FILMMAKERS

Jānis Nords
Latvia
Agata Prętka
Poland
Jola Bańkowska
Poland
Magnus von Horn
Sweden
QIU Yang
China
Jorunn Myklebust Syversen
Norway
Mauricio Osaki
Brazil
Aline Höchli
Switzerland
Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson
Iceland
Jeppe Rønde
Denmark
Hana Jušić
Croatia
Elin Övergaard
Sweden
Monica Manganelli
Alan Holly
Ireland
Jens Blank
Germany
Lauren Jackson
Leonardo Van Dijl
Belgium
Will Ashurst
Will Ashurst
Paul Wright
UK
Johanna Pyykkö
Norway
Matías Rojas Valencia
Syllas Tzoumerkas
Eliška Chytková
Czech Republic
Kristóf Deák
Hungary
Anna Mantzaris
UK
Jan P. Matuszyński
Poland
Michał Toczek
Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson
Iceland
Aislinn Clarke
Ishan Shukla
India
Bobbie Peers
Norway
Roman Vasyanov
Katarzyna Klimkiewicz
Poland
Luca Tóth
Hungary
Kuba Mikurda
Poland
Przemysław Kotyński
Poland
Michael Koch
Renata Gąsiorowska
Poland
Arnaud Demuynck
Gustavo Pizzi
Brazil
Jonas Odell
Sweden
Jan Gadermann
Niki Lindroth von Bahr
Sweden
Naïla Guiguet
Grímur Hákonarson
Iceland
Alicja Jasina
Poland
David Stumpf
Slovakia/Hungary
Andrew McVicar
Bryn Chainey
Chintis Lundgren
Estonia
Laura Moss
USA
Réka Bucsi
Hungary
Hector Herrera
Canada
Signe Baumane
Latvia
Ezequiel Radusky
Argentina
Malou Reymann
Denmark
Asaph Polonsky
USA / Israel
Selma Vilhunen
Finland
Karni and Saul
UK
Trevor Jimenez
Canada
Barnabás Tóth
Hungary
Onur Tukel
USA / Turkey
Fernando Guzzoni
Gabe Klinger
Brazil
Bartosz Kędzierski
Poland
Dara Van Dusen
Bas Devos
Belgium
Kristin Ulseth
Norway
Ivan I. Tverdovsky
Russia
Tom Hardiman
Dawid Bodzak
Poland
Matan Yair
Israel
Sacha Polak
Michał Socha
Poland
DK Welchman
Johnatan Nowak
Marcin Janiec
Poland
Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson
Tomasz Wasilewski
Poland
Eva Pervolovici
Romania
Gunhild Enger
Norway
Andrei Cretulescu
Romania
Špela Čadež
Slovenia
Babis Makridis
Greece
Elisabet Gustafsson
Sweden
Aga Woszczyńska
Michael Koch
Michal Blaško
Slovakia
Ivana Šebestová
Slovakia
Hugh Welchman
Asaf Saban
Tudor Jurgiu
Romania
Tudor Giurgiu
Romania
Asaf Saban
Israel
Selma Cervantes
Kristoffer Rus
Sweden
Marc James Roels & Emma De Swaef
Mariko Bobrik
Renee Zhan
Grzegorz Jaroszuk
Poland
Matt Porterfield
USA
Anna Odell
Devon Manney
USA
Farnoosh Samadi
Iran
Isabelle Sieb
UK
Story Chen
Chaitanya Tamhane
Yelyzaveta Pysmak
Martin Snopek
Slovakia
Antti Heikki Pesonen
Finland
Tobias Nölle
Switzerland
Michal Žabka
Valdimar Jóhannsson
Megha Ramaswamy
India
Jan Komasa
Poland
Kamil Polak
Poland
Teemu Nikki
Finland
Ivaylo Minov
Bulgaria
Ali Asgari
Iran
Cav Bøgelund
Denmark
Carla Simón
Spain
Miguel Llansó
Spain
Lisa James Larsson
Sweden
Cecilia Actis
Argentina
Michał Poniedzielski
Poland
Mark Cousins
UK
Endre Skandfer
Norway
Gustav Danielsson
Sweden
Sonja Tarokić
Valentyn Vasyanovych
Ivana Laučíková
Slovakia
Hlynur Pálmason
Iceland
Charles Williams
Australia
Marisa Ginger Tontaveetong
Thailand
Edmunds Jansons
Latvia
Caroline Ingvarsson
Sweden
Jasmine Elsen
Aleksandra Terpińska
Poland
László Nemes
Kateřina Karhánková
Czech Republic
Katie Aselton
Marie Larrivé
Damian Nenow
Poland
Josephine Decker
Johan Oettinger
Denmark
Goran Stolevski
Hallvar Witzø
Norway
Adura Onashile
Fijona Jonuzi
Sweden
Carin Bräck
Sweden
Dania Bdeir
Shir Wen Sun
Malaysia
Hanne Berkaak
Norway
Christopher Arcella
USA
Paweł Maślona
Poland
Ognjen Glavonić
Hamy Ramezan
Ulaa Salim
Denmark
Joanna Kos-Krauze & Krzysztof Krauze
Poland
Rachel Lambert
USA
Rémi Durin and Arnaud Demuynck
Ruben Östlund
Sweden
Álvaro Gago
Jimmy Laporal-Trésor
Eirik Svensson
Norway
Elina Talvensaari
Finland
Sascha Fülscher
Sweden
Tam King
USA
Evi Kalogiropoulou
Teemu Niukkanen
Finland
Daniel Mulloy
UK
Sander Joon
Marta Pajek
Poland
Mia Hulterstam
Sweden
Shady Srour
Israel
Marijana Jankovic
Montenegro / Denmark
Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk
Ukraine
Andrias Høgenni
Faroe Islands
Tomasz Popakul
Poland
Agnieszka Smoczyńska
Lise I. Osvoll
Norway
Dominga Sotomayor
Chile
ZOU JING
Linda Hambäck
Cristina Grosan
Romania
Rémi Durin
Yu Ueda
Japan
Tomasz Bagiński
Poland
Ben Pearce

Marc James Roels & Emma De Swaef

Marc James Roels is a live-action director, making award winning shorts ‘Mompelaar’ in 2007 and ‘A Gentle Creature’ in 2010. Emma De Swaef specializes in stop-motion and doll-making, her preferred working materials include wool, felt and textile. Together they made the short film ‘Oh Willy…’ in 2012, a stop-motion short that won 80 international awards including the Cartoon d’Or for best European short, and a Cézar nomination. They are based in Antwerp, Belgium and ‘Ce Magnifique Gâteau !’ is their latest production.

Hana Jušić

Croatia

Hana Jušić obtained ma degree in film and tv directing at Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. She also graduated in comparative literature and English language and literature from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2007 and she enrolled in the Postgraduate Doctor’s Study of Literature and Film.

So far, she has written and directed several short fiction and documentary films which have been shown at student, but also at some prominent European festivals. She has directed short films ‘Zimica’ / ‘The Chill’ (international premiere in competition at Oberhousen festival), ‘Mušice, krpelji, pčele’ / ‘Gnats, Ticks and Bees’, for which she has received Oktavijan award and the Jelena Rajković award and ‘Terarij’ / ‘Terrarium’, for which she received Oktavijan award for fiction film and Golden Pram award at Zagreb Film Festival. Her latest short ‘Da je kuća dobra i vuk bi je imao’ / ‘No Wolf Has a House’ was screened in Rotterdam and awarded Best Film at London Short Film Festival 2016. She has written the script for feature film ‘Zagonetni dječak’ / ‘The Mysterious Boy’, directed by Dražen Žarković.

‘Quit Staring at My Plate’ is her debut feature film as a director/screenwriter. The project was developed at screenwriting workshop Torino Film Lab, the programs Script & Pitch and TFL – FrameWork, intended for projects in pre-production.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 Quit Staring at My Plate

Goran Stolevski

Goran was born and grew up in Macedonia before migrating to Australia in his teens.

His debut feature, You Won’t Be Alone, premiered in official competition at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, while his second, Of an Age, opened the 2022 Melbourne International Film Festival before winning the $100,000 CinefestOz prize for Best Australian Film. Both films were distributed internationally by Focus Features and Universal.

Before shifting to features, Goran had made twenty-five shorts, playing over 200 festivals worldwide, with Would You Look at Her winning the jury prize for Best International Short at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and being selected for the Criterion Channel.

Goran completed a Bachelor in Creative Arts at the University of Melbourne and a Masters in Film and Television at the Victorian College of the Arts.

Filmography

TITLE	YEAR	SHORT / FEATURE / DOCUMENTARY
OF AN AGE	2022	feature
YOU WON’T BE ALONE	2022	feature
MY BOY OLEG	2018	short
WOULD YOU LOOK AT HER	2017	short
YOU DESERVE EVERYTHING	2015	short
EVERYTHING WE WANTED	2015	short

Carin Bräck

Sweden

Carin Bräck was born in Stockholm, studied scriptwriting and has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Lund. She works as a director, scriptwriter and teacher in scriptwriting.

FILMOGRAPHY
2008 Attached to You, short
2010 Det görs ju inga misstag, short
2010 En gång var jag en dröm, short
2010 You Know?, short

Eirik Svensson

Norway

Eirik Svensson, born in 1983, belongs to a brand new generation of Norwegian directors. He graduated from the Norwegian Film School in 2010 with internationally acclaimed short film called FRIDAY. Before that he has attended film school in Finland – Lillehammer University College (LUC) where he met Jyrki Väisänen, with whom he co-wrote and directed the short LIFE WORTH LIVING. In 2013 he made his feature film debut called MUST HAVE BEEN LOVE. ONE NIGHT IN OSLO is his second feature film.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 One Night In Oslo, feature
2012 Must Have Been Love, feature
2010 Friday, short
2006 Life Worth Living, short

Renata Gąsiorowska

Poland

Born in 1991. Animation student and cartoonist from Cracow, Poland. In 2010 graduated from The National School of Fine Arts in Cracow.
Currently 5th year student of Film Animation and Special Effects Department at the Polish National Film School in Lodz.

FILMOGRAPHY
2015 Cipka / Pussy, animated short
2014 With your eyes closed, animated music video
2013 Birthday, animated music video
2013 Niezwykła noc / Unusual night, animated short
2012 Łukasz i Lotta / Luke and Lotta, animated short
2011 Pułapki / Traps, animated short

Karni and Saul

Directing duo Karni and Saul.

They have been working together since 2005 , merging Karni’s atmospheric photographic style with Saul’s fantastical animated elements to create music videos, commercials and short films. In 2010 Karni & Saul showcased their short film TURNING, which then went onto feature at many festivals worldwide winning three, and was nominated for a BAFTA in 2011. Their new short film FLYTOPIA, commissioned by film4. Based on a dark, fantastical Will Self story, with original score by Adrian Utley , is showing in festivals worldwide. They are currently represented for commercial work at Aardman and are developing their first feature film.

Asaf Saban

Asaf Saban is a director and writer. His short films were screened at major film festivals worldwide including Clermont-Ferrand, Telluride, San Sebastian, and AFI Fest. In 2017 he directed and produced his debut feature film – ‘Outdoors’ (‘Bayit Bagalil’), which was successfully released in Israeli cinemas.
His new film, ‘Delegation’ (‘Ha’Mishlahat’) premiered at the Berlinale Film Festival 2023.

FILMOGRAPHY
DELEGATION (2022, Feature)
PARADISE (2021, Short)
BLESSED IS THE MAN (2018, Short)
OUTDOORS (2017, Feature)

Aleksandra Terpińska

Poland

Polish filmmaker based in Warsaw. Director and screenwriter of short films, commercials and music videos. Studied Directing at the University of Silesia in Katowice, and Psychology at the University of Wroclaw. She has made several short films – CHICKEN, ALL SOULS’ DAY, AMERICA, THE BEST FIREWORKS EVER– and a documentary – CZECH SWAN.

Her film AMERICA (2015) recived 16 awards including Golden Horseman of the Youth Jury at Filmfest Dresden, Best Short Film at Sehsuchte International Student Film Festival in Potsdam, Golden Tadpole at Camerimage IFF, Early Bird Grand Award in Bulgaria and The Flaming Faun at Shnit International Shortfilm Festival. Her previous film All Souls’ Day was selected on over 100 film festivals among them San Sebastian, Palm Springs, Los Angeles, Edinburgh, Clermont-Ferrand. It received 16 awards, including Grand Prix at Short Film Festival in Drama, Best Short Film at Cottbus Film Festival and PFI and Mastershot Award at Camerimage IFF.

FILMOGRAPHY
2021 Other People, feature in production
2017 The Best Fireworks Ever, short
2015 America, short
2015 Czech Swan, documentary
2013 Chicken, short
2012 All Souls’ Day, short

Gabe Klinger

Brazil

Gabe Klinger is an award-winning filmmaker, film studies professor, and author. His acclaimed documentary DOUBLR PLAY: JAMES BENNING AND RICHARD LINKLATER (2013) won a Lion for Best Documentary in Venice and screened at over 100 leading events and venues worldwide including SXSW, Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, TIFF Bell Lightbox, and the IFC Center. Klinger’s articles have appeared in Sight & Sound, Film Comment, and Cinema Scope. He has taught film studies at University of Illinois and Columbia College.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 Porto, feature

Dania Bdeir

Dania Bdeir is a Lebanese-Canadian award-winning writer & director with an intenselove/hate relationship with Lebanon which she finds to be her biggest heartache and sincerest inspiration. Dania, currently a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, hasa BA in GraphicDesign from the American University of Beirut and an MFA in directing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she received a full scholarship in her third year. Her pre-thesis film “Meshkal” (English title: Kaleidoscope), has traveled to film festivals in France, Morocco, Pakistan, Mexico, Czeck Republic, India and many more. It has won a few notable awards including Award of Excellence at the2014 Canada International film festiva land Golden Palm at the2014 Mexico International Film Festival. Her thesis film, “In White”, which received the Spike Lee Production Fund, had its world premiere at the renowned Clermont Ferrand film festival and went on to screen at the BFI London Film Festival, Uppsala International short film festival and more than 30 film festivals worldwide. It has won a dozen awards including the International Grand Prize at the Rio de Janeiro International short film festival thus making it eligible for the 2019 Academy Awards in the short live-action category. In 2019, Dania was selected as a Berlinale Talentand participated in its Short Film Station with her short film “Warsha”.Warsha is a co-production between Inter Spinas Films (France), GoGoGo Films (France) and Né à Beyrouth Films (Lebanon).The film has secured a pre-purchase broadcast deal with renowned European TV channel ARTEand as been supported by the CNC, therégion Grand Est, the région Sud, the Métropole Aix-Marseille-Provence, the Sacemand the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF). Warsha had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance International Film Festival and its French premiere at International Short Film Festival of Clermont-Ferrand 2022. Dania is currently based in Dubai and is developing her first feature film “Pigeon Wars” which was selected for the 2018-2019 Torino Film Lab x DFI Hezaya Screenwriting lab. Pigeon Wars was also selected for the 2021 Cine Qua Non Storylines lab.

