ARACELI LEMOS (DISCOVERY DAYS – Co-Founder / Director) is a film director, writer and editor based in Athens and Los Angeles. Her debut feature HOLY EMY, a Greek / French / US co-production, had its world premiere at the 2021 Locarno Film Festival in the Cineasti dei Presenti section, where it received a Special Mention Award from the Jury for First Features. Variety described the film as an “excellent debut about faith, mysticism and displacement.” HOLY EMY screened at festivals worldwide, including AFI Fest, Goteborg, Thessaloniki, New Orleans, Seville, and Sun Valley. It was nominated for two 2023 Independent Spirit Awards (Someone To Watch and the John Cassavetes Award), 15 Hellenic Academy Awards, where Araceli won Best Director, and was distributed by MUBI. As an editor and producer, Araceli has frequently collaborated with the filmmaker Panayotis Evangelidis on his documentary portraits of intimate relationships. Their latest feature film, IRVING PARK, won the Mermaid Award at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival. As an editor, Araceli’s work also includes the documentary THEY GLOW IN THE DARK (dir. P. Evangelidis), which received the Hellenic Film Academy Award for Best Documentary, and LOST LA (Season 2) for the Los Angeles based public television station KCET, which was nominated for a regional Emmy Award. Her 2012 graduate thesis film from CalArts, the dark comedy short MIGUEL ALVAREZ WEARS A WIG, screened at festivals worldwide including Tampere, Drama, Leeds and Outfest. Araceli is the founder of Discovery Days (formerly the International Project Discovery Forum), an annual development lab for Balkan and Southern European feature filmmakers, held annually in LA in conjunction with the LA Greek Film Festival. She holds an MFA in Film Directing from CalArts and is an active member of the underground comedy scene in LA.
KARINA LOGOTHETIS (DISCOVERY DAYS – Producer) is a filmmaker based in Athens and Los Angeles. She holds a BA in photography and audiovisual arts, later on studied filmmaking and cinema theory and has obtained several diplomas throughout the years like set & production design. She also directs actors at Sundance Lab. For the past decade, Karina has been working in the film industry mostly as a director and script supervisor in Greece, LA and Mexico. Karina has directed five short films which have won numerous awards in festivals around the world, and has written the first 3 of them: VOURVOUROU (2018), DEAR VICTOR (2022), PLEASE WAIT (2023), NEXTING (2021) and PEBBLE (2022). Her work is taught in high schools and universities in her hometown, Thessaloniki. Karina is also a fine arts and fashion photographer, and her work was featured in magazines like VOGUE and in solo and group exhibitions. She is the producer of Discovery Days, marking her 8th year in the lab. Her short film PLEASE WAIT will be screening in LAGFF on Saturday, June 08, 8:30 PM.
JOEL GARBER (DISCOVERY DAYS – Producer) is a filmmaker from Milwaukee based in Los Angeles. As a Writer/Director, his films have screened widely including at the Palm Springs International ShortFest, Miami International Film Fest, San Francisco Shorts, Wisconsin Film Fest and at NewFilmmakers New York and LA. Joel collaborated, as Consulting Producer, with Director Araceli Lemos on the critically acclaimed feature film HOLY EMY, which premiered internationally at the Locarno Film Festival, at AFI Fest in the US, and was distributed by MUBI. HOLY EMY received numerous accolades including a nomination for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2023 Independent Spirit Awards and a leading 15 nominations at the 2022 Hellenic Film Academy Awards. He is currently developing the feature film BIG BABY BETTY, co-written with Araceli Lemos, which recently received development funds from the Greek Film Center and will participate at the Mediterranean Film Institute’s Script 2 Film Workshop 2024. As an editor and producer, Joel has worked extensively on fiction and non-fiction films and television programs for platforms that include Amazon, Disney+, HGTV, and CBS. He is a producer at DISCOVERY DAYS, an annual workshop for European films in development at the LA Greek Film Festival, and he holds degrees in cinema from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (BA) and San Francisco State University (MFA).
NASOS GATZOULIS (DISCOVERY DAYS – Programmer) is a Greek film director based in Los Angeles. Born in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Athens, Greece, he earned a degree in political science and public administration at the Kapodistrian University of Athens and a directing MFA at the American Film Institute. His AFI thesis project, called TIM OF THE JUNGLE, has screened in many festivals including Camerimage International Film Festival, LA SHORTS International Film Festival and is an official pick in Short of the Week. He received an honorary mention for his feature project called TWO RACCOONS at the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival as part of the IPDF Project of 2018. He has been a part of the LAGFF Programming Team since 2019.