Jury

Goran Paskaljević was born in 1947 in Belgrade. He studied at the well-known Prague school of cinema (FAMU). He has made 30 documentaries and 16 feature films, shown and acclaimed at the most prestigious international film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto and San Sebastian...). The rise of nationalism in Yugoslavia forced him to leave his country in 1992. In 1998, he went back to make Powder Keg (aka Cabaret Balkan in the USA) which won the international critics‘ prize (FIPRESCI) at the Venice Film Festival and the European Film Award. In 2001, Variety International Film Guide marked him as one of the world‘s top five directors of the year. The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) presented a full retrospective of his work in January 2008. In July 2010, it was BFI Southbank‘s (London) turn to organize a full retrospective of his 16 feature films, along with the publication of a monograph (in English) about his work. Goran Paskaljevic lives between Belgrade and Paris. He has both French and Serbian citizenship.

Settled in Warsaw, Joanna Lapinska studied psychology and film in Poland. Since 2002, she has been connected with the T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival, the largest film festival in Poland. In 2003, she was one of the founders of the New Horizons Association, the main organizer of the festival. Since then, she has been a member of its management board. Being also the artistic director of the festival, she is responsible for the program, guest department and the industryrelated events. She is the head of the New Horizons Studio, a workshop for young film professionals held during the festival. She is also the head of the Polish Days, a new industry event within the festival focused on presenting the latest Polish films. Joanna Lapinska is also actively involved in the distribution programme run by the association. In 2009, Joanna Lapinska started a collaboration with the MUNK Studio production company, where she works as an artistic advisor, and is also responsible for its international strategy.

Jiří Mádl was born in 1986 in České Budějovice. His lead role in Karel Janák’s Snowboarders (2004) has skyrocketed him among the Czech film’s young acting talents. The movie won the Most Popular Czech Film Award at the Czech Lions. Following the success of Snowboarders, he took on three more comic roles in Taming Crocodiles (2005), Rafters (2006) and Rock Con Artists (2006). Feeling the need to move away from comedies, he was cast in Tomáš Vorel‘s The Can (2007). His first English-language performance came in the 2008 film Bathory, directed by legendary Slovak director Juraj Jakubisko. Shortly after, he starred in Night Owls (2008). His role in this film made him the youngest ever recipient of the Crystal Globe for Best Actor at the 2008 Karlovy Vary IFF. His latest projects include TV series Borgia (2011, d. Oliver Hirschbiegl) and films The Confidant (2012), Four Suns (2012), I’ll Wake Up Yesterday (2012), Lousy Bastards (2013) and Colette (2013). In 2011, he completed a screenwriting class at the New York Film Academy.

Born in 1948 in Nancy, France, Jean studied at the Nanterre University (France) and UCLA (USA). As a film critic he wrote as a film critic for the film buff magazine Cinéma (1979-1988), for the weekly Révolution (1980-1986) and the daily L‘Humanité (since 1984). He is the author of a book on John Ford, a book on Citizen Kane, and co-author of ten or more other books. Jean worked as the director of the French Federation of Film Societies, the general secretary of the French Film Critics Guild, was a member of the IFTC (International Film and Television Council) at UNESCO, director (for 19 years) of the Critics‘ Week within the Cannes Film Festival, member of the selection committee (for 24 years), member of the board of the Cannes film festival (for eight years) and a member of the bureau (4 years). He is currently the president of the French Film Journalists Union, president of FIPRESCI and a member of the European Film Academy. Roy is also a member of the French Film Academy.