FILMOGRAPHY
2021 Warsha (short)
2018 Sound of Reverence (short, documentary)
2017 IN WHITE (short)
2014 DAD (short)
2014 KALEIDOSCOPE (short)

Réka Bucsi

Hungary

Réka Bucsi, born in 1988, is a Hungarian independent animation filmmaker. She received her BFA and MFA at the animation department of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest.

Her graduation film SYMPHONY NO. 42, got shortlisted for the 87th Academy Awards. Her films were screened at official shorts competition Berlinale, SXSW, Sundance, Annecy, and won over 50 international awards. 2013/2014 she attended Animation Sans Frontiéres (ASF), the European Animation Production Workshop. She was an artists in residence at the Open Workshop in Viborg – Denmark, and at Q21 in Vienna – Austria. Her French co-produced short film LOVE was nominated for the European Film Awards 2017, and shortlisted for the César Award 2018. Réka is represented as a director by Passion Pictures.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Solar Walk, animated short
2016 Don’t Know Where Going, animated short
2016 LOVE, animated short
2014 Symphony no. 42, animated short

Carla Simón

Spain

Carla Simón (1986) studied at the University of California and the Audiovisual Communication Department of Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona. After that she directed TV series and programmes for TV Catalan. After being awarded the prestigious scholarship of Obra Social “la Caixa”, Carla moved to the UK to study at the London Film School, where she wrote and directed the documentary BORN POSITIVE and the fiction LIPSTICK, both short films selected in numerous international film festivals.

SUMMER 1993 is her feature film debut produced by Inicia Films and co-produced by Avalon. The project was developed at Berlinale Script Station, Ekran program in Poland, Sources 2 in Barcelona and won the SGAE screenwriting fund. It was also presented at the Low Budget Film Forum in Les Arcs, Premiers Plans Atelier, Berlinale Co-Production Market and won the first prize in Holland Film Meetings in 2015. The film also received the MEDIA Development funding and the ICAA fund for production. In 2013 Carla created Young For Film!, an association which taught cinema to children and teenagers. Since moving back to Barcelona, she has been collaborating with “Cinema en Curs”.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 Summer 1993, feature
2013 Lipstick, short
2012 Born Positive, short

Álvaro Gago

Álvaro Gago was selected by Variety in 2019 as a Spanish talent to track and as a Star of Tomorrow by Screen International in 2021.
In 2017 he directed a short film “Matria”, which was a 2019 Goya nominee and received the 2018 Sundance Grand Jury Prize. His follow up short film, “16 de decembro”, premiered at the 2019 Locarno Film Festival and was also a Goya nominee in 2021.
He is currently working on his debut film “Matria” (titled like the short) which was part of the Berlinale Co-Production Market and has been developed at the TIFF Academy, La Incubadora or the MFI Script Lab.

Selected Filmography

2022, MATRIA (long feature)
2019, 16 DE DECEMBRO
2017, MATRIA (Short Film)

Dominga Sotomayor

Chile

Dominga is one of the leading young directors from Chile. Her first feature film, DE JUEVES A DOMINGO (Thursday till Sunday), was developed at the Cannes’ Cinéfondation Résidence and won the Tiger Award for best feature at the Rotterdam International Film Festival 2012 as well as best film awards at the IndieLisboa, T-Mobile New Horizons IFF and Valdivia FF, among others. The film was released theatrically in the US, UK, Portugal, Poland, Chile, Argentina and Mexico.

Her second feature film MAR had worldwide premiere during Berlinale 2015 in Forum Section. Dominga also had her video pieces and installations shown in Tate Modern and at exhibitions in Santiago de Chile. She directed several short films, including LA ISLA (2014), which won the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival 2014 and Best Short Film at Huesca Film Festival 2014. Her next feature film, TARDE PARA MORIR JOVEN (Late to die young), took part in the Binger Filmlab program and received the support from the Sundance Institute (Global Film Maker Award) and Hubert Bals Fund.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 Mar, feature
2013 La Isla, short
2012 Thursday till Sunday, feature
2009 Videogame, short
2008 The Mountain, short
2007 Below, short

Laura Moss

USA

Laura is a NYC-based director and production designer. Her early work has screened at MoMA, Anthology Film Archives and the Boston International Film Festival, where she was awarded Best Director for her featurette, RISING UP.

Her latest short, FRY DAY, screened at SXSW and Tribeca in 2017, where it won the Student Visionary Award. FRY DAY has since screened at over 40 international festivals and won 30 awards, including the Grand Prix for Best Short at the Melbourne International Film Festival, and Best Narrative Short, Hollyshorts, 2017.

Laura is an alumna of NYU’s graduate film program. She was recently named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Fry Day, short
2009 Rising Up, short

Megha Ramaswamy

India

Megha Ramaswamy is a screenwriter, director and producer based in Mumbai. Her hybrid short documentary, NEWBORNS premiered at TIFF’14 and was reviewed as the Best Film of Programme Four. It takes a close, discomfiting look at the lives of survivors of acid attack violence. Newborns has since travelled to numerous festivals like Clermont Ferrand, Films de Femmes, Byron Bay, Flicker Fest, Cinequest, Filmmor, and Human Rights Film Festival, Paris. Winning awards and top honours for its powerful storytelling and innovative technique. Megha has also been a beneficiary of the prestigious Chicken & Egg Fund in collaboration with IDF for the film and for her work with the support group Stop Acid Attacks.

Megha’s banner, Missfit Films, is dedicated to producing innovative films, which don’t necessarily subscribe to being independent or commercial.

Megha’s latest film Bunny premiered in North America at TIFF’15

FILMOGRAPHY
2015 Bunny, short
2014 Newborn, docucmentary short

Story Chen

Born in China in 1995, Story Chen is a writer director with expertise in films, commercials, and music videos. She graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts majoring in FILM&TV with a minor in psychology.

Her two student short films made at NYU Tisch has won her many awards. A Woman’s Gaze has won Best Drama Short at Hollywood International Film Festival. Her thesis short film Marina has won Best International Short at Norwegian International Short Film Festival.

Her own identity as a hybrid of Eastern and Western culture cultivates her keen eye on prevailing themes of humanity, transcending cultural and racial differences. She focuses on depicting the emotional struggles of real life. Her stories also put a spotlight on minorities like Asian women, LGBTQ and children.

Currently, Story is based in New York and Beijing. She has been selected by Asian Film Academy Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in 2018.

1^st feature on writing process

2021，Drunk of Sun (4min 16mm film experimental) Grand Jury Award at New York International Film Awards

2018，Marina (15min Short Fiction) Best Actress, NYC Independent Film Festival

Best Student Short, LA Independent Film Festival Awards

Best International Short, Norwegian International Short Film Festival

2016, A Woman’s Gaze (18min Short Fiction)

Best Drama Short, Hollywood International Film Festival

Tobias Nölle

Switzerland

Tobias Nölle (1976 Zürich) studied film at the School of Visual Arts in New York. His short film RENÉ (2008) was screened at numerous festivals worldwide and won several awards such as the Golden Leopard in Locarno for the best Swiss short. Nölle is one of the directors of WONDERLAND, which premiered at the Festival del film Locarno 2015 (International Competition).

ALOYS is his first feature, which he wrote, directed and edited. It was developed at the Torino Film Lab and selected for the Rotterdam Cinémart and the Berlinale Co-Production Market.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 Aloys, feature
2015 Heimat land, omnibus
2007 René, short
2006 Mes vacances, animated short
2006 Kuckuck, short
2004 Bernd, short
2003 Dav is, short

Paweł Maślona

Poland

Graduate of political sciences, student of Faculty of Radio and Television at the University of Silesia in Katowice. Director of several award-winning short films and commercials, including VFF Young Talent Award for the Best Film at International Festival of Film Schools in Munich 2010. In 2013 he finished his diploma film MAGMA.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Panic Attack, feature
2013 Magma, short

Will Ashurst

Will Ashurst started as a traditional animator and story artist, and created and wrote his own series King Arthur’s Disasters in the UK, which earned him a BAFTA nomination. He has contributed to many children’s film productions such as the first Two Buddies and a Badger film, and as director he also helped reimagine the Elias universe for an international audience in Elias’ New Adventures. He made his debut as a feature director on the award winning Anchors Up, also from the Elias universe.

Will Ashurst

Renee Zhan

Renee Zhan is a Chinese-American director and animator from Houston, Texas. Renee graduated with an
BA from Harvard University and an MA in Directing Animation from the National Film and Television School.
In her films Renee is primarily interested in exploring topics of female identity, nature, and sexuality – all
things beautiful, ugly, and squishy. She is an alumnus of the Sarabande Foundation, BAFTA crew x BFI
Network and Berlinale Talents and her short films have screened and won awards at festivals internationally
including Annecy, Locarno, TIFF, SXSW, an Annie Award nomination, BAFTA LA shortlist, and the Jury Prize for
Animated Short at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

FILMOGRAPHY
Soft Animals | 2021 (short)
O Black Hole! | 2020 (short)
Reneepoptosis | 2018 (short)
Hold Me (Ca Caw Ca Caw) | 2016 (short)

Mark Cousins

Mark Cousins is an Northern Irish filmmaker, writer and curator living and working in Scotland. In the early 1990s he became director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival. His 2004 book The Story of Film, was published in Europe, America, China, Mexico, Brazil and Taiwan. The Times said of it “by some distance the best book we have read on cinema.” Cousins adapted the book into a 930 minute film, THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY (“The place from which all future revisionism should begin” – New York Times). Michael Moore gave it the Stanley Kubrick Award at his Traverse City Film Festival. It won a Peabody Award in 2014.

Next Cousins wrote, directed and filmed his first feature documentary, THE FIRST MOVIE, about kids in Kurdish Iraq. It won the Prix Italia. His other feature films include WHAT IS THIS FILM CALLED LOVE?, HERE BE DRAGONS, A STORY OF CHILDREN AND FILM, which was in the Official Selection in Cannes, LIFE MAY BE, co-directed with Iranian filmmaker Mania Akbari, and 6 DESIRES, an adaptation of DH Lawrence’s book Sea and Sardinia.

He is currently making STOCKHOLM MY LOVE, a city symphony starring Neneh Cherry, and directing the archive film ATOMIC, a collaboration with the band Mogwai.

FILMOGRAPHY
Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise, documentary
2015 I Am Belfast, documentary
2015 Your Eyes Flash Solemnly with Hate, short
2014 6 Desires: DH Lawrence and Sardinia, documentary
2014 Life May Be, documentary
2014 The Place, short
2013 Here Be Dragons, documentary
2013 A Story of Children and Film, documentary
2012 What Is This Film Called Love?
2011 The Story of Film: An Odyssey, TV Mini-Series documentary – 15 episodes
2009 The First Movie, documentary
2008 First Impressions, Video documentary short
2008 The New Ten Commandments, documentary
2005 Cinema Iran, TV Movie documentary
1999-2000 Scene by Scene, TV Series – 3 episodes
1994 I Know Where I’m Going! Revisited, TV Movie documentary
1993 The Psychology of Neo-Nazism: Another Journey by Train to Auschwitz, documentary

Tam King

USA

Tam King specializes in 2D digital animation, but loves visual storytelling of all kinds. She has done work with installation art, projection mapping, graphic novel illustration, and sound art. As a kid, Tam first learned to animate digitally at the Intel Computer Clubhouse, a community center in her hometown of New Mexico. As an adult, she is passionate about promoting media literacy and creating content that empowers kids of all backgrounds.

In 2012, Tam earned her bachelors degree in studio art at Stanford University, before moving on to Savannah College of Art and Design to study animation. In 2010, she worked as visual developer and key animation for the Oscar long-listed short, El Salon Mexico. Later, as part of the animation collective Obscura Works, Tam co-directed STARLIGHT, another Oscar long-listed short. She is currently working on her thesis project, researching coming of age stories for girls in animation. In the future, Tam hopes to help create animated children’s content that will empower kids, and help promote empathy and critical thinking.

FILMOGRAPHY
Three Wishes and a Half
Avez-vous du Feu?
Art’s New Car
Timothy and the Great Robotic Invaders from Outer Space
El Salon Mexico
Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines
Starlight

Jan Komasa

Poland

Polish director, studied directing at the Łódź Film School. His short film Nice to See You world-premiered in Cannes Cinefondation competition, where it got the 3rd prize. His feature film debut, Suicide Room, premiered in the Panorama section of the Berlinale and attracted over 800.000 viewers in Polish cinemas. His second film, a war blockbuster Warsaw ’44, sold over 1.8 mln. tickets. Corpus Christi is his third feature film.

FILMOGRAPHY
2019 Corpus Christi
2014 Warsaw 44
2011 Suicide Room

Michael Koch

Born in Lucerne (Switzerland) in 1982. From 2003–2008 he studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. His short films have been shown at over 100 international film festivals and won several awards. His graduation film Polar received a Special Mention at Berlinale 2009 and won the German Camera Award as well as the German Short Film Award. His debut feature film Marija had its world premiere in Competition at the International Filmfestival Locarno 2016. The film was internationally screened at several festivals such as Toronto, Busan, Angers and Gothenburg, winning numerous national and international prizes. A Piece of Sky is his second feature film.

Gustavo Pizzi

Brazil

Gustavo Pizzi is a Brazilian film director, producer and screenwriter. His directorial debut was RISCADO / Craft, which world-premiered at SXSW and went to over 40 other film festivals worldwide. In 2010 Gustavo produced the short film Ivan’s Distraction, which world-premiered at the Semaine de la Critique of Cannes International Film Festival. In 2012 he directed the documentary TV Series Oncotô. He also worked on the script of the TV series #callmebruna, already in its second season, broadcasted by Fox Premium in all Latin America. His is now developing the film/miniseries GILDA.

