person. Their doctorate (2006) focused on structural properties of complex systems (yes, that’s the AI kind of math), and they have been busy over the past couple of decades identifying practical applications to this branch of knowledge, whether in genetics, psychology, forestry, or finance.

For 16 years, Elisa was a tenured professor in Mexico, teaching undergrads and graduate students and supervising diverse theses.

As the world plunged into a pandemic, Elisa took on the role of Academic Director of Technology and Innovation at the School of Continuing Studies of McGill University (2022), from where they transitioned to their current role as Dean of Technology at LaSalle College Montréal.

Although an early adopter of tech, they’re also a climate-anxious luddite, exploring ways to balance the risks and the opportunities of innovation. In their free time, they play video games surrounded by their chaotic indoor urban vegetable garden until the felines demand their dinner, after which it’s time for dystopian fiction.

I often jokingly say that I’m a hybrid in the fashion world when people ask me what I do for a living. I say this because I contribute to the industry in various ways, which I’m deeply passionate about. I’m the Dean of Fashion at LaSalle College, a columnist, I oversee the artistic direction of fashion shows, and I’m behind the visual image of singers and actors in Québec’s star system.