Born in 1951 in India, he is a film graduate from the Film & Television Institute of Tamil Nadu, India. After a short stint in the Southern Film Industry, he joined Doordarshan (Indian Television) in 1975. After seven years, he joined the Films Division (world’s largest producer of documentaries and news reels) of the Government of India in 1982. Later, he moved to the Directorate of Film Festivals (organising the International Film Festival of India – IFFI) and worked as its Deputy Director (1994- 2008). During this period, he worked in all departments of the Directorate (organizing international film festivals, participating in foreign film festivals with Indian Panorama Films, National Film Awards, and Cultural Exchange programmes, etc.). He has also selected and programmed films for the IFFI independently (2003- 2007). After spending 33 years in the service of the Indian Government, he took voluntary retirement in 2008. He has also worked as the Chief Programmer for the Mumbai Film Festival (2008-2011), as well as programmer and advisor for other film festivals (e.g. Pune, Chennai, Bangalore).

Sean Farnel is a curator, consultant and an aspiring creator. He specializes in festivals and digital platforms, primarily for creative documentary. Prior to working independently, he was Director of Programming at Hot Docs, North America‘s largest documentary festival, market and conference. He started his career at the Toronto International Film Festival, where he became a staff programmer specializing in documentary and learning programmes. Sean is a graduate of Cinema Studies from one of Canada’s most respected film schools, Concordia University. Upon graduation, he received the Motion Picture Foundation of Canada Award for Most Outstanding Achievement. His occasional blog is RippingReality.com.

Limor Pinhasov graduated from the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem (1993-1996). Prior to that, she studied Philosophy of Art and the French Language at the Paris-Sorbonne University (1992-1993). She is a documentary filmmaker, having directed six films, including Holiday Flowers (2001) and Out of the Forest (2004), which she co-directed with Yaron Kaftori. The latter film premiered at the Berlin Film festival 2004 and won the Creative Award of the Jerusalem Film Festival. Her film 4.7 Million (2005) won the Haifa Art Foundation Award at the Haifa International Film Festival. A Working Mom (2006) won the Best Documentary Award at the New Jersey Film Festival. Her most recent films are Filmed by Itzhak (2008) and Melissa: Mom and Me (2010).

Multimedia artist Tomáš Rafa was born in 1979 in Žilina. He ‘lives in trains’, as his activities are dispersed among the numerous cities where he is active, but especially the cities where there is something going on (protests against or battles for something...). Rafa graduated from the Academy Of Arts in Banská Bystrica, where he had enrolled as a sculptor in 2004, but finished his studies at the Studio of Intermedia and Digital Arts in 2009. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, he studied in the class of Prof. Grzegorz Kowalsky (2010). Kowalsky’s department known as „Kowalnia“ produced numerous distinct figures active in critical art (e.g. Katarzyna Kozyra, Paweł Althamer, Katarzyna Górna, Artur Żmijewski). In 2001, Rafa he won the Oskár Čepan Award, as well as the Tatra Tiger Award. Following his stay at the ISCP in New York, his exhibition Respect Existence Or Expect Resistance! was presented in the 20th Century Art Cabinet of the Slovak National Gallery from June 15 to July 24, 2012.

Otto Reiter was born in 1957 in East Berlin, GDR. When he was three years old, his mother, a native of Vienna, took refuge with him in Austria. He studied literature, theatre science and film at the Vienna University. Since 1985, he has worked as a film scout, programmer and moderator for the international film festival VIENNALE. Since 1986, he is also an advisor and moderator for the Austrian Film Days. He is organizer and curator of the Austrian Film Week in Bucharest and the Iranian Film Week in Vienna. Since 1984, he has written articles for BBC, Screen International, Moving Pictures, Austrian Radio (Ö1) and all serious Austrian newspapers, like Der Standard und Die Presse. He is also a moderator for film festivals like Berlinale (Forum), Rotterdam, Sao Paulo, Karlovy Vary, Cottbus, etc. Reiter also organised the Ulrich Seidl retrospective at the Bratislava IFF 2007. In 2008, he wrote essays for the 3-month-long summer programme of the Film Archive Austria: BALKAN FEVER. He was a member of juries in Locarno, Sarajevo, Novi Sad, Rio de Janeiro, etc. Reiter even appeared as an actor in Before Sunrise by Richard Linklater and in Die schlafende Schöne by Dieter Berner.