FILMOGRAPHY
2018 Loveling
2010 Riscado / Craft

Jānis Nords

Latvia

After extensively working as 1AD on various Latvian features and TV commercials, Jānis Nords shot his feature debut AMATEUR in 2008. The film won Best Debut at the Latvian National Film Festival. The following year he co-wrote Return of Sergeant Lapins (directed by Gatis Smits), which premiered at Busan International Film Festival. He then studied film directing at National Film and Television School in Britain. MOTHER, I LOVE YOU is Jānis Nords’ second feature.

FEATURE FILMS
2013 Mother, I Love you
2011 Au Revoir Monkeys, short
2010 Freedom Day, short
2008 Amateur, feature

Jan Gadermann

Jan Gadermann, born in 1986, studied Film Studies and Animation. He has written and directed two short films and is co-creator of the board book series „Mats & Frida“. With “Laika & Nemo” he graduated from Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF with a master’s degree in Directing Animation.

Filmography

2022 – Laika & Nemo, Animationsfilm, 15 min
2013 – Pieter the Pirate, Animationsfilm, 2 min
2009 – Welcome to London, Animationsfilm, 3 min

Teemu Niukkanen

Finland

Teemu Niukkanen, born 1978, is a Finnish director working solely within comedy genre. Niukkanen has distinguishable style of storytelling where deadpan meets mundane meets absurd meets humane comprehension – often accompanied with spot-on cinematography. Niukkanen has described his style being “bad taste done with good taste”.

Niukkanen’s first professionally produced short FUCKING BUNNIES premiered AT Sundance Film Festival 2017 and it has been awarded twelve times. Niukkanen’s second short ARE YOU HUNGRY? will has its world premiere in Toronto International Film Festival 2019.

FILMOGRAPHY
2019 Are You Hungry?, short
2016 Fucking Bunnies, short

Jonas Odell

Sweden

Jonas Odell is partner and co-founder of the production company Filmtecknarna. He specializes in making films combining live action and various mixed media animation techniques. He has also scripted, co-scripted and written the music to a number of the studio’s productions. His short film NEVER LIKE THE FIRST TIME! was awarded with the Golden Bear for best short film in the Berlin Film Festival 2006. His short LIES was awarded as Best International Short at the Sundance film festival 2009. The past years Jonas has also been a much sought after director for music videos and his portfolio includes videos for such artists as Erasure, Goldfrapp, U2 and Franz Ferdinand, for which he received an award for breakthrough video of the year at the MTV Music Awards 2004 as well as a Grammy nomination. Jonas also directs a number of television commercials each year.

FILMOGRAPHY
2015 I Was a Winner, animated short
2010 Tussilago, short
2008 Lies, short
2006 Never Like the First Time!, short
2002 Family and Friends, short
1997 Otto, short
1995 Body Parts, short
1993 Revolver, short
1993 Alice in Plasmaland, short
1989 Exit, short
1988 Pesce Pesce, short
1985 Dawning, short

Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson

Gudmundur Arnar graduated in Fine Art and studied screenwriting. His short films and feature debut have been showcased and awarded in numerous festivals. Among these accolades are Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival and a nomination for the European Film Awards. His debut feature Heartstone premiered in the Venice Days Competition in 2016 and ended up collecting over 50 awards worldwide.

Rachel Lambert

USA

Rachel Lambert is a writer-director hailing from Louisville, Kentucky. Her debut feature, IN THE RADIANT CITY, produced by Jeff Nichols and starring Marin Ireland, Michael Abbott Jr., Paul Sparks, and Celia Weston, premiered to rave reviews at TIFF 2016 and was nominated for the New American Cinema Award.

Rachel’s sophomore feature, SOMETIMES I THINK ABOUT DYING, starring Daisy Ridley, recently premiered opening night of Sundance 2023 in US Dramatic Competition. Alongside Nate Gregorski, she also sold the spec script THEY WERE JUST NICE PEOPLE to Netflix with Adam Sandler attached to star and Dylan Clark producing.

FILMOGRAPHY
Sometimes I Think About Dying 2023 – Feature film
I Can Feel You Walking 2022 – Feature film
In The Radiant City 2016 – Feature film

Rémi Durin and Arnaud Demuynck

Anna Odell

Anna Odell is a Swedish conceptual artist and film director. She graduated from two of the most highly valued institutions in Sweden: University College of Arts, Craft and Design, and the Royal Institute of Art. In 2009 her graduation work, Unknown Woman 2009-349701, was an intervention in the public space. She staged a psychotic attack on the Stockholm bridge, and was taken away by the police to the psychiatric hospital. The take on the mental health institution in the spirit of Faucault’s‘ Madness and Civilisation’ made the headline of all Swedish newspapers as a case of the critical art gone too far. In 2013, in her feature debut The Reunion she reenacted the class reunion between the former classmates after 20 years, exploring the tensions between the victim, the bullies and the observers at schools. The film was selected for Critics’ Week at the Venice Film Festival and won a number of awards, among them two Guldbagge Awards, Sweden’s top movie honor, for film and screenplay. In contrast to many other critical artists, in her work the investigations get a twist of a cinematic form and a subversive humor.

Filmography
2018 X&Y
2013 The Reunion
2009 Okänd kvinna, student film

Josephine Decker

Having started her career in documentaries, helping to produce for A&E, ABC and Discovery, Josephine Decker often builds her work from improvisation and collaboration with real communities. Her recent feature BUTTER ON THE LATCH- called “a sexy, wild romp you have to see to believe” by Indiewire and “an utter exhilaration of cinematic imagination” by The New Yorker – is set at a real-life Balkan folk song and dance camp. The film, based on a Balkan folk song, explores the dark intimacy and neuroses of a female friendship, was included in Film Comment’s year-end list of Best Undistributed Films of 2013, and will have its international premiere at the Berlinale 2014. Recently named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, Josephine has just completed her second narrative feature THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY. Starring Joe Swanberg, Robert Longstreet, Sophie Traub and Kristin Slaysman and inspired by a character from John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” Thou Wast Mild and Lovely balances horror, beauty, and intimacy as an erotic thriller set in the wilds of Kentucky. The film will World Premiere at the Berlinale 2014.

In 2008, Josephine directed the documentary feature BI THE WAY, exploring the rise of bisexuality in America and available on Logo and Netflix. The film screened at SXSW, Silverdocs, and about 100 festivals worldwide and received write‐ups in The Austin Chronicle, Curve Magazine, The New York Times, New York Magazine, and The Dallas Morning News, among others. Josephine’s short films and music videos have played at MoMA, SXSW, Cucalorus, Maryland, and Austin Film Festival, have won children’s programming awards, and can be seen on PBS and Kidzbop. Her short ME THE TERRIBLE, about a child pirate who tries to conquer New York City, received a glowing review in The New Yorker. Fortunate to be collaborating with artists she admires, Josephine Decker spent the past few years producing short videos for United Way, creative producing a doc for performance artist Sarah Small and acting in films by directors like Joe Swanberg, Onur Tukel and Spencer Parsons. Josephine also raises awareness about environmental issues through her performance art.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, feature
2013 Butter on the Latch, feature
2011 Me The Terrible, short
2008 Bi The Way, feature documentary
2005 Naked Princeton, short

Malou Reymann

Denmark

Malou started acting in her early teens and was nominated for a Danish Academy Award (Robert) and a Danish CriticsAward (Bodil) for her role in Hella Joof’s feature film “Hush Little Baby” (2009). She has a BA in literature from the University of Copenhagen and an MA in Directing Fiction at the National Film & TV School in England (2016). She has directed a number of short films at the DFI Filmworkshop. 13 won the Best Short Film award at Odense Film Festival in 2011 and she was nominated for a Robert for OSLO-COPENHAGEN in 2014. Her short film INTERRUPTION, funded by New Danish Screen, has been selected for a number of festivals, including CPH PIX in 2015.

A PERFECTLY NORMAL FAMILY is Malou’s first feature film and is inspired by her own life.

FILMOGRAPHY
2020 A Perfectly Normal Family
2015 Interruption, short
2014 Oslo-Copenhagen, short
2011 13, short

Katarzyna Klimkiewicz

Poland

Katarzyna is a graduate from the Polish Film School in Lodz and alumni of the Binger Film Lab in Amsterdam.

Her documentary WASSERSCHLACHT – THE GREAT BORDER BATTLE co-directed with Andrew Friedman was awarded Berlin Today Award during Berlinale 2007. Her short film HANOI-WARSZAWA won many Polish and International awards and was voted the Best Short of 2010 by the European Film Academy. Her debut feature film FLYING BLIND premiered in Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2012 where it was nominated for the prestigious Michael Powell Award. The film received three Awards (Grand Prix, Best Director, Critics Award) at the Polish Festival of First Films in Koszalin and was released cinematically in the UK and in Poland in 2013.

Katarzyna is a member of the European Film Academy, for many years she was also a president of Film 1,2 Association, which supports young filmmakers in Poland.

FILMOGRAPHY
2013 La Isla, short
2012 Flying Blind, short
2009 Hanoi-Warszawa, short
2009 Nic do stracenia, documentary short
2007 Wasserschlacht: The Great Border Battle, documentary short
1999 Treading Water, short

Daniel Mulloy

Daniel Mulloy films are known for nuanced and sensitive exploration of characters often concentrate on story worlds with strong social themes. Mulloy is a BAFTA and BIFA winning filmmaker and has been nominated for an Indie Spirit and European Academy Award. Three of his films have premiered at Sundance and he is two time winner of the Edinburgh international Film Festival. His films have received near one hundred international awards.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 Home, short

Niki Lindroth von Bahr

Sweden

Niki Lindroth von Bahr, born in 1984, is an artist and animation director based in Stockholm. She got her master degree in fine art at the Royal Institute of Art in the spring of 2016. Her films BATH HOUSE (2014) and TORD AND TORD (2010) has been screened at festivals around the word, such as Berlinale, Sundance, AFI and Annecy. TORD AND TORD was also nominated as Best Shortfilm at Guldbaggegalan 2011.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 The Burden / Min börda, animated short
2014 Bath House / Simhall, animated short
2010 Tord and Tord / Tord och Tord, animated short
2007 One Night in Moscow / En natt i Moskva, animated short

Signe Baumane

Latvia

Signe Baumane, an independent animator known for her controversial films on the subjects of sex, pregnancy, dentists and madness, was born in Latvia in 1964. In 1983 Signe successfully passed exams to enter Moscow State University and study Philosophy. The one thing she learned in her five years of Philosophy study was that knowledge is relative: what you know to be the truth today can become a lie tomorrow.

In 1991 Signe was given an opportunity to direct her first animated short, THE WITHCH AND THE COW, a two minute story about a tiny witch trying to milk a humongous cow. When the film was finished Signe started to work as a freelance designer and illustrator with publishing houses in Moscow and Riga. She illustrated several children’s books and made sets for a puppet theatre. In 1993 she received another grant to make TINY SHOES, a personal fairy tale about a young woman who dreams to marry a prince, but has to live with a dragon instead. Eastern European film festivals recognized it as a bold feminist statement. In 1995 she received a grant for her next film THE GOLF OF THE TIGERS, a complicated tale of tigers who interchange dreams with reality and reality with dreams. With her first three films Signe developed her unique storytelling style – direct, head-on, unflinching – and pursued the subjects that she was most interested in: violence, power, womanhood, relationships between men and women. Her first films also showed her fascination with animals, which are a big source of her inspiration. In 1997 she applied for and received a green card as an Extraordinary Ability Alien in USA.

By that time she had saved enough money to make her first short on American soil: LOVE STORY. Between 1999 and 2009 Signe wrote and directed 11 more award winning shorts: THE THREATENED ONE (1999) produced by Pierre Poire of Italy, NATASHA (2001) coproduced and co-directed with Josh Rechnitz, FIVE FUCKING FABLES (2002), WOMAN (2002) produced by Rija Films in Latvia, DENTIST (2005), FIVE INFOMERCIALS FOR DENTISTS (2005), VETERINARIAN (2007) produced by Rija Films, THE VERY FIRST DESIRE NOW AND FOREVER (2007), TEAT BEAT OF SEX: Episodes 1 – 3 (2007) produced by Pierre Poire, TEAT BEAT OF SEX: Episodes 8 – 11 (2008) produced by Pierre Poire, and BIRTH (2009). In all of Signe’s work, the influences of Eastern European traditions like those of Stasys Eidrigevicius in illustration and Jan Svankmajer in animation are easy to spot. But her New York films have a new, specifically American sensibility with their accessible storylines, developed gags and outrageous humour.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 Rocks in My Pockets, feature
2009 Birth, short
2007 Teat Beat of Sex: Episodes 8, 9, 10, short
2007 The Very First Desire Now and Forever, short
2007 Veterinarian, short
2007 Teat Beat of Sex, short
2005 Five Infomercials for Dentists, short
2005 Dentist, short
2002 Woman, short
2002 Five Fucking Fables, short
2001 Natasha, short
1999 The Threatened One, short
1998 Love Story
1995 The God of the Tigers, short
1993 Tiny Shoes, short
1991 The WItch and the Cow, short

Mia Hulterstam

Sweden

Mia Hulterstam was born in Linköping and studied stage and theater technology in Malmö, Sweden. She is a director, animator and currently a technician at the Theater of Malmö.

FILMOGRAPHY
2010 Igelkottsresan, short
2008 Attached to You, short
2006 Blue, Karma, Tiger, short
2003 The Dance of My Text, short

Devon Manney

USA

Devon Manney is a 22-year-old artist and filmmaker, currently living in Los Angeles. He grew up in Moorhead, MN, where he taught himself to draw and animate at the age of 9, largely as a way to occupy his ever-expanding imagination (and escape from the frigid winters). By the time he left high school, his films had been screened at festivals across the US, and Devon was named one of the top-14 young filmmakers in the nation by the National YoungArts Foundation.

Studying Animation at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Devon was awarded grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, ASIFA-Hollywood, and the USC Undergraduate Research Fellowship, as well as being named the recipient of the 2016 Association of American Editorial Cartoonists’ Locher Memorial Award, given annually to the most promising student cartoonist in North America.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Cradle, animated short
2016 The Red We’ve Got, animated short
2015 A Study in Studies, animated short
2014 The Sight of Stars, animated short

Marcin Janiec

Poland

Graduate of Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, painting faculty. Specialist in digital special effects, 3D artist, motion designer. Producer of many music videos, author of illustrations and visual concepts in TV commercials and movies. In his free time he paints and… plays chess. Currently working at Badi Badi. THE GAME is his first film.

