Judges

Kevin Nolting is an award-winning film editor who has been working in film and digital cutting rooms for over 37 years. After serving an apprenticeship in Hollywood with iconic film editors like Robert C. Jones and Richard Chew, he’s spent the last 22 years at Pixar Animation Studios, where he edited the Academy Award-winning films Up, Inside Out, and Soul and contributed to many others, including Finding Nemo and WALL-E. He also directed the short film '22 vs. Earth’ for Disney+. Kevin currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife Diane (UCSC alumna, Porter College, 1978), just a short bike ride from their two daughters and two grandchildren, and is working on independent live-action films while continuing to mentor and consult at Pixar.

Axel Geddes joined Pixar Animation Studios in February 1999 as an assistant editor on the Academy Award®-nominated feature Toy Story 2. Geddes went on to work as a second assistant editor on Monsters, Inc., first assistant editor on Oscar®-winner Finding Nemo and second film editor on Oscar®-winning feature film WALL-E. He continued as a lead editor on two Toy Story Toons, the studio’s Halloween television special Toy Story of TERROR! and Finding Dory. He more recently served as Editor on the Academy Award®-winning film Toy Story 4, in addition to working on Pixar’s Lightyear. Geddes recently completed cutting Pixar’s latest feature Hoppers. 

Geddes was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He studied filmmaking with an emphasis on editing at The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He resides in the East Bay with his wife and their three children.

Maya Churi graduated with a BFA in Film from NYU and a MFA as an Annenberg Fellow from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. Churi has worked in independent film production, in independent film distribution and as a writer and editor at indieWIRE. As a filmmaker, her projects include Letters From Homeroom (2000) and Forest Grove (2005) which screened at the Sundance Film Festival and the Walker Art Center, among other venues. Her projects have been funded by the Creative Capital Foundation, the Jerome Foundation and New York State Council on the Arts. A screenplay adaptation of Forest Grove was selected to be a part of the 2009 Sundance Producers Lab. In 2011, Churi paused her work as a filmmaker to raise her family. She continued to write and consult while working at ITVS/Independent Lens where she produced grassroots screenings and events for documentary filmmakers. She lives in the Bay Area.

Margaret Spencer has been a story artist at Pixar Animation Studios since 2019. She studied animation and Italian at USC she began at Pixar as a Story Intern. She has worked on projects such as Lightyear, Turning Red, Elio, Win or Lose, and most recently, was a story lead on Hoppers (2026). She loves movies, sailing, yoga, and the New Yorker (for more than just the cartoons, she swears). 

Emily Engie is a film lover that's managed to find a way to work in the industry from passion and sheer determination. A UC Berkeley grad (2003) in Mathematics to being an ex-stock trader to now a 15 year career in film financing at Pixar from Monsters University  to Toy Story 5. An avid film festival attendee (Telluride, Sundance, Berlinale, Melbourne, Annecy, to Toronto & hopefully many more), with a focus on documentaries and foreign films. 

She is based in Oakland, CA with her orange tabby cat Fred, who sometimes watches some of the 150 movies she tries to watch a year (as many in theaters as she can!).