After studying Management Engineering, Valéry Rosier started film studies in Belgium (IAD). His final film, Yeti, was selected by numerous festivals and received several prizes. Apart from this, he worked as an assistant director on several feature films. In 2008, he made Good Night, a short film that won numerous prizes all over the world and was nominated at the European Film Awards in 2009. In 2011, he finished a new short film Sundays, which won the Discovery Prize at Critics‘ Week in Cannes Film Festival, and numerous other prizes (Grand Prix at the Bratislava IFF 2011, Grand Prix at ISFU Köln, etc.). He just finished a feature documentary Silence Radio in northern France and is currently writing a script of his first feature film.

Kate Taylor is based in London, UK, where she is an exhibition and distribution officer for the Independent Cinema Office, programming for several arthouse cinemas and distributing cultural films. Formerly a festival director of Abandon Normal Devices and the London Short Film Festival, her freelance activities include co-curating the Project: New Cinephilia project, which is a partnership with MUBI and the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Kate is a board member of the Birmingham’s Flatpack Festival and contributes to Electric Sheep, The Quietus and Sight & Sound online.

Viera Langerová studied Film and Theatre Studies at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and Cultural Studies at the Charles University in Prague. She has worked as an editor in Slovak journals (Film a divadlo, Dialóg, Slovenské pohľady), and was the editor-in-chief of the Czech monthly Slovenské listy. She has lectured on film subjects at the Baltic Film and Media School and the Tallinn University in Estonia. Viera occasionally works as a film curator (a retrospective of Kazakh films for the IFF Karlovy Vary; programming screenings for the Asian Study Group arthouse cinema in Islamabad, Pakistan; Chinese film selections for the Confucius Centre in Tallinn, Estonia). She also works as a film consultant for various film festivals (IFF Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic; IFF Kazan, Festival of Muslim Cinema, Russia; IFF Blacknights, Tallinn, Estonia; IFF Flying Broom, Ankara, Turkey). She is the author of publications Film geography: Continental China, Honk-Kong, Taiwan and Urdu, Purdah, Burqe. Five Years In Pakistan. She focuses on Asian and East European cinematographies, and currently works on a book about Iranian film. Langerová is a member of Slovak Club of Film Journalists.

Julia Khomiakova was born in 1963 in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg, Russia). She graduated from VGIK in 1986 in Film History And Theory. Julia worked for various distribution companies, magazines, and journals, e.g. TEFI Review (editorin-chief), also for Kinoglaz, Premiere and ELLE (Russian versions), Russian State TV etc. Since 2001, she works in NIIK (Film Art Research Institute), and also translates from English and French. She is a member of the Filmmakers‘ Union of Russia and the Moscow Union of Journalists. She served as a member of FIPRESCI juries in Cottbus, Istanbul, Ankara, Athens, Tromso, Pecs, Cluj, Fribourg and Thessaloniki.

She started writing about cinema after having studied female directors’ issues during her studies at the University of Paris VIII-Saint-Denis, where she received her Master Of European Cultural Studies degree. She has been writing for Positif for nearly ten years, and is a member of its Editorial Board since 2010. Dominique Martinez also works as a social journalist in a union weekly magazine La Nouvelle Vie Ouvrière (NVO).

Dubravka Lakić was born in Belgrade. She is the film critic and columnist of Politika daily paper. She is a FEDEORA Executive Board member, EFA member and FIPRESCI member. She is also a film selector of the Cinema City IFF – Novi Sad, member of the Board of Serbian Film Center and member of the Council of BELDOC (Documentary film festival). She is the author of the books Close Up – Masters Of Modern Direction; A Monograph About Serbian Director Goran Paskaljevic; Introducing Youth; co-author of Cinema City and Fedeora Presents: Dorota Kedzierdzavska – Polish Film Writer And Director; Cinema City and Fedeora Presents: Andreas Dresen – German Film Director... Dubravka Lakić is the author of the concept of the European Film Festival Palić, where she was a long-time film selector. She was a long-time council member of the Belgrade FEST. She is also known as author of specialized TV program about films – KINO KLUB and In Medias Res.