FILMOGRAPHY
2010 The Game, short

Hugh Welchman

Mauricio Osaki

Brazil

Mauricio Osaki was born in São Paulo, Brazil, where he started his career directing short films and working in feature projects as assistant editor and post producer at major film companies. At NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia, he completed his short film, MY FATHER’S TRUCK, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2013 and has won numerous prizes at film festivals around the world. He currently lives in Brazil, where he is developing his first feature film.

FILMOGRAPHY
2013 My Father’s Truck, short
2010 Lembrança / Reminder, short
2008 Liberdade / Liberdade, short
2007 Primavera / Springtime, short
2004 Quando Tudo Formiga / Life in an Anthill, short

Ivan I. Tverdovsky

Russia

Born in 1988. He graduated from the Russian Institute for Cinematography in 2011. His early documentary works won him multiple awards in Russia and at international film festivals worldwide. His fiction debut CORRECTIONS CLASS (2014), inspired by the novel by psychologist Ekaterina Murashova, won over 35 prizes worldwide, including East of the West Award (Crystal Globe) at the 49. Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (international premiere).

ZOOLOGY is Ivan’s second feature project. It was showcased both at the Paris Co-Production Village and Les Arcs in 2015 and received financial support from the Eurimages and Russian Ministry of Culture.

FILMOGRAPHY
2018 Jumpman, feature
2016 Zoology, feature
2014 Corrections Class, feature
2013 Space Dog, documentary
2012 Pianism, documentary
2009 As If Waiting for a Bus, documentary

Eva Pervolovici

Romania

Eva Pervolovici is a young Romanian director whose record already contains an impressive list of short films, video art, photographs and participation in the collective writing of novels or art magazines. Multiple in its forms and styles of expression, the heteroclite work of Eva always has the same intention: to make visible subjectivity by letting the surreal arise in everyday situations. Featured and awarded for originality in many festivals around the world, she also got an MFA Film Advance Practice (Edinburgh).

In 2010 she was nominated for the Berlin Today Award, which gave her the opportunity to direct LITTLE RED (world premier Berlinale 2011). Her work, LUBABEN, was shown in the official Tiger competition in Rotterdam 2011, while MINA was shown in Spectrum in the same festival. MARUSSIA, shot in Paris, is Eva’s first feature film. It had its world premiere at Berlinale 2013.

FILMOGRAPHY
2012 Marussia, feature
2012 Monday Morning,short
2011 Little Red, short
2011 LubaBen, short
2011 30-40-50, short
2011 Mina, short
2009 Down the Rabbit Hole, short
2007 My Undone School Film, short
2007 Video-poems, 5 experimental shorts

DK Welchman

Kamil Polak

Poland

Director Kamil Polak studied classical music, ballet and painting at the College of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and excelled in all these disciplines. His love of story-telling brought him to film-making, and in animation he has found the opportunity to combine his classical training in drawing and painting with his love of music and rhythm, and to bring these together in one dramatic narrative. He studied directing at the world-renowned Łódź Film School.

His film INSIDE is on the all-time great films reel of the School, and his film BIRTH OF A NATION won the 2nd prize at the Wiesbaden International Festival and has been widely sold to international television. He developed THE LOST TOWN OF ŚWITEŹ during his graduation year. Kamil was the Visual Effects Supervisor on “Peter & the Wolf”, a £ 2.5 million stop-frame animation for Channel 4 and for the big screen accompanied by live orchestra.

FILMOGRAPHY
2010 The Lost Town of Świteź, animated short
2003 In, animated short
2001 Birth of a Nation, animated short

Marta Pajek

Poland

Marta Pajek was born in 1982 in Kielce/Poland. She graduated from Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, where she specialized in animated film in the class of Jerzy Kucia. As part of an exchange programme she studied in Turku Arts Academy in the class of Priit Pärn. Author of the animated short films. Her previous film – Impossible Figures and Other Stories II was screened and awarded at almost 80 festivals in Poland and abroad and scored 25 awards among others Grand Prix of the Stuttgard ITFS. Marta Pajek lives and works in Warsaw.

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

2018 III
2016 Impossible figures and other stories II
2011 Sleepincord
2005 Nextdoor
2004 After apples

Caroline Ingvarsson

Sweden

Caroline Ingvarsson’s short BENEATH THE SPACESHIP (2015) premiered at TIFF 2015 and then screened at BFI London Film Festival and Stockholm Film Festival. In 2014 Ingvarsson won the “After Bergman” script award for her the script of Beneath the Spaceship. In May 2015 Ingvarsson was selected as one of six participants for Pure Fiction, a feature film development program for Swedish Female Directors.

She was also the recipient of the 2014 SWEA Los Angeles Film Grant, and the 2014 Pixel Director Talent Award. Ingvarsson’s short documentary THE DOGWALKER (2014) won 2nd prize for Best Documentary at Palm Springs Short Fest as well as the Audience Award for Best Film at Uppsala International Shortfilm Festival. The film screened at DOK:Leipzig in addition to Camden and Chicago’s International Film Festivals, as well as in Zagreb DOX 2015 and TEMPO Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Tempo New Doc Award. Caroline holds a Diploma in Screen Studies from Sydney Film School, Australia, and a Masters Degree in Broadcast Journalism from City University in London, England. She currently resides in Malmo, Sweden.

Elisabet Gustafsson

Sweden

Elisabet Gustafsson is a Swedish director and producer, born in Stockholm, Sweden. She studied at Stockholm and Lund University and graduated with a Degree in Literature. She started her carrier working for theatre as stage director from 1992 to 1998. In 1998 she moved to Paris where she produced TV reports and short documentaries for Scandinavian TV-channels. Since 2003 she is established as film director and producer in Sweden.

FILMOGRAPHY
2011 The Seventh Pullet, short
2010 Awaiting Examination, short
2007 The Great Magician, short
2005 Let Us Dance, short
2003 Älskade du, short

Chintis Lundgren

Estonia

Chintis Lundgren is an Estonian-born animator currently living in Croatia. She studied fine arts at an alternative art school in Estonia called Academia Non Grata before pursuing a career as a painter. Lundgren later taught herself animation and quickly gained attention in the animation world for her quirky music videos, PSAs and short films featuring a light, absurdist tone along with distinct anthropomorphic characters. In 2011, Lundgren created her own animation studio called Chintis Lundgreni Animatsioonistuudio and later co-founded Adriatic Animation, an animation studio based in Croatia.

Her films (including ABOUT THE HARD LIFE OF THE BARN SWALLOW, the music video, I LOVE YOUR FACE, and the award-winning 2015 short, LIFE WITH HERMAN H. ROTT) have screened at numerous international animation festivals including Annecy, Zagreb, and Ottawa. MANIVALD is her first film with the National Film Board of Canada.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Manivald, animsted short
2015 Life with Herman H. Rott, aniamted short
2014 Kingfisher, animated short
2013 Mysterious Swamp, animated short
2011 Montego, animated short
2011 About the Hard Life of the Barn Swallow, animated short
2010 Volli Pall, animated short
2009 The Great Grey Shrike, animated short

Michal Žabka

Michal Žabka (born in 1965) graduated from Film School Zlín and in Animation from FAMU, Prague. He works as a free-lance filmmaker and director with several Czech production companies and studios.

FILMOGRAPHY
2007 Mrs. G
2001 Premammals
1999 Baballoon

Edmunds Jansons

Latvia

Edmunds Jansons was born in 1972 in Saldus, Latvia. He studied TV directing at Academy of Culture, has taken animation directing course at VGIK in Moscow, but recently graduated MA at Estonian Academy of Art – the masterclass led by Priit Pärn.

In 2002 Edmunds founds animation film studio Atom Art. Studio tends to be a platform for young talented animators and their experiments. In the last years Atom Art has become one of the most noticeable creatively active Latvian animation studios. The films produced by Atom Art has been selected at the festivals all over the world, such as Annecy, Ottawa, Hiroshima, HAFF, Stuttgart, Zagreb, Oberhausen, Clermont-Ferrand, Dok Leipzig, Encounters, Anima Mundi and many others, and has been awarded in many of them. Studio works in variety of techniques – drawing, sand animation, animation with charcoal, puppet and cut out animation. There is also a big variety of animation genres – magical realism, animated documentary, musical, absurd, animated tv series for pre-schoolers a.o. Edmunds has worked as tutor of animation directing at Academy of Art and Academy of Culture of Latvia. He is also film expert at Culture Endowment Fund and National Film Centre of Latvia. Besides his initial work Edmunds is recognized and beloved award winning children’s book illustrator. His books “Year of Wonderbaby” and “Poop and Springtime” has been awarded J.Baltvilks Best illustrations award and had been included in IBBY honor list. Each film has its own story of how it began. One begins with some sort of event while another with a vivid visual image. THE ISLE OF SEALS began with a peculiar place and its environment.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 Isle of Seals, short
2012 Choir Tour, short
2012 International Father’s Day, short
2010-2015 Shammies
2009 Springtime in Crow Street, short
2007 Little Birds Diary, short

Jola Bańkowska

Poland

Jola Bańkowska, born in 1992, is a Polish filmmaker and illustrator. Double winner of Adobe Design Achievement Awards and proud owner of Vimeo Staff Pics for her short film BIOTOP. In 2016 she received Minister’s of Culture and National Heritage Scholarship for Outstanding Achievements. Currently she is working in London, also finishing her graduation film on Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

FILMOGRAPHY
2019 Story
2016 Biotop

Kristoffer Rus

Sweden

After finishing inter-arts studies at Lund University and later film school in Stockholm, Kristoffer Rus started to work as an editor and cameraman for TV 4 in Sweden. At the same time he was writing scripts and directing shorts. The short film THE APPLE TREE (produced by Lars Jönsson, Memfis Film) was awarded and recognized at film festivals like Cannes, Marrakech and Palm Springs.

In 2007, Kristoffer decided to go back to his Slavic roots. He got enrolled at Wajda School (before known as Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing) where he developed and later shot a film called STREET FEELING. The film is a part of the new Decalogue where 10 young promising directors have been chosen to deal with the old moral questions by modern means of storytelling. STREET FEELING also works as a standalone film and has already been screened and awarded at several international film festivals. Kristoffer is currently working both in Sweden and in Poland. He directs a TV-show about film, aired on Polish national television. He has recently been granted funds for his new film NATURALS. Currently Kristoffer is working on his feature film debut called MASAKRA PROFANA.

FILMOGRAPHY
2013 The Big Leap, short
2009 Street Feeling, short
2003 The Apple Tree, short
2002 The Last Round, short
2001 Smiling Faces, short
2000 Red On White, short

Sascha Fülscher

Sweden

Sascha Fülscher works in the field between art and activism and likes to experiment with different techniques and formats. NEXT DOOR LETTERS is her graduation film from Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she studied documentary film making.

Sascha has previously directed Belgrade Bound, a documentary about three young adults in the City of Belgrade and HITMUSIC – RHYTHM OF THE REVOLUTIONARY, a colorful portrait of political artists. Sascha was born in Switzerland in 1983 and grew up in Lund, Sweden. She is a member of the filmmakers collective RåFILM, a collective of political and socially engaged filmmakers. She wants to continue exploring the worlds of animation, documentary and a combination of the two.

FILMOGRAPHY
2011 Next Door Letters, animated short
2010 Belgrade Bound, short documentary
2007 Hitmusic - Rhythm of the Revolutionary, short documentary

Michał Toczek

Director and screenwriter. Author of short films presented and awarded in Poland and international as well as public awareness campaigns and commercials. Michal studied directing at the Polish National Film School in Lodz. His student short fiction „A Dead Marriage” received many awards at Polish film festivals – such as Silver Hobby Horse at Cracow Film Festival, Grand Prix of the Short Film Competition at WAMA Festival in Olsztyn and several other prizes and honorable mentions on festivals like „Two Riversides” in Kazimierz Dolny, „The Youth and Film” in Koszalin and many more. The film was also shown at the international festivals, e.g. in Leuven and Tirana.

Michal gained experience by working as the 2nd director on set of „My Wonderful Life” a film by Lukasz Grzegorzek and „Elephant” by Kamil Krawczycki. His documentary debut „Strawberry boys” was presented on festivals in Poland and international, was awarded with Best Editing Award at Cracow Film Festival and an honourable mention at Lubuskie Film Summer in Lagow. In 2021 he received a Best Directing Award with Ola Hulboj for their film in Branded Stories Papaya Young Directors Competition. Michal developed his storytelling skills by working as a reporter for Gazeta Wyborcza during his studies. What he appreciates in Cinema the most is a sensitive approach towards the characters of the movie and witty humour. He considers Ken Loach and Mike Leigh his masters in directing.

Katie Aselton

Katie Aselton is an acclaimed actor and filmmaker based in Los Angeles.She is known for her starring role as ‘Jenny’ in the FX comedy show, THE LEAGUE. Her other TV credits include the FX series LEGION created by Noah Hawley, HBO’s ANIMALS, TOGETHERNESS, CURBYOUR ENTHUSIASM, VEEP, THE OFFICE, ROOM 104, and Hulu’s CASUAL.

In the feature space, her acting credits include Netflix’s OLD DADS, the Paramount feature, BOOK CLUB, Warner Brother’s FATHERFIGURES, Neon’s SHE DIES TOMORROW, SYNCHRONIC, and Lionsgate’s BOMBSHELL. Katie’s breakout acting role was in the indie darling, THE PUFFY CHAIR, directed by Mark and Jay Duplass. The film was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards.

She made her directorial debut with THE FREEBIE, in which she alsostars with Dax Shepard. The film premiered to much critical acclaim at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Katie also directed and starred in the survivor thriller, BLACK ROCK opposite Kate Bosworth and Lake Bell, premiering at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. She directed the iconic Diane Keaton in MACK & RITA in 2022. And she recently wrapped her fourth feature, MAGIC HOUR with Daveed Diggs.

OH CHRISTMAS TREE is Aselton’s short film directorial debut.

