Meet the Jury
Meet the visionaries and creatives driving Indie Film Awards forward.
Danny Angotti
Emmy Award-winning producer and director
The founder and lead Executive Producer of Atomic Productions, Inc., as well as the long-form narrative division, Fission-Films. A four-time Emmy Award-winning producer and director, he has grown Atomic into one of the nation’s most prolific production companies. Beyond his work in film and television, Danny is an avid skier and passionate traveler—often finding ways to combine the two.
Sam Gollestani
Emmy-nominated producer and director
An Emmy-nominated Los Angeles-based producer and director with more than 20 years in film and television. He has created projects for FOX, Disney, Sony, and NBC Universal, and worked on iconic shows including Survivor, The Contender, and Amazon’s The World’s Toughest Race. Recent credits include HBO/Discovery’s The Challenger: Battleground (2024 Asian TV Award winner) and CryptoKnights starring Adrian Grenier. Sam previously led entertainment production for FOX Asia-Pacific and now teaches film and television at San Jose State University.
Freddy Rodriguez
EMMY® award-winning filmmaker
A Miami-based EMMY®, TELLY® and Promax/BDA award-winning filmmaker with over 20 years of experience in shorts, music videos, commercials, and documentaries. His short Malabar (2019) premiered at the Miami Film Festival, won multiple awards, and is now streaming on HBO. He has also directed acclaimed documentary shorts including Open Dialogues: Stories from the LGBTQ Community (2020), Black Voices | Black Stories (2022, PBS), and Queer Allies and Gen QueerZ (2023).