Dr. Mauro Sifuentes
co-writer/director/producer

Dr. Sé Sullivan
co-writer/director/producer

Dr. Mauro Sifuentes is co-writer/director/producer for We Just Want To Be, and an accomplished educator and scholar whose activist research and writing support the leadership and healing of queer, trans, and questioning BIPOC communities. Mauro teaches in the discipline of gender and women’s studies, and works in partnership with nonprofits, K12 public schools, community colleges, and universities from across California to holistically address the needs of queer, trans, and questioning students in diverse regions. Their collaborative endeavors with artists, writers, healers, and other filmmakers create engaging opportunities for innovative approaches to history and storytelling. As an advocate for public scholarship, and a first-time filmmaker, Mauro is proud to be a co-writer/director/producer for We Just Want To Be, which brings rigorously engaged California history to popular, advocacy, artistic, and academic audiences.

Dr. Sé Sullivan, co-writer/director/producer, is a scholar-educator born and raised in Santa Monica, California, and a survivor of conversion therapy who has taught in the discipline of gender and women’s studies across public and private universities in California. Sé has been on the frontlines of LGBTQ+ activism since the 1980s, surviving and organizing through the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the lesbian sex wars, and our current era of trans awareness. As a non-binary Irish-American Settler, Sé’s artistic work, including gallery installations and public talks, foregrounds questions of history, gender, and assimilation. They engage the public at a visceral level through audio reenactments of conversion therapy sessions that are accompanied by images from their childhood. Sé may be the only person who survived these experimental therapies at UCLA who has gained access to the official transcripts of these sessions.

Marc Smolowitz
executive producer

Marc Smolowitz is a multi-award winning independent filmmaker based in San Francisco. With three decades of experience in the film and media business, Smolowitz is a director, producer, and executive producer who has been significantly involved in 50+ successful independent films wearing many hats across the entertainment industry. The combined footprint of his works has touched 200+ film festivals and markets on 5 continents, yielding substantial worldwide sales to theatrical, television and VOD outlets, notable box office receipts, and numerous awards and nominations. His long list of credits includes films that have screened at top-tier festivals such as Sundance, Berlinale, Venice, Chicago, Palm Springs, AFI Docs, IDFA, DOC NYC, CPH: DOX, Tokyo, Melbourne, Viennale, Krakow, Jerusalem, among others. His film company — 13th Gen — works with a dynamic range of independent film partners globally to oversee the financing, production, post-production, marketing, sales, and distribution efforts of a vibrant portfolio of films and filmmakers. Founded in 2009, the company is known widely for being active on some 10-15 concurrent projects, both independent and inside Hollywood, and it has successfully advanced Smolowitz's career-long focus on powerful social issue films and filmmaking across all genres. In 2016, he received one of the prestigious Gotham Fellowships to attend the Cannes Film Festival’s Producers Network and Marche du Film marking him as one of USA’s most influential independent film producers. Learn more at 13th Gen Film.