Elin Övergaard

Sweden

Elin was born 1994 in Uppsala, and grew up in Sigtuna and Salt Lake City, USA. Today she is based in Stockholm as a film director, and has directed several award-winning short films. As of 2018 she is studying Film Directing at Stockholm University of the Arts. Earlier she has worked as assistant director on many productions. Her films are often about the fear of being abandoned, and she likes to test how far characters are willing to go to avoid confrontation.

FILMOGRAPHY
2019 Ingen lyssnar / Who Talks
2017 Förebilder / Picture world
2014 Kontroll / Control
2014 Antingen-eller / Either-or
2013 Gryning / Stockholm daybreak

Photo credit: Robin Trolin

Kristin Ulseth

Norway

Kristin Ulseth (b.1968) has a BA in Film and Photography from Harrow College, University of Westminster in London. She has worked professionally in the Norwegian and Nordic film and television industry since early 90s doing a wide range of work on shorts, creative documentaries, TV-drama and feature films. In 2008 she started producing at Maipo Film, producing the 360° animation project Alfie Atkins with an animated TV-series, feature film and app-game in 2013, and the live action feature Gilbert’s Grim Revenge, and the app-game Gilbert’s Eggggg in 2016. ODD IS AN EGG is her first animated short film as a director.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 Odd Is an Egg, animated short

Adura Onashile

Adura Onashile is an award-winning Glasgow based artist. She has just finished playing Medea in the National Theatre of Scotland and Edinburgh International Festival 2022 acclaimed production. She has directed two productions, HeLa and Expensive S**t for The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, winning a Fringe First, Edinburgh Guide Best Scottish Contribution to Drama and TOTAL and Amnesty nominations. Both shows toured nationally and internationally supported by the British Council. She has directed productions with The Unicorn Theatre, The Place, Contact Theatre, Fuel Theatre, and The National Theatre of Scotland. In 2020, she wrote and directed her screen debut, EXPENSIVE SHIT, a BAFTA Scotland nominated short produced by barry crerar which premiered at BFI London Film Festival 2020.

FILMOGRAPHY
Girl (2023, feature)
Expensive Shit (2020, short)

Luca Tóth

Hungary

Luca Tóth studied animation at the MoholyNagy School of Design (MOME) in Budapest and at the Royal College of Art in London. She received a number of awards for he graduation short film THE AGE OF CURIOUS, such as the jury distinction at the Annecy IAFF or a special mention at the ITF in Stuttgart.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 Superbia
The Age of Curious

Grzegorz Jaroszuk

Poland

Grzegorz Jaroszuk was born in 1983, in Warsaw. In 2011 he graduated from The Polish Film School in Lodz. Since 2012 Jaroszuk is a member of EFA. In 2011, his short film FROZEN STORIES received numerous awards and nominations at film festivals around the world, among them Pianifica Prizena at the 64th Locarno Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize at AFI FEST in Los Angeles. The film was shown at film festivals in Sundance, Munich, Warsaw, Krakow, Leuven and St. Petersburg.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 Kebab & Horoscope, feature
2011 Frozen Stories, short
2011 The Beginning of New Season, short
2008 A Story of a Missing Car, short
2008 Anger, short
2007 Authorial copy, short
2007 The End of Summer, short
2006 The Last Day, short

Michal Blaško

Slovakia

Michal Blaško (1989, Bratislava) studies Film and television directing at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (VŠMU). His second year film at VŠMU, STRACH (Fear, 2015), was premiered at the 63rd San Sebastián International Film Festival and won several prizes including Best Short Film Award at the 21st International Film Festival in Vilnius. He is a writer and co-director (with Marta Prokopová) of a short animated film WILD BEASTS, which was presented at the Short Film Project Lab during the 67th Berlin International Film Festival. His bachelor project ATLANTIS, 2003 premiered at the Cinéfondation competition at the 70th Cannes Film Festival and was also selected for the Future Frames at the 52nd Karlovy Vary IFF.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Atlantis 2003, short
2015 Fear, short

Ezequiel Radusky

Argentina

Ezequiel Radusky was born in 1981 in San Miguel de Tucumán (Argentina).

He is a film director, screenwriter and actor. His first feature film “The Owners” was screened at the 52nd Cannes – Semaine de la Critique in 2013, where he got the special mention from the great Jury. His new project, “The Lunchroom” won best project at the Europe Latin America Co-production VI Forum at San Sebastian Film Festival in 2017, got a special mention at the screenplay competition of the 39th International Latin America New Film Festival in Havana (2017), and won the co-production Ibermedia Fund in 2018.

Yu Ueda

Japan

Yu Ueda was born in Japan and studied Animation in the United States. While Yu teaches himself drawing and digital animation tools, he also explores puppet and miniature making for stop-motion animation.

FILMOGRAPHY
2015 Starlight, animated short

Marijana Jankovic

Montenegro / Denmark

Marijana Jankovic is a Danish actress and director, born in Montenegro. She moved to Denmark with her parents when she was only 6 years old. Later she graduated from the Danish National School of Theatre in 2006. Since then she has established herself as one of Denmark’s most interesting actresses. She has starred in numerous award winning films and has been honored with several awards and accolades.

This year, in 2018, she will appear in award winning director Lars von Triers highly awaited, The House that Jack Built opposite of Matt Dillon.

Most recently, Jankovic stepped behind the camera to write and direct her very first short film MAJA.
It’s a biographical short film, a story from her own childhood, that’s Starring Selena Marsenic, Jesper Christensen, Dejan Cucik and Jankovic, as her own mother.

FILMOGRAPHY
2018 Maja (short)

Špela Čadež

Slovenia

Špela Čadež (born 1977) is a Slovenian animator and filmmaker. After graduating in Visual Communication Design (2002) in Ljubljana she continued her studies at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Department of Media Design. During her studies in Germany she made two animated puppet films MATE TO MEASURE and LOVESICK which have been screened at over a hundred festivals all over the world and won more than 30 awards. Since 2008 Špela Čadež works in Slovenia as an independent animation film director and producer.

FILMOGRAPHY
2013 Boles, puppet animation
2011 Good Night, Missy, animated scenes in Metod Pevec feature
2010 Last Minute, animated film (co-director Marina Rosset)
2009 Far East Film Festival Trailer, puppet animation
2008 Marathon, clay animation (co-director Izabela Plucinska)
2007 Lovesick, puppet animation
2004 Mate to Measure, puppet animation

Gustav Danielsson

Sweden

Gustav Danielsson was born 1975 in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. Studied Architecture at Chalmers and directing at IHTV. Gustav work primarily as a cinematographer, whose work includes Roy Anderssonʼs most recent, award winning feature film You, the living. The film premiered in the Certain Regard section in Cannes 2007. In 2008 Gustav made the short documentary PORTRAIT OF A RELUCTANT GENTLEMANwhich received a lot of attention for its experimental and visual style. The Twin is his short feature film debut.

FILMOGRAPHY
2012 Animals I Killed Last Summer, short
2011 The Twin, short
2008 Portrait of a Reluctant Gentleman Writer, short

Syllas Tzoumerkas

Born in 1978 in Thessaloniki, Greece. He writes, directs and acts for film and theatre.His first feature film, Homeland, asaga about afamily and acountry in free-fall, premiered at the Venice Critics’ Week 2010, and participated in many international film festivals. His second feature film, ABlast, the portrait of awoman going rogue, premiered in the International Competition of the Locarno Film Festival 2014. Praised by the international press, the film went on to be theatrically released in 20 countries, and to screen at over 80 festivals around the world (Rotterdam, BFI London, Karlovy Vary – Variety’s10 Directors to Watch, Sarajevo, Seattle, Hong-Kong, São Paulo, Jeonju, A.F.I.’s European Film Showcase, etc.). His other film credits include co-writing the script of Argyris Papadimitropoulos’ Suntan(Rotterdam, SXSW, 2016) and Ahmad Ghossein’s All This Victory (2019) and participating as an actor in selected short and feature films.

FILMOGRAPHY
2019 The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea
2014 A Blast
2010 Homeland

Michał Socha

Poland

Born in 1981. Director, graphic designer, animator and illustrator. Michal was born and bred in Warsaw, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. He is a wizard of storytelling and through his unique and compelling style he has captured audiences worldwide.

His animated short films like STONE (2006) ICARUS (2007), CONCERT (2007) were screened at festivals around the world and CHICK (2008) won awards at various international film festivals, including awards at Annecy IAFF, Ottawa IAFF, 49 Cracow Film Festival, BuSho, Animania, Art Directors Club of Europe, and many more. He also create one of the interesting Couch Gag for “The Simpsons”. In 2014 Michał participated as a segment director, and create short animation ON FREEDOM (2014) in the feature film KAHLIL GIBRAN’S THE PROPHET

Michal is now focusing both on short filmmaking and directing commercials and commissioned work. Co-owner of animation and post production Studio BrosFX.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Room, animated short
2017 Z jak Zagadka/Ojczysty, animated short
2016 The Simpsons – Couch Gag – 2, animated short
2014 Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet” Segment director “On Freedom”
2014 Tap, animated short
2014 Loop, animated short
2014 The Simpsons – Couch Gag -1, animated short
2008 Laska, animated short
2007 Odlot, animated short
2006 Ślimak, animated short
2006 Koncert, animated short
2006 Kamień, animated short
2005 Ryba, animated short

Jan P. Matuszyński

Poland

Born in 1984. Jan graduated in Film Directing from Krzysztof Kieślowski Faculty of Radio and Television University of Silesia in Katowice and completed the Documentary Course in Wajda School. His documentary DEEP LOVE was awarded, among others, Best Documentary Award at the 36th IFF in Moscow and the Silver Horn award for Best Feature Documentary Film at the 54th Kraków FF. His feature debut, THE LAST FAMILY, premiered at Locarno, where it won the Best Actor Award, and was screened at over 100 festivals worldwide (including Rotterdam, Hong Kong, Palm Springs & New Directors New Films), winning many international awards. Jan also works in TV, his most recent series THE KING OF WARSAW, produced by CANAL+, was released in October 2020. LEAVE NO TRACES is his second feature film.

FILMOGRAPHY
2021 Leave No Traces, feature
2016 The Last Family, feature
2013 Deep Love, documentary
2011 Heaven, documentary
2009 Afterparty, short
2007 15 Years of Silence, short

Ulaa Salim

Denmark

Danish director Ulaa Salim was born in Denmark in 1987, both parents are originally from Iraq. In his films he uses his personal experience as inspiration. In 2018 Ulaa Salim graduated from The National Film School of Denmark and established Hyæne Film with his producing partnerDaniel Mühlendorph. SONS OF DENMARK is Ulaa Salim’s debut film.

FILMOGRAPHY
2019 Sons of Denmark (Feature)
2017 Land of our Fathers (Short)
2014 The Pure Heart (Documentary)
2014 Vore Fædres Sønner (Short)
2013 Min Bror (Short)

Fernando Guzzoni

Fernando Guzzoni debuted in 2008 with the documentary La Colorina, with which he competed in the Films du Monde Festival in Montreal and for which he won the Best Director Award at the Santiago International Film Festival and Best Film at the Trieste Festival. His first fiction feature was Carne de Perro (Dog Flesh, 2012), written during a residency at the Cannes Festival, selected for more than 30 festivals and winner of awards at San Sebastian, Gothenburg, Havana, Punta del Este and Toulouse. His second feature Jesús premiered at Toronto International Film Festival and won a prize at San Sebastian’s New Directors competition.

Filmography:
2022 Blanquita (Feature)
2016 Jesús (Feature)
2012 Carne de Perro (Feature)
2008 La Colorina (Documentary)

ZOU JING

Biography ZOU Jing, born in 1984, she is a Chinese director and writer based out of Shanghai and Los Angeles. Jing came from a literature background but she found her calling when she began working at Shanghai International TV station as a director/editor on documentaries.
As a fanatic lover of literature and philosophy, Jing has always loved writing. Lili Alone is her first short film. Her ultimate goal is to write and direct feature films that explore the truths in modern China life.

Filmography

• Lili Alone – 2021

Aline Höchli

Switzerland

Andrias Høgenni

Faroe Islands

Andrias Høgenni is a filmmaker from the Faroe Islands who is currently based in Denmark. He got his start working freelance for Faroese national television while directing short films in his spare time. In 2009 Andrias uprooted himself and moved to Denmark, where he started on the Fuenen film programme 18 FRAMES. Andrias has since studied at the alternative and prestigious Danish film school SUPER16 from which his first year project BREAK IN, won awards at several international festivals. IKKI ILLA MEINT is Andrias’ graduation film from SUPER16 and follows his fancy for telling intimate stories in claustrophobic environments. He has a deep desire to explore Faroese culture, which has been severely underrepresented in an international context. Andrias is currently developing his feature film debut, which will be shot on the Faroe Islands.

Dawid Bodzak

Poland

Trevor Jimenez

Canada

Trevor Jimenez is a Canadian filmmaker and story artist who has worked in animation for over 10 years at companies such as, Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Feature Animation, and Blue Sky. His student film “Key Lime Pie” won the award for best animated short at AFI Dallas 2008, and screened at numerous international festivals. He currently works in the story department at Pixar while also pursuing his own creative projects.

Lauren Jackson

Lauren trained at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School and has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Auckland in German and Film, TV & Media Studies. She works as a director, playwright, actor and drama tutor. Lauren attended film school in Germany in 1998, and in 2004 represented New Zealand at the 40th International Young Theatre Practitioners’ Forum in Berlin. Lauren has had her writing on the German and New Zealand film industries published in New Zealand and in Germany. In 2010 Lauren was selected to participate in Script to Screen’s short film lab, and in 2012 wrote and directed the short film I’m Going to Mum’s. Lauren has further film projects in development.

Lauren has directed various stage productions for the Pacific Institute of Performing Arts, Smackbang Theatre Company, Auckland Theatre Company and Four Afloat Productions. Lauren began her career playing the lead in the NZ feature film Alex. Following her graduation from Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School in 2001, Lauren has enjoyed a variety of stage, screen and radio work. Theatre performances include Mr Marmalade, Land of Make Believe and Mr Kolpert at the SiLO Theatre. Her screen work includes roles in TV series: This is Not My Life, The Jaquie Brown Diaries and A Thousand Apologies; and in feature films: Perfect Creature, 1nite and The Tattooist. In 2005 Lauren won the Chapman Tripp Most Outstanding New Playwright of the Year Award for her play Exchange, which premiered at BATS in the Young and Hungry season. Exchange has been published by Playmarket Press and produced by Radio New Zealand.

