Walter Murch has been working in Hollywood since contributing to Francis Ford Coppola's film The Rain People (1969). He edited the sound for American Graffiti (1973) and The Godfather: Part II (1974), won his first Academy Award nomination for The Conversation (1974), his first Oscar for Apocalypse Now (1979), and an unprecedented double Oscar for sound and film editing for his work on The English Patient (1996).

More recently he helped reconstruct Touch of Evil (1958) from Orson Welles' original notes, and edited The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). Walter Murch has also written several books, including In the Blink of an Eye (1995), universally considered the bible of film editing.

Alison McAlpine roots are in poetry, which she began writing as a teenager, publishing in her early twenties. At a writing workshop in Banff the novelist Alistair MacLeod described her work as film poetry. Soon she discovered theatre in Ireland, writing highly visual poetic monologues which were performed in Dublin. In Canada, Alison formed a theatre company and wrote and directed plays that were presented at festivals in Canada, Ireland and France. She was encouraged towards cinema and received a commission to write a TV Opera based on a play she had written. Her mid-length film Second Sight (2008) was screened at more than 35 international film festivals. Cielo is Alison’s first feature film.