Born in Romania, Anca Damian studied at the Academy of Theater and Film Arts in Bucharest, where she specialized in Cinematography and later obtained a doctorate in Arts, Film and Media. She worked as a director, screenwriter and producer of several documentaries on art-related topics. His extensive filmography includes Crossing Dates (2008), A Very Unsettled Summer (2013), The Magic Mountain (2015), Moon Hotel Kabul (2018) and The Fantastic Tale of Marona (2019). His films have been distributed worldwide and have been honored with numerous international awards, including the Cristal Award for Best Feature Film at Annecy, the Best Director Award at Warsaw, the Mirada International Award at Madrid and the Eurimages Audentia Award. The Island is his seventh and most recent feature film.

Frammartino's debut, Il dono (2003) (an unbudget feature premiered at the Locarno Film Festival) won the Grand Prix at the Annecy Italian Film Festival (France) and the Jury Prize at both Thessaloniki and Warsaw . Frammartino's second feature film, Le quattro volte (2010), premiered at the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. The film won the Europa Cinemas Best European Film award at Cannes and the top prize at CPH:DOX. In 2013, Frammartino's Alberi installation, a 26-minute loop, premiered at MoMA PS1 and was subsequently exhibited at other museums, including the Center Pompidou's 2021 Hors Pistes Festival. Frammartino's third feature, Il buco, was shot in southern Italy, in the neighboring regions of Calabria and Basilicata that continue to inspire him and where all of his previous works were shot. With the approach of an anthropologist, Frammartino captures the traditional and the transcendent with a simplicity and spirituality typical of his filmography.

Ruth Beckermann is a filmmaker and author based in Vienna. His films include The Paper Bridge, East of War, and American Passages. In 2014, his film Los que se van, los que seque received the grand prize for cinema at the Diagonale in Graz. Two years later, The Dreamed Ones was also awarded Best Feature Film there. Waldheim Waltz received several awards, including the Glashütte Original – Documentary Award for Best Documentary Feature at the Berlinale 2018, as well as an Oscar nomination. In 2019 Ruth Beckermann created the Joyful Joyce installation for the Salzburg Festival. In 2022, he won the Golden Bear for Best Film in the Encounters section for his work Mutzenbacher.