Chris Bowman, Abby Mohaddes, and Adam Volerich to Curate 16th Annual Art of Brooklyn Film Festival

For its signature Guest Festival Director program, Art of Brooklyn Film Festival invites different filmmakers each season to take the reins of curation — ensuring its programming is always fresh, exciting and diverse. It is our pleasure to announce that for 2026 we have invited award-winning filmmakers CHRIS BOWMAN (Narrative Shorts), ABBY MOHADDES (Documentary Shorts and Features) and ADAM VOLERICH (Narrative Features) to work in tandem with AoBFF co-founders Joseph Shahadi and Anthony DeVito to program our 16th season, which will take place in early June in venues across Brooklyn.

CHRIS BOWMAN (they/them) is a queer, nonbinary filmmaker and artist. Their work centers queer and trans characters within classic genre narratives. By appropriating these genres they hope to provide cathartic, joyful onscreen representation historically denied to the queer community. They enjoy combining special and visual effects to create unique and engaging worlds - a skill they also put to use in their work as a production designer. Chris has been working in production in NYC since 2018, and in 2024 they graduated from the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College with an MFA in Directing. Their work there was twice nominated for the National Board of Review Student Grants. In 2025 Chris was named Outstanding Director of a Narrative Short by the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival for their short film BUTCH ROBINSON AND THE STOLEN SOULS.

ABBY MOHADDES is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and actor. She founded Mohaddes Productions in 2023 and completed her debut feature documentary, 500 YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP, in 2024, serving as director, producer, and editor. The film documents her father and his lifelong college friends as they reflect on their experience as Iranian foreign students at the University of Nebraska in the 1970s. It screened at film festivals across the United States and won Outstanding Feature Documentary at The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival (2025), after which it was licensed by the University of Nebraska Alumni Association. Abby is a member of SAG-AFTRA and holds a BFA in acting and film production from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

ADAM VOLERICH Is a NYC based Filmmaker and Podcast Producer. The set is his natural habitat and the crew his family. His films have screened and been awarded at festivals worldwide. His latest short film, MISPRINT, premiered on Omeleto, and his feature directing debut, DRINK AND BE MERRY, is available on Video on Demand and Blu-Ray.  
Adam is the co-creator of the hit film podcast EYE OF THE DUCK on the Morbid Podcast Network for Sirius. He also produced and developed the Signal Award Winning and Ambie and Webby Nominated narrative fiction podcasts AMERICAN HOSTAGE (Amazon Originals), starring Jon Hamm (soon to be a TV Show from Shawn Ryan and MGM+), and THE FOXES OF HYDESVILLE (QCODE), starring Carey Mulligan, for Criminal Content.

Submissions for the 16th annual AoBFF are open until April 17, 2026.
Learn more at aobff.org