
IFWC Team


Festival Producer
Adam Bentley
Adam Bentley is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and the face of #yegfilm. His works explore traumatic experiences in spaces we once felt safe, including the body, the home, the land, and the nation. His works have been screened across Canada, the United States, Europe, Air Canada, CBC Television, and online. He is a FAVA Producer member and founder of the International Festival of Winter Cinema. He's also the recipient of the Edmonton Arts Council's Cultural Diversity in the Arts Award, and two-time recipient of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts' Cultural Relations Award. When not working on the film festival, he can be found biking -summer or winter, in Edmonton’s river valley.

Festival Director
Bar Lavy
A former resident of four countries other than Canada, Bar Lavy has seen lots of images all over the world. Bar has nurtured a passion for film and photography since he was a young child glued to the TV screen. Now equipped with a B.A. in Film Studies from the University of Alberta, Bar is looking to share his eclectic vision with the rest of the world. He has worked on multiple short films, web series, music videos, photo shoots, TV pilots, and commercials.

Secretary
Kevin Heaman
Over his career, both as an art practitioner and arts manager, Kevin Heaman has taken on various roles and opportunities that challenge him and allow him to create phenomenal experiences for the people he meets. He recently received his MA, where he specialized in Music Management and Digital Storytelling. In his practice, he experiments with various art mediums, from live performance to digital storytelling, and blends them together into his artistic work. In his professional work, he currently works full-time as a grant coordinator in a not-for-profit and works as a freelance consultant with various arts organizations, including music, film, and theater.

Festival Coordinator
Pip Pomroy
Pip Pomroy is an undergraduate in the Film Studies program at the University of Alberta that has interned at the festival before, and is now working on the 2023 festival. He grew up moving between Australia and Canada, being a dual-citizen that has learned to love the winters of both climates. In Pip’s personal time, he enjoys watching film, mostly art and indie films, reading historical literature, playing bass guitar, and video games, notably Mario games. His favourite musical artists are Radiohead and Slowthai, and he has a collection of animal and film tattoos.

Treasurer
Jeffery Nichols
Jeffery Nichols is a long-time supporter of independent stage and screen arts. With a background in Canadian cultural studies and public administration, he has lived and worked from coast to coast and is now based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Volunteering with IFWC since its debut, he is excited about the continuing exposure the festival gives to northern artists, and the collaboration it can foster across northern cultures.

Board Member
Christina Beamish
Christina Beamish is an Edmonton-based screenwriter, filmmaker, and director. She writes and directs narrative film work with a focus on telling human stories from an 2SLGBTQIA+ lens. Christina was awarded a Telus Storyhive grant and two AMPIA nominations for her short-narrative directorial debut, ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’.

Board Member
Edmon Rotea
Edmon Rotea is an Edmonton-based documentary and feature film producer. Edmon strives to help filmmakers from all walks of
life--including emerging, artistic, newcomer, and LGBTQ2S+ filmmakers--create films about cultural, environmental, and social justice issues. Edmon has a variety of experience working in the areas of food security, healthcare, and union activism that have inspired Edmon to bring more attention and awareness to marginalized populations and workers via storytelling. Edmon is also a board member for the Film and Video Arts Alberta (FAVA) and the Alberta Media Arts Alliance Society (AMAAS).