Ningyi Sun is a film director, writer, and actor and a grantee of Sundance, Hot Docs Blue Ice, Ford Foundation, IDFA Bertha Fund, and Chicken & Egg Pictures . Her documentary feature Eat Bitter about a Chinese construction manager and a local sand laborer pursuing happiness in a civil war in the Central African Republic was her first attempt at making a film. Eat Bitter had its world premiere at CPH:DOX in 2023 and has been screened in Hot Docs, Vision du Reel, Shanghai International Film Festival, Encounters South Africa Documentary Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Doc Edge and more. Before diving into the filmmaking world, she worked for the United Nations peace operation in the Central African Republic.
Pascale Appora-Gnekindy hails from the Central African Republic (CAR). She is the owner of Kea-Kwis Production, a video production company in Bangui, CAR. She co-directed her first feature documentary Eat Bitter in 2023. In 2017, she directed “My Eyes To Hear”, a documentary short about a boy overcoming his disability in a land where the disabled are marginalized. The film was an official selection of The International Film Festival of Kinsaha and Film Festival Africlap. In 2019, she directed “Two Sisters”, the journey of two sisters who struggle to find the right balance between their studies, their life at home and their femininity. Pascale came to film production from the IT world. She started studying films when she was selected to participate in 2016 in documentary filmmaking workshops organized by the French Alliance of Bangui and the Ateliers Varan.