In 2010 Lauren directed Exchange for Auckland Theatre Company’s Young and Hungry festival. In 2009 Lauren wrote Polly Hood in Mumuland — a Pacific adaptation of Red Riding Hood — which premiered as part of Pasifika 09. Polly Hood in Mumuland was also produced by Auckland Theatre Company in association with the Pacific Institute of Performing Arts for its successful 2011 season. Lauren has been commissioned to write the 2013 touring play for the ‘Duffy Books in Homes’ programme.

Kuba Mikurda

Poland

Kuba Mikurda (born 1981) is a film scholar and filmmaker based in Warsaw, Poland. He started as a film critic, journalist and publisher, then worked as TV director and „Film News” talk show presenter for Canal+ Poland.

Mikurda has studied psychology (MA, 2006) and philosophy (PhD, 2012). He works as an Assistant Professor at Film School in Łódz. He has delivered a number of guest lectures abroad,including British Film Institute and Tate Modern in London and Volksbühne in Berlin. He has been a student of the maverick philosopher & psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek and written a thick book about his work.

Mikurda is fascinated by the idea of mixing film practice & research – he has explored various forms of visual film analysis, including graphic novel, found footage film, instalation and performance (as a creative duo with visual artist Jakub Woynarowski). Every time he falls in love with a film, he wants to share it with a largest number of people – this is how he initiated & co-edited books on Terry Gilliam, Brothers Quay, Guy Maddin, Tsai Ming-liang and, last but not least, Walerian Borowczyk.

Mikurda has been five times nominated for Polish Film Institute Award (category „film book”and „TV/radio show”) and won the Polish edition of British Council’s „International Young Screen Entrepreneur”.

FILMOGRAPHY
2018 Love Express. The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk

Shady Srour

Israel

Actor, scriptwriter, director and producer for Cinema, Theatre and tv, and a lecturer at the Open University. He has b.a degree from Tel-Aviv University in Theater acting and m.f.a in filmmaking from the Academy of Art University. Lately Shady was involved in the film 24 HOURS JERUSALEM (ARTE), which won the German tv Award for best midlength documentary 2014. He was the Lead in the Oscar-nominated short film Ave Maria. HOLY AIR is his feature debut as director.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Holy Air, feature
2014 24 Hours Jerusalem, Documentary, Palestinian Content Director
2011 Watan A Watar Comedy tv Series
2010 Films from Real life, 10 shorts (project with adults in distress)
2009 Amwash, Comedy Series (10 Episodes)
2007 Either Me or Haifa, short
2005 Sense of Need, short

Martin Snopek

Slovakia

Born on November 13, 1974 in Bratislava. He studied Animation on Film and Television Faculty, Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. His diploma film EVERYDAY GRAZING was awarded among others also by the main student prize on Animafest Zagreb. Two of his short fi lms were distributed in cinemas in Slovakia as pre-fi lms. Besides the directing he works as a graphic designer and teacher.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 The Last Bus, short

Onur Tukel

USA / Turkey

Onur Tukel is a filmmaker, writer/illustrator and occasionally an actor. He probably own the world’s largest unread book collection. He doesn’t exercise at all. Prior to SUMMER OF BLOOD he directed 5 feature films and published two children’s books. About his feature film RICHARD’S WEDDING the Wall Street Journal claimed that it ‘sets a new standard for laughs-per-minute in a micro-budget comedy”. His latest film SUMMER OF BLOOD had premiere at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival and received great reviews. Tukel is currently directing an experimental feature film with musician Jamie Block.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 Summer of Blood, feature
2012 Richard’s Wedding, feature
2004 The Pigs, feature
2001 Ding-a-ling-LESS, feature
1998 Sergio Lapel’s Drawing Blood, feature
1996 House of Pancakes, feature

QIU Yang

China

QIU Yang was born and raised in Changzhou, China. He studied film directing at the Victorian College of the Arts in Australia.

His latest short film SHE RUNS has been selected to the competition at the Cannes 58th Critics’ Week. His previous works including A GENTLE NIGHT was awarded the Short Film Palme d’Or at the 70th Festival de Cannes. He became the first ever Chinese director to receive this award. In 2015, UNDER THE SUN was selected for the 68th Festival de Cannes Cinéfondation Competition.

He is currently developing his first feature project, which was selected to the Cinéfondation Residence 2017 and was awarded the CNC Screenwriting Grant during the 70th Festival de Cannes.

Filmography
2019 She Runs
2017 A Gentle Night
2015 Under the Sun

Ishan Shukla

India

Ishan is an award winning Indian CG Artist and Filmmaker.
After he worked in the Singaporean animation industry for several years he came back to India and managed to finish his first short film single-handedly. The film became the first Indian animated short to get long listed for the Academy Awards followed by a tremendous reception at more than 120 international festivals.
Ishan Shukla has now set up his own animation studio to work on highly personal and artistic adult oriented animated feature films aimed at both an arthouse and broad audience.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 Schirkoa, animated short

Przemysław Kotyński

Poland

Przemek Kotyński was born in 1981 in Zyrardow. Self-taught, he graduated with a degree not directly related to art, a MSc. in Mathematics and Information Science from the Warsaw University of Technology. Przemek creates mainly film and advertising for the Warsaw Production Studio Orka. He worked on the post-production of such films as Manhunt by Martin Krzyształowicz , 80 millions by Waldemar Krzystek , Girl in the Closet by Bodo Kox , Ixjana by Skolimowski brothers, Ambassada by Machulski, The Warsaw Uprising by Jan Komasa and Photographer by Waldemar Krzystek.

He worked for brands such as Mazda, Orange, Ladybug, Oshee, Bwin, Bakoma, Garnier, Coral, Play, Peugeot, Samsung, Ferrero. The list of customers also included such studios as Platige Image, Vivid Games, Yakumama or CI Games. Kotyński’s illustrative works lived to see the publication of, among others, in Exotique and Ballistic Publishing EXPOSE whether BOOK OF CREATION 2012 Oracom.

He mainly works with picture, he designs and illustrates. BLOODY SUNDAY is his debut as a director and another step in the implementation of the arts. Previously worked with Arkadiusz Jurcan at the “Canon of Polish fairy tales” , a collection of four short animated cartoons.

FILMOGRAPY
2014 Bloody Sunday, animated short

Matías Rojas Valencia

Director and screenwriter.

His first feature film, Root (2013), made originally as his graduation film, was internationally premiered in San Sebastian International Film Festival and awarded as Best National Film in Valdivia International Film Festival. Also, it was selected in many international film festivals as La Habana, Cartagena de Indias, BAFICI, Palm Springs, Nuovo Cinema de Pessaro, TUbinguen, Málaga, Latin Beat New York and others.

After his debut, he co-write and direct I need to know (2015), short film made by the program Factory, organized by the Director’s Fortnight of Cannes Film Festival. The short film premiered in the Director’s Fortnight and then selected to be part of the Official Competition in Warsaw’s International Film Festival in Poland.

His second feature film as screenwriter and director, A place called Dignity (before In the Shade of Trees), filmed in 2019, is a fiction feature film about the real case of Colonia Dignidad, and which is an international coproduction between Chile, France, Germany, Argentina and Colombia, and granted with the Cinemas du Monde international fund, Ibermedia coproduction fund, INCAA-CNCA bilateral fund, as well as public funds granted by Hamburg, Germany and Chile.

His film projects has been selected in many international development instances like the Coproduction encounter of San Sebastian International Film Festival, Produire au Sud residence, Coproduction Market of the Berlinale, Venice Production Gap, Cinéfondation L’Atelier of Cannes Film Festival, among others.

Along with visual artist Alejandro Leonhardt he works in the development and realization of video art projects. Their first work together When the forests shine was selected in the Medial Arts Biennale in Chile, ARCO Madrid and in the official selection of Getty Center in Los Angeles, California.

He also works as a director in many audiovisual productions and publicity spots for TV at the same time he works as a college teacher in the subjects of scriptwriting, direction and cinema appreciation.

Cav Bøgelund

Denmark

Cav Bøgelund (1978) has a degree in character animation from The Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark. On top of this, Cav graduated as animation director from The National Film School of Denmark in 2008. Apart from his work with film, Cav has written, illustrated and edited a series of comics, along with doing illustration and graphic facilitation for years.

In 2012, Cav helped to create a bachelor’s degree in graphic storytelling at The Animation Workshop and he is now on the schools advisory board. Cav has just finished directing Film Maker’s animated short film BROTHERS IN ARMS.

FILMOGRAPHY
2012 Brothers in Arms, short

Tomasz Wasilewski

Poland

Born 1980. Polish scriptwriter and director. Tomasz started his career with a low-budget feature film IN A BEDROOM, which world premiered in Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2012 and travelled to numerous festivals picking up prizes in Mannheim-Heildelberg IFF, among others. His second feature film FLOATING SKYSCRAPERS had its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival in 2013 (selected as one of Indiewire’s Top Films of the Festival). The film won the East of the West debut competition at Karlovy Vary iff in 2013, Best Director Award at Transylvania iff 2014, Audience Award at the T-Mobile New Horizons IFF in Wrocław, and Best New Directing Talent and Grand Prix of the Youth Jury at Gdynia Polish Film Festival. UNITED STATES OF LOVE was presented at Cinemart and Berlinale Coproduction Market in 2014.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 United States of Love, feature
2014 Floating Skyscrapers, feature
2012 In a Bedroom, feature

Gunhild Enger

Norway

Gunhild Enger (1980) graduated from Edinburg College of Art, and The School of Film Directing in Gothenburg. She was nominated for a BAFTA with her graduation film BARGAIN, and has since then screened her films in festivals around the world. The film PREMATURE, won the international Grand Prix at Breif Encounter, Bristol 2012. Her film PASSION won for the best international short at Alcine, Madrid 2009. She is currently working as a director in Norway and Sweden.

FILMOGRAPHY
2013 Premature, short
2012 Bargain, short
2009 Passion, short

Lise I. Osvoll

Norway

Lise I. Osvoll (b.1979) is educated in art, design and art direction. She entered the film industry in 2004 after graduating and worked as a graphic designer and motion graphics designer for many popular fiction films. During her studies she made two animated short films together with scriptwriter Anne Elvedal. Their graduation film won the award for best film and for the best newcomer at festivals in Norway. Osvoll co-directed Elias and the Royal Yacht (2007, a first film of Elias). Then followed the season two of the TV series Elias (2009) and the movie Elias and the treasure of the sea (2010) where Osvoll also wrote the script together with Anne Elvedal. Her next film as a director, Cattle Hill was released on the 19th of October 2018.

Filmography
2018 Cattle Hill
2010 Elias & Duppe searching for Ramsalt
2008 Elias: The Little Rescue Boat

David Stumpf

Slovakia/Hungary

David was born on Slovak-Hungarian borders in 1991. During past 4 years he studied animation at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. Currently he works on his master’s degree at FAMU in Prague. While rendering school films he also works as a freelance animator on several projects, including TV Series The TOTS (dir. Vanda Raymanova and Michal Struss). And while rendering freelance work, David is developing his debut short film with Michaela Mihalyiova called THE END.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 Cowboyland, animated short

Rémi Durin

A graduate of the ENSAV La Cambre animated film workshop, in 2006 Rémi Durin together with three fellow graduates from the same school, set up L’Enclume Animation, an animation studio which makes short films, adverts, long films, video clips, TV series…

Since 2009 Rémi has been teaching at the Albert Jacquard CG school in Namur.

After his graduation films Là-haut, Mademoiselle Chloé, and Séquence 01 Plan 02, Rémi Durin made De si près (2009), a moving tribute to the 14-18 war, The Scent of Carrots (2014), an animated musical comedy, co-directed with Arnaud Demuynck, The Unicorn (2016) based on the kids book by Martine Bourre, and recently Big Wolf & Little Wolf (2018) adapted from the book by Nadine Brun-Cosme and Olivier Tallec.

Since 2017, he has developed a feature film for children, Yuku and the Himalayan Flower, written and co-directed by Arnaud Demuynck.

Asaph Polonsky

USA / Israel

Asaph was born in Washington, DC in 1983. In Israel, where he grew up, he directed, wrote and produced two short films, both official selections of the Jerusalem Film Festival: ZIPPER and IN BED AT 10 P.M. In 2010 he attended The American Film Institute Conservatory’s Directing Program where he directed the 2013 Student Academy Award Nominee thesis film SAMN ANG, which premiered at the New York Film Festival and won awards and screened at several film festivals internationally.

His debut feature film, ONE WEEK AND A DAY, was participated in the 2012 Sam Spiegel International Film Lab – Jerusalem, participated in the 2013 Sofia Meetings and won the 2015 Haifa Film Festival Work in Progress Award. Asaph was awarded AFI’s Richard P. Rogers Spirit of Excellence Award, an Irwin and Sheila Allen Scholarship and an America-Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 One Week and a Day, feature
2013 Samn Ang, short
2010 In Bed at 10 PM, short
2009 Zipper, short

Bobbie Peers

Norway

Bobbie Peers is a Norwegian writer/director that came out of London International Film School in 1999. His 2006 short SNIFFER won the Palm D’Or at Cannes Film Festival and went on to other festivals with great success. After several other acclaimed shorts, his debut feature THE DISAPPEARING ILLUSIONIST came out in 2015. That same year, Bobbie also released his first in a series of highly sucsessful fantasy novels. Today he continues to both write and direct. TO PLANT A FLAG is his latest film and his fourth novel in the series about William Wenton is expected to reach the stores in 2018.

