AFI FEST Team

Todd Hitchcock, Director of AFI FEST and the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center

Director of the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center Todd Hitchcock leads the national AFI team programming AFI FEST. In his previous role as Director of Programming at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, Todd oversaw numerous international film festivals, retrospectives, first-run engagements and special events, including planning, programming and producing the AFI Latin American Film Festival, the AFI European Union Film Showcase and the New African Film Festival, and classics in Noir City DC (co-presented with Eddie Muller’s Film Noir Foundation) and the Silent Cinema Showcase. Todd began his career at AFI in 2003 working on the inaugural edition of SILVERDOCS before joining AFI Silver’s year-round programming team, and has also served as the Silver’s Associate Theatre Director for the past ten years.

Ethan Caldwell, Director of Operations

Ethan Caldwell oversees the planning and execution of AFI’s exhibition activities, including AFI FEST. He has been working in exhibition cinema and operations for the past two decades. During that time, he has contributed to several theater renovations and system infrastructure projects. With a passion for customer satisfaction, he strives for unique programming and excellent presentation and has a vast range of experience, including the coordination and production of private events, film and television premieres, specialty screenings with artist Q&A sessions and large-scale film festivals. Ethan most recently served as the Director, Theater Operations at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, CA.

Abbie Algar, Director of AFI Programming

Based at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Washington, DC, Abbie leads an incredible team of world-class film programmers (see the rest of this page!) in curating and planning AFI FEST, as well as the AFI Silver’s year-round programming, which includes a bounty of special events, repertory series, first run engagements and large-scale festivals such as the AFI Latin American Film Festival and AFI European Union Film Showcase. Prior to joining AFI in 2016, Abbie was Curator of Film at the Honolulu Museum of Art, where she led the film and performance programs at the museum’s Doris Duke Theatre, overseeing a slate of annual festivals, as well as curating year-round repertory series, special screenings and exhibition-related programming. Abbie has a degree in History of Art and Italian from the University of Reading and has worked at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art and National Portrait Gallery in London and Great North Artists Management in Toronto. As a relatively new mum, Abbie is also looking forward to guiding her two-year-old son through the filmography of his namesake, Ennio Morricone.

Malin Kan, Senior Programmer, AFI FEST

Malin Kan is a film programmer originally from a small coastal town near San Francisco. She graduated with a BA in Film and Media Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and went on to obtain an MA from the University of California, Los Angeles in their Moving Image Archive Studies program. Now based in Los Angeles, she is a Programmer with AFI FEST at the American Film Institute, where she has been since 2016. At AFI, her primary area of focus has been international feature films, though she has contributed to all sections across the festival and previously oversaw the Cinema’s Legacy section, partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, since 2018. In previous roles, she contributed to the George Eastman Museum and the LA Film Festival. She has contributed writing program notes and reviews to both Palm Springs International Film Festival and MovieMaker Magazine, has spoken on a panel at the Locarno Film Festival, and has served on juries for the Tacoma Film Festival, the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films, Outfest and the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival.

Nichole Young, Associate Programmer, Short Films, AFI FEST

Once the AFI FEST programming intern, Nichole Young has remained with the Institute since 2018, programming for both AFI FEST and AFI DOCS. Today, she oversees the entire Shorts Program, Screening Committees and Jury. Nichole has programmed for several festivals including Seattle International Film Fest, Indian Film Fest LA and Big Sky Documentary Film Fest; was a panelist at Atlanta Film Fest and NALIP; and has acted as a judge for Nashville Film Fest and numerous student-run film festivals. She has also assisted in the success of hundreds of film organizations while working at the online platform Eventive. Nichole holds a BFA in Broadcast Journalism from Chapman University and a master’s degree in film and media studies from Arizona State University. She currently resides in Phoenix, continuing her arduous search for the state’s best breakfast burrito.