Michala Burcáková was born in 1988. She is in the final year of her Master of Arts in Film Theory studies at the Film and Television Faculty, Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. In 2011, she earned a MA degree in Professional Writing at the University College of Falmouth in UK, focusing on writing non-fiction and short scripts. She writes mainly about film.

Peter Morávek sa narodil v roku 1988. Študuje strih na Vysokej škole múzických umení v Bratislave. Ako asistent strihu zatiaľ pracoval na dokumentoch Zamatoví teroristi, Malá Hanoj a na hranom filme Až do mesta Aš, na ktorom spolupracoval i ako strihač. Okrem fotografie sa občasne venuje písaniu haiku a rád chodí na filmové festivaly.

Lucia Žatkuliaková was born in 1969 in Bratislava. After attending the Metodova Grammar School, she enrolled at the Philosophical Faculty in Comenius University of Bratislava, but dropped out after one year in favour of studying at the Academy Of Fine Arts, Bratislava, where she is currently completing her BA studies in Printmaking And Other Media. This year, Lucia attended a 6-month study stay at the Kolding School of Design in Denmark. She has also taken various film or photography workshops. Lucia focuses on free printmaking, illustration,
animation and photography.

Dubravka Lakić was born in Belgrade. She is the film critic and columnist of Politika daily paper. She is a FEDEORA Executive Board member, EFA member and FIPRESCI member. She is also a film selector of the Cinema City IFF – Novi Sad, member of the Board of Serbian Film Center and member of the Council of BELDOC (Documentary film festival). She is the author of the books Close Up – Masters Of Modern Direction; A Monograph About Serbian Director Goran Paskaljevic; Introducing Youth; co-author of Cinema City and Fedeora Presents: Dorota Kedzierdzavska – Polish Film Writer And Director; Cinema City and Fedeora Presents: Andreas Dresen – German Film Director... Dubravka Lakić is the author of the concept of the European Film Festival Palić, where she was a long-time film selector. She was a long-time council member of the Belgrade FEST. She is also known as author of specialized TV program about films – KINO KLUB and In Medias Res.

Gidi Orsher is one of the founding members of FEDEORA and serves on it‘s board. He was born in Tel Aviv in 1950 and studied cinema at the Tel Aviv University. Since the late 1970s, he has worked for IDF Radio, the most popular radio station in Israel, for which he is a cinema critic, editor and presenter of several culture programs. Since 1999, he has been the editor-in-chief of the Internet section of the station. He was the cinema critic of Haaretz, Davar dailies and Pnai Plus and wrote for Maariv and Hair for many years. He presented and edited several cinema and internet programs on Israeli television. A teacher and lecturer on cinema, he is Chairman of the Film Critic Section of the Israeli Journalist Association, and the FIPRESCI Section, as well as being one of the founding members of The Israeli Film Academy and a member of its board. He wrote the cinema section of the Hebrew edition of „the New Britannica“, and has served on juries of national and international film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Jerusalem, Haifa, etc.).

James Evans is an Anglo-Canadian film critic, author and lecturer. He has contributed, among other journals, to Cinema Scope, Electric Sheep Magazine (editor of the Books Review section, monthly column Cine Lit), Total Film and Little White Lies. He has written chapters for Under Fire: One Hundred Years of the War Movie, The End: an Electric Sheep Anthology, World Film: London, Jerzy Skolimowski, and Eastern European Cinema. Evans has served on various film juries – most recently at the Haifa International Film Festival; he additionally gives lectures on Film Studies at the Sussex University and the University of Brighton in the U.K.