FILMOGRAPHY

2018 To Plant a Flag (short)
2015 Dirk Ohm – The Disappearing Illusionist (feature)
2014 Veggie Land (TV-series)
2013 People Who Fall (short)
2008 The Qroquet Match (short)
2007 5 grøss fra vestlandet (short)
2007 Spandexman (short)
2006 Sniffer (short)

Isabelle Sieb

Isabelle Sieb started her career directing documentaries for clients like National Geographic and FIFA in South Africa. London-based since 2010, she has made four short films, two of which screened at festivals in the UK and internationally. She is currently developing a slate of projects in the UK, Germany and Los Angeles and has recently been selected for the Northern Film & Media feature development scheme RISE funded by Creative Skillset and the BFI.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 Three Women Wait For Death, short

Naïla Guiguet

Bryn Chainey

Yelyzaveta Pysmak

Sacha Polak

Sacha Polak (1982, Amsterdam) is an award-winning director and writer. She graduated from the Dutch Film and Television Academy in 2006. Her first two feature films HEMEL (2012) and ZURICH (2014) received great critical acclaim from the international press. They were both selected at many international film festivals, HEMEL won the FIPRESCI award (International Federation of Film Critics Award) at the Berlinale Forum and ZURICH the International Confederation of Art Cinema Award (C.I.C.E.A award), the jury price for Best Film of Berlinale’s Forum. Her latest feature DIRTY GOD, about a young mother who is the victim of an acid attack, premiered in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition of Sundance 2019 and was the opening film of the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2019. After finishing DIRTY GOD, Sacha directed a block of episodes for Season 2 of HANNAH for Amazon. Her newest feature film is called SILVER HAZE.

Silver Haze	2022	Feature
Hanna	2021	2 episodes of series 2
Dirty God	2019	Feature
Zurich	2015	Feature
New Boobs	2013	Documentary
Hemel	2012	Feature
Brother	2012	Short
Under the table	2008	Short
El Mourabbi	2007	Short

Selma Vilhunen

Finland

Selma Vilhunen (b.1976) is a director and a screenwriter of both fiction and documentary films. She has graduated from the Turku Polytechnic / Arts Academy in film directing. Her works as a director include PIETA (TV film) and PONY GIRLS (follow-up documentary), which won the main prize in Tampere Film Festival. She has also written a feature film Homesick (with director Petri Kotwica) and A tv film Suburban virgin (dir. Hanna Maylett). She lives in Helsinki with her husband and daughter.

FILMOGRAPHY
2011 Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?, short

Teemu Nikki

Finland

Christopher Arcella

USA

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Christopher earned a Bachelor’s Degree from the Virginia Tech College of Architecture where he worked as an assistant to the director of the Virginia Tech Multimedia Lab. Following graduation he gained experience as a designer at IDEO San Francisco and Blu Dot before starting an interaction design studio called RUNROBOTS. While running this studio he spent over a year working part time at the office of independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. This combined professional experience in both design and film has strongly influenced his creative process.

FILMOGRAPHY
2010 I Don’t Blame the Beautiful Game, short

Charles Williams

Australia

Charles grew up in a country town in northern Victoria, far from anything connected to filmmaking, except for an obsession with movies.

Though his household was largely dependent on government assistance, he found a way to make films with equipment ‘borrowed’ from the local school and, while still in his teens, won the Best Director award at Tropfest Film Festival.

Over the past decade his acclaimed films have screened and won awards at some of the world’s most prestigious film festivals including Cannes, Clermont-Ferrand, Toronto, SXSW, Telluride, Toronto, MIFF, Busan and the Australian Academy Awards.

His latest short film ALL THESE CREATURES was awarded the Palme d’Or at tthe 2018 Cannes Film Festival among more than 20 other international awards. He is currently developing feature projects THE BUZZARD and INSIDE.

Leonardo Van Dijl

Belgium

http://www.leonardovandijl.com/

Alan Holly

Ireland

Alan Holly is a Dublin based artist and filmmaker. He studied animation and has been working in various roles in the industry since 2005. He has directed a number of short films, his most recent film Coda is funded by the Irish Film Board.

FILMOGRAPHY
2013 Coda, short

Selma Cervantes

Agnieszka Smoczyńska

Agnieszka Smoczyńska debuted in 2015 with THE LURE – a genre-bending, horror-musical mashup written by Robert Bolesto,won awards around the world, at dozens of international festivals, including Porto, Sofia, Montreal, Vilnius, and the Sundance Film Festival. Recently it became a part of prestigious Criterion Collection. Her second feature film FUGUE premiered at Cannes as a part of the prestigious Critics’ Week section. In 2022, her English-language debut, SILENT TWINS, starring Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance, premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival. Smoczyńska took part in the European Cinema: Ten Women Filmmakers to Watch program. She was also a winner of the Global Filmmaking Award sponsored by the Sundance Institute. This year Smoczyńska was named among Directors to Watch in Cannes.

Linda Hambäck

Linda Hambäck, born 1974, is a Swedish film director and owner of the production company LEE Film. She works mainly with animated films for children, recently works such as Bajsfilmen (2016), Tänk om… (2014) as she co-directed with Marika Heidebäck. But she has also directed a short documentary, FIGHTING SPIRIT (2013). Before her directing debut she had a long background with producing highly acclaimed shorts.

FILMOGRAPHY
2018 Gordon & Paddy
2013 Fighting Spirit

Jimmy Laporal-Trésor

DIRECTOR

2020 RASCALS – Shooting- Production : Spade / Agat Films

SOLDAT NOIR Short Feature- Production : Spade-Agat Films (Critics Week 2021)

2013 LE BAISER CM –

2007 LA FRANCE EST A L’IMAGE DE NOTRE VOTE

WRITER

2019 RASCALS – Shooting- Production : Spade / Agat Films

2015 MON FRERE – Julien ABRAHAM. Production : Agat Films/BacFilms. Released July 2019

2013 LA CITE ROSE – Julien ABRAHAM. Production : Agat Films/UGC. Released March 2013

WRITER SHORT FEATURES

2019 SOLDAT NOIR – En Financement. Production : The Jokers

2013 LE BAISER

WRITER FOR TELEVISION

2018 LA REPUBLIQUE ALOKOS 10X26’– Showrunner– Awarded bourse Beaumarchais TV

2019 JE NE SUIS PAS NOIR 10X10’– Showrunner

Fijona Jonuzi

Sweden

Fijona Jonuzi, born in Sweden 1977, director and writer. Studied at the School of Photography and Film, Gothenburg University. Her graduation film JUNE, was nominated for Best short in the Swedish Guldbagge Award and was awarded Gyllene Draken by the magazine Film Konst. It also won the Jury’s Special Price at Uppsala International Short Film Festival. FLATMATES won The SF Nordic Talent Award at Nordisk Panorama and was nominated for Best Short in the Norwegian Amanda Award. Girl was nominated in Best Swedish Short at Gothenburg International Film Festival 2011 and competed in Sundance 2012. ASTRID premiered in the competition Best Swedish Short at Gothenburg International Film Festival in January 2012.

FILMOGRPAHY
2012 Astrid, short
2007 Flatmates, short
2007 June, short

Endre Skandfer

Norway

Animator and illustrator, Endre Skandfer is a young veteran within the Norwegian animation industry with over 15 years experience from the biggest production studios. He has directed several short films, commercials, commission films and music videos, as well as the children’s TV-series KU-TOPPEN. DUNDER is his most ambitious project. Skandfer have been heavily involved from start to finish, incorporating his vision in every stage of the production.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 Dunder, animated short
2009 El Tango, animated short
2007 Cattle Hill, animated series
2006 Subsitute, animated short
2001 Guggen – du store gauda!, animated short
1999-2003 Mind the Gap, animated short

Monica Manganelli

Born in Parma (1977) is a scenographer-set/ stage designer, visual artist and vfx-art director.

She spent her early career to work as Set/Stage Designer and Concept/Visual Artist for many productions since 2001 to 2011 in the Lyric Opera House in Italy and Europe: Theatre Marijnski- St. Petersburg, Theatre Regio Turin, Theatre la Fenice – Venice, Theatre Comunale Bologna, Operà Royal de Wallonie, Theatre Comunale Piacenza, Rome Opera House, with Directors Luca Ronconi, Davide Livermore, Walter Le Moli, Rosetta Cucchi, Alfonso Antoniozzi. Then she moved to work into Movie Production and begin to collaborate on different projects (commercial spot, movies, animation short) for creating virtual set design and look, where she put together both vfx and art departmental skills.

One of her past important work for a production movie has been Cloud Atlas by Wachowski Brothers at the Babelsberg Studios in Berlin. She signed at the Beijing Music Festival (2013) the Virtual multimedia Set Design on some Lyric Opera for the Verdi’s Festival celebration ( Traviata, Rigoletto, Trovatore and Opening Ceremony). She also collaborated as Scenographer for fashion show (Paris, New York, Milan, 2012-2013) with Villa Eugenie (Bruxelles) and Sivestrin (Milan) . Credits: Dior, Y3, Condenast-Vogue, Borbonese, Meissen.

Last year she collaborated with Event Creative Director Marco Balich and his creative team for event show like OPERA ON ICE at the Arena of Verona. Now she is focusing on projects regarding creative and artistic direction in cinema, lyric opera house and fashion&event show. She sign as director her first short animation movie: The BALLAD of HOMELESS ( La Ballata dei SenzaTetto – 2015) with the co-production of EmiliaRomagna Film Commission. Also she is preparing the scenography-stage design for 5 Lyric Opera for the next Opening season 2015-2016 for the CARLO FELICE OPERA HOUSE GENOVA: Roberto Devereux, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda by G. Donizetti, Il Turco in Italia for Como Opera House-Aslico, AIDA in Perugia for Morlacchi Opera House.

She will sign WHEN THE DREAM COMES TRUE: FONTANA SISTER a documentary film mixed animation about famous haute couture fashion designers Micol, Giovanna and Zoe Fontana and her future first fiction film THE OPERA SON.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 A Symphony for Rossini: Il Turco in Italia, animated short
2015 The Ballad of the Homeless, animated short

Hamy Ramezan

Finnish-Iranian film director and screenwriter. Having fled persecution in Iran, and survived Yugoslav refugee camps as a young boy, Ramezan and his family arrived in Finland in 1990. He graduated from the film school at UCA, Franham in 2007 and has since completed several short and documentary films, including REFUGEE UNKNOWN (2016), LISTEN (2015) and KEYS OF HEAVEN (2014). LISTEN premiered in Directors’ Fortnight during the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, won Best Narrative Short at the Tribeca Film Festival and was nominated for the European Film Awards. It went on to win 45 awards and screened at more than 200 festivals world-wide. His latest work is the film ANY DAY NOW (2020) which was selected at Berlinale 2021.

Grímur Hákonarson

Iceland

Icelandic director, Grímur Hákonarson, graduated from FAMU in 2004. His graduate film, SLAVEK THE SHIT, was selected to the Cinefondation section of Cannes Film Festival 2005. The film traveled widely and won 12 festival prizes, including the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival. His next short film, WRESTLING, premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2007 and won 25 festival prizes around the world. Grimur’s previous feature film, RAMS, won the Prix Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival 2015. The film has received more than 30 international awards and won 11 Icelandic Academy Awards.

FILMOGRAPHY
2019 The County
2015 Rams
2013 Hvellur, doc
2012 Pure Heart, doc
2010 Summerland
2007 Wrestling, short
2005 Slavek the Shit, short
2004 Last Words of Hreggvidur, short
2002 Vardi Goes Europe, doc
2001 Vardi Goes on Tour, doc

Farnoosh Samadi

Iran

Farnoosh Samadi was born in Iran and graduated from the Fine Arts Academy in Rome. She started her career as a filmmaker at the Iranian Youth Cinema Societyand after that she made some video installations. She is the scriptwriter for the short films More Than Two Hours directed by Ali Asgari which was nominated fora Palme d’Or at Cannes 2013, The Baby which premiered in Short film competition at Venice Film Festival 2014 and some other short films.

She is currently co-writing a feature film with Ali Asgari which is accepted at Cinefondation Residence of Cannes Film Festival. THE SILENCE is her first short film which will have its world premiere in competition at Cannes Film Festival 2016.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 The Silence, short film

Cristina Grosan

Romania

After graduating from the Faculty of Theatre & Television of Babes Bolyai University, Romania with a 4 year BA in film, she continued her MA at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art, Budapest directing several shorts which travelled the European festival circuit. She graduated in 2012/2013, directing CARRY ME AWAY. Based on that work, Cristina was selected among two other filmmakers for a one month residency at the Sarajevo City of Film, where her most recent short film was produced and shot.

HOLIDAY AT THE SEASIDE premiered in Sarajevo in August 2013, winning the “Atlantic Group” grand prize for best short film. She is developing OPENING, a short film focusing on a young transsexual working in a sex chat, as an operator, which gives him not only a chance to earn easy money, but to practice what he wants to become: a woman. OPENING is nominated for the 2014 Film Prize Germany/Eastern Europe by the Robert Bosch Foundation, and was also selected for the European Short Pitch, organized by NisiMasa.

On the long term, she is working on a first feature film project, A COAT OF GOLD telling the story of a woman diagnosed with breast cancer who refuses surgery. On a commercial side, I’ve worked on a variety of commissioned works from clips showcasing United Nation’s work, to book trailers and classical advertisement clips. I work in the advertising industry in Budapest.

FILMOGRAPHY
2013 Holiday at the Seaside, short
2009 Express Delivery Service, short

Andrew McVicar

Having spent his early life in the Middle East, Andrew returned to the North East of England to study Literature Film. He made a documentary at a workshop led by Abbas Kiarostami in southern Italy, and then made a short drama titled BREATHE FOR ME. This film premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival and went on to play many other European festivals.

LAMB was his next project, premiering at Encounters and playing Oberhausen, Krakow, Brest and Hamburg amongst other international festivals, gaining Special Mention of the Jury at Nice Film Festival 2009 and inclusion in Oberhausen’s Best of the Festival DVD selection and their permanent archive.

COMPULSION is his third film, premiering at London Film Festival 2011 and winning Best Film at London Short Film Festival 2012. Currently, he works in development of feature film and moving image installation projects at Third Films.

FILMOGRAPHY
2011 Compulsion, short

Roman Vasyanov

Roman Vasyanov is a DOP and director. He graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography.

Since 2007 Roman worked Russia’s highest acclaimed feature films, such as Hipsters (2008), Vice (2007), Odessa (2019), dir. by Valery Todorovsky. In 2010 Roman received a prize for Best Cinematography at Kinotavr Open Film Festival for Act of Nature (dir. by Alexandr Lungin, Sergey Osipyan).

Since 2010, Roman has been working with US film studios with directors David Eyre (Fury, Suicide Squad), Doug Liman (The Wall), Jason Hall (Thanks for Your Service), J. C. Chandor (Triple Frontier).

The Dorm is Roman’s directorial debut, produced by METRAFILMS Studio.