Javier Chavez, Associate Programmer, AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center

Javier Chavez is a Cuban American film programmer based in Washington, DC. In addition to curating feature films for AFI FEST, he is a programmer for the AFI Silver Theater, which presents over 700 films a year, ranging from first run to repertory and several festivals, including the AFI Latin American Film Festival and AFI European Union Film Showcase. He serves as Secretary of the board of Art House Convergence and was previously Associate Director of Coral Gables Art Cinema and a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Grant Panelist for Media Arts. He holds a BFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Outside the world of cinema, he is a self-taught computer programmer who hopes to fully automate his workday – a task not yet accomplished – and is an avid gamer whose favorite games include XCOM, Hollow Knight, and Metal Gear Solid.

Josh Gardner, Associate Programmer, AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center

Josh Gardner is a Detroit-based film programmer. In addition to his role at AFI FEST, he is the Associate Film Programmer and Public Relations Manager at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, where he enjoys working on the AFI Latin American Film Festival, AFI European Union Film Showcase and the New African Film Festival. He is also the founder of Cinema Lamont, a nonprofit that fosters cross-cultural understand through the power of world cinema. There he produces and programs annual series including Cine Mexico Now, a festival of contemporary Mexican cinema; Skin City: Erotica on Screen and a series highlighting puppets on film. He moonlights as a Film Festival Correspondent for Cinema Tropical, where he interviews Latin American filmmakers on the circuit.

Eli Prysant, Assistant Programmer, AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center

Eli got his start in the theater exhibition field as an Operations Lead for ArcLight Cinemas, working his way to Operations Manager at the Bethesda, Maryland location. He joined AFI in the fall of 2019 and became the Short Films Associate Programmer for the Washington D.C. International Film Festival in 2021. Eli’s biggest passion outside of film is music, and he can typically be found compulsively listening to at least twenty new releases a week. His top three bucket list concerts are currently Björk, Bosse-de-Nage and HAAi.

Julia Kipnis, Associate Programmer, AFI FEST

Julia Kipnis is an LA-based cinephile and film programmer. She has programmed features for AFI FEST since 2018 and documentary features for the Nashville Film Festival since 2022. Julia has previously programmed for Outfest and Mountainfilm and has worked on series in collaboration with the Alamo Drafthouse and Womxn in Windows. She received a BFA in Film from the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University.

Anna Li , Associate Programmer, AFI FEST

Anna Li is a film programmer and visual artist born and raised in Hong Kong. A graduate with a BFA in Illustration from Rhode Island School of Design, she worked in the animation industry before pivoting to the film festival circuit. Apart from her involvement with AFI FEST since 2018, she has contributed to Outfest LA, San Francisco International Film Festival, Indian Film Festival of LA and guest curated for OutMuseum. In her free time, Anna can be found cataloging her cherished physical media collection.

Daniel Crooke, Associate Programmer, AFI FEST

Daniel Crooke (he/him) is a film programmer in Los Angeles who aims to amplify filmmakers from around the globe and connect their work with audiences. This year, in addition to AFI FEST, he served as Senior Programmer at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and the Queer Rhapsody film series organized by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Previously, he worked as the Senior Programmer at Outfest, where he held various programming roles including lead Shorts Programmer from 2016-2023. He has served on festival juries including the Nashville Film Festival and Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, and is proud to have worked across leading arts organizations in the United States such as the Atlanta Film Festival, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Overlook Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, NewFest, Palm Springs ShortFest and TCM Classic Film Festival. His favorite film constantly changes, but today it is Lynne Ramsay’s MOVERN CALLAR.

Payton Ewalt, Associate Programmer, AFI FEST

Payton Ewalt is a student at the University of Southern California, pursuing a BA in Cinema & Media Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies. Following in the footsteps of previous interns, she continued screening for AFI FEST after interning with the programming team in 2021 and is currently working with the American Cinematheque for their second annual PROOF Film Festival. Outside of class, she spends her time working in various projection booths of theaters around campus and perusing movie channels for Golden Age Hollywood films she hasn’t seen before.