Tomasz Bagiński

Poland

Born in 1976. Director, animation and producer. He is a self-taught artist. He left architecture studies to make films. His first student film Rain won several local awards in 1998 and became an entry pass to Platige Image studio, where he currently works as an Art Director. From 1999 to 2002 he worked, with short intervals, on his debut short film THE CATHEDRAL. The film won the first prize for Best Animated Short at the largest animation and special effects festival SIGGRAPH in 2002 and it was nominated a year later for an Academy Award in the category Animated Short Film.

In 2004 he completed his second short animated film entitled FALLEN ART. He won the Jury prize at SIGGRAPH festival in 2005 and became the first person in the history of the festival to have won both main prizes. The confirmation of the success of both The Cathedral and Fallen Art are numerous awards and the films’ screenings at tens of international festivals. He received the BAFTA Film Award for Best Short Animation.

When not working on his own projects he produces special effects and animations for film and advertising productions. He is also no stranger to theatre productions. He is the director of, among others, a virtual set for a commemorative concert of Krzysztof Penderecki entitled Seven Gates of Jerusalem which was the basis for a musical-ballet film nominated by the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for Emmy Award 2009. He currently prepares the realization of his first feature-length film HARDKOR 44.

FILMOGRAPHY
2010 The Kinematograph, short
2010 Animated History of Poland, short
2004 Fallen Art, short
2002 The Cathedral, short

Ivana Laučíková

Slovakia

Born on October 12, 1977 in Partizánske. She studied Animation on Film and Television Faculty, Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and nowadays she’s teaching there. In 2006 she established a production company feel me film and debuted as a producer with an animated short by Ivana Šebestová FOUR. She’s a founder and editor in chief of a magazine about animated fi lm Homo Felix.

FILMOGRAPHY
2011 The Last Bus, short

Johnatan Nowak

Miguel Llansó

Spain

Miguel Llansó, a big fan of experimental-punk-weird music and films, studied philosophy and cinema before leaving on his many adventures. He has mainly filmed in Ethiopia, where he lives half the year. Inspired by Werner Herzog, he created and distributed the film WHERE IS MY DOG? (2010, with Yohannes Feleke), screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2011 & 2012) and other international festivals. He also directed, produced and wrote CHIGGER ALE (2013) – a short film about Hitler´s Ethiopian clone which premiered at Locarno Film Festival in 2013 and has been screened at BAFICI, Tampere, Hamburg and more than 25 international film festivals.

CRUMBS (2015) is Miguel´s feature film debut, premiering at Rotterdam International Film Festival 2015.

FILMOGRAPHY
2015 Crumbs, feature
2013 Chigger Ale, short
2010 Where Is My Dog?, short

Antti Heikki Pesonen

Finland

Antti Heikki Pesonen is a director and scriptwriter originally from Korso. He has studied directing (film and tv) in School of Arts, Design and Architecture (Aalto University/Helsinki). He sometimes finds humor in the grim and he thinks it is funny that he writes a biography about himself in a thrid persona.

FILMOGRAPHY
2012 Say Yes and Dance, short
2012 So it Goes, short
2011 Meal with a Deal, short
2010 Happy Fatties, short
2008 Mentally Fat, short

Mariko Bobrik

Mariko Bobrik was born in Japan in 1983. In 2009, she graduated from the directing course of the Lodz Film School. Currently she lives in Warsaw with her family and is finishing her first feature The Taste of Pho. The project participated in Cinéfondation: Résidence du Festival de Cannes (2012) as well as in Script Station program of the Talents, Berlinale (2013). The script won a 2nd prize of Script Pro 2015 – a Polish feature film script competition.

FILMOGRAPHY
2019 The Taste of Pho

Michał Poniedzielski

Poland

Shir Wen Sun

Malaysia

Shir Wen Sun was born and raised in Malaysia, Shir Wen Sun, who also commonly goes by the name Sun, is a passionate artist who dabbles in many fields of art such as illustration, graphic design, animation and games.

She is the co-director of Oscar long-listed animated short STARLIGHT, and has received many awards and recognition such as First Place in Global Game Jam 2014, as Production Manager/ Background designer and painter, Acceptee of 52 Illustration West Competition , Adobe Design Achievement Awards Semifinalist 2014 for illustration and animation category and 1st place in ASIFA 12X12 Animation Competition 2012. Her works have also been published in Port City Review 2014 and exhibited in SCAD’s open studio night.

FILMOGRAPHY
2015 Starlight, animated short

Kristóf Deák

Hungary

Kristof Deak (1982, Budapest) started his career in editing before studying directing at Westminster Film School. He has been working in London and Budapest, directing fiction short films and TV drama episodes. He is currently developing his first feature film.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 Sing, short
2013 Monstrosity, short
2012 The Boss, short
2012 Losing It, short
2011-2012 Hacktion, TV series
2011 Germ Free Adolescent, short
2010 Golf With a Shotgun, short

Bas Devos

Belgium

Born on 11/04/1983 in Zoersel, Bas Devos wrote and directed four short films, TAURUS (2005), PILLAR (2006), THE CLOSE (2007) and WE KNOW (2009) and one feauture film, VIOLET (2014). Through image and a sparse narrative, he tries to capture moments of beauty, compassion and consolation. Violet explores these themes and investigates the consequent loneliness of its young protagonist. Besides his filmic work, Bas is involved in theater as a director and light designer. He currently writes a new film, ANIMAL LANGUAGE.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 Violet, feature
2009 We Know, short
2007 The Close, short
2006 Pillar, short
2005 Taurus, short

Ali Asgari

Iran

Ali Asgari was born in Tehran, Iran. He studied cinema in Italy. He is an alumnus of Berlinale Talent Campus 2013. Two of his short films MORE THAN TWO HOURS (2013) and THE SILENCE (2016, co-directed by Farnoosh Samadi) were in competition at Festival de Cannes where they competed for the Short Film Palme d’Or. His short film THE BABY premiered in competition of Venice Film Festival in 2014. His short films were screened in more than 600 film festivals around the world including Sundance, BFI London and Melbourne and won more than 150 international awards. DISAPPEARANCE is his first feature film. The script was developed at Cannes Festival’s Cinefondation La Residence.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Disappearance, feature film
2016 In The Same Garden (Vika episode), short
2016 The Silence, short
2015 The Pain, short
2014 The Baby, short
2013 More Than Two Hours, short
2012 Barbie, short
2011 Tonight Is Not a Good Night for Dying, short

Eliška Chytková

Czech Republic

Eliška Chytková is a Czech young animator and director. She studies animation at Tomas Bata University in Zlín. Eliška says about her own approach to work and life:

“The most ordinary thing about those ordinary days of our time is the everydayness, impersonal greyness and the fact that the greatest stereotype of all is that there is always something new. That greyness is what doesn’t let the imagination perish. None of us is without imagination. None of us stamps on it and holds it chained, no matter how hard we try. None of us!“

FILMOGRAPHY
2013 Ham Story, short
2011 Den debil, short
2010 Polednice / Noon Witch, short
2009 Dejchátko, short

Marie Larrivé

Marie was born in Saint-Brieuc in 1988, she is a painter and a director. After studying classical literature in hypokhâgnes and khâgnes, she studied at ENSAD Paris and developed a practice of both still and moving images. Trained in the techniques of stop motion model making, traditional animation, and painting, she explores different types of narration.

In 2017, her video «Proxima B» won the audience award at the Science Po Prize for Contemporary Art. The same year, she took part in the exhibition «Apparailler» at the Palais de Tokyo which brought together 23 young artists who graduated from ENSAD Paris. In 2018, Marie completed a writing residency organised by the NEF, at the Abbaye de Fontevraud for her short film project «Noir-Soleil».

Winner of the Pierre-Gautier Delaye prize in 2019, she benefits from a one-year residency at the Cité internationale des Arts to develop both her film and her painting practice.

Marie Larrivé In January 2020, the Miyu gallery organised «Eden», a solo exhibition of her paintings and animation work. The same year, she participated in the Ciclic residency for the production of her hand painted film «Noir-Soleil».
At the beginning of 2021, she exhibited at the Openbach Gallery and the Bastille Design Center with Maison Contemporain. Marie regularly collaborates with musicians on music videos and with magazines as an illustrator.

Johanna Pyykkö

Norway

Johanna Pyykkö has a bachelor’s degree in film directing from The Norwegian Film School (2016). She has made several award-winning shorts and worked as Joachim Trier’s director’s assistant on his latest feature THELMA. She’s also been in writers’ rooms and worked as episode-writer for several drama series. One of them being the second season of critically acclaimed tv-series ‘Heimebane’ / ‘Home Ground’ (Screened at Berlinale – Tv-series, the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK and other Nordic channels such as SVT, Yle and DR).

Johanna Pyykkö has a Swedish-Finnish background (a mainly working-class Finnish speaking minority group in Sweden) and now lives and works in Norway. Her films are often about identity, belonging/alienation, gender and power.

She’s now developing four features and a tv-series and has received development funding from The Norwegian Film Institute – New Paths’ scholarships for three of her projects: the sci-fi-drama series ‘Year 2098’ (to be produced by Nordisk Film Production), for the features ‘Ebba: The Lover’ (to be produced by Ape&Bjørn) and ‘Mirrors On Evy’. ‘Ebba & The Lover’ got an Honorable Mention at the Scandinavian Debut pitch competition at The Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund in 2017. Her second feature, ‘The Swedish-Finn’, is in development with the Sweden-based production company Verket Produktion.

At the Göteborg International Film Festival 2017, Johanna Pyykkö was awarded the Bonnie Scholarship Dragon Award – presented to a filmmaker who has made a special effort. The same year, she was chosen for the FilmLab Norway-program and in 2018, she was selected to participate in the Nordic Film Lab held by the film institutes of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland together with Göteborg International Film Festival. In 2018 she was chosen for the development program UP arranged by Talent Norge and The Norwegian Film Institute. This year Johanna Pyykkö received The Norwegian Art Council’s one-year filmmaker’s grant.

Valentyn Vasyanovych

Valentyn Vasyanovych is a Ukrainian director, producer and DOP. He was born in 1971 in Zhytomyr, Ukraine and graduated from The National University of theatre, cinema and television of Karpenko-Kary as cinematographer (1995) and documentary filmmaker (2000), as well as from The Wajda School in Poland (2007).

Matan Yair

Israel

Filmmaker, an author and a high school history and literature teacher. He’s a graduate of the screenwriting program at the prestigious Sam Spiegel Film & Television School in Jerusalem, as well as of the MFA directing program at Tel Aviv University. Matan’s literary and artistic work derives from his personal experiences and biography. His documentary film IT IS WRITTEN IN YOUR ID THAT I AM YOUR FATHER (2008) describes a process of growing intimacy between himself and his father, Mordechai, who left home when he was thirteen. The film participated in Haifa International Film Festival’s competitive section as well as other film festivals. Matan’s drama UNSEEN focuses on his experience working as a teacher in a class for kids who were rejected from the regular school system. In 2009, Matan published his first novel, which is built as a diary of a teenager who documents one dramatic year of his adolescence. The novel was awarded from the National Library of Israel, described by the jury as a groundbreaking work. SCAFFOLDING is his first feature film.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Scaffolding, feature
2016 Unseen, short drama
2008 It is written in your I.D that I am your Father, documentary feature film

Sonja Tarokić

Sonja Tarokić (Zagreb, 1988) has an MA degree in film directing, and a BA degree in literature. She is the author of several short films. On Shaky Ground (2014), a dissection of a Mediterranean family that goes through the breakdown of its paterfamilias, was screened at Rotterdam IFF and awarded the best Croatian short at Zagreb Film Festival, while her other films (You Bitch!, I’m a Self Made Woman, Smart Girls, Red) were screened and awarded at numerous international festivals, such as Sarajevo FF, Vila do Conde, Angers Premiers Plans, NEXT Bucharest FF, Brief Encounters FF. She participated at CPH:Lab and Sarajevo Talent Campus workshops. The Staffroom is her first feature film, which was developed through TorinoFilmLab Script&Pitch 2015 and FrameWork 2016 program, winning the TFL Production Award.

Jeppe Rønde

Denmark

Jeppe Rønde, born in 1973, is one of the most recognized, award-winning Danish filmmakers. Since graduating from the University of Copenhagen in 2002, he has directed short fiction films, feature documentaries and commercials.

His debut feature documentary work JERUSALEM MY LOVE won countless international prizes including Nordisk Panorama, Taiwan IFF and Dok Leipzig FF (Golden Dove).His second feature film THE SWENKAS won the Special Jury Prize at Hot Docs 2005, Best Documentary at CPH:DOX and was nominated for European Film Academy Awards (2005). During last few years he won several ‘Roberts’ (Danish equivalent of the Oscars) for his TV and feature documentary work.

Rønde has now completed the feature film, BRIDGEND, shot on location in Wales, which world premiered in the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2015.

FILMOGRAPHY
2015 Bridgend, fiction feature debut
2013 Girl in the Water, short fiction film
2004 The Swenkas, feature documentary
2003 Jerusalem My Love, feature documentary
2001 Son, short documentary

Agata Prętka

Poland

Agata Prętka was born in Poznań (Poland). The graduate of The Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. The diploma in Film Department in Faculty of Multimedia Communication in 2010.

FILMOGRAPHY
2010 Talk to Him, short (2010)

Sander Joon

Biography: Sander Joon uses animation to create surreal worlds with a dash of humour. His films have previously travelled to festivals such as Annecy, DOK Leipzig, Ottawa, Go Short, Stuttgart, Fredrikstad, Kaboom, Supertoon, Animateka and GLAS. He has attended the Open Workshop artist residency in Viborg twice and is now teaching animation at the Estonian Academy of Arts, where he has received a master’s degree in animation. Besides films he has animated a music video for Tommy Cash, participated in a popular commercial for Rick and Morty and has been a VJ to numerous events. Sander also worked as a 2D artist for the multi-awarded film The Old Man Movie (2019). His previous short Sounds Good (2018) won awards from Stuttgart, Fredrikstad, SUPERTOON and PÖFF Shorts.

Filmography:
2022 Short animation “Sierra”. 15’57”. Director and animator.
2018 Short animation “Sounds Good”. 9’50”. Director and animator.
2017 Short animation “Moulinet”. 5’51”. Director and animator.
2015 Short animation “Velodrool”. 6’12”. Director and animator.

Elina Talvensaari

Finland

Born in Helsinki, Finland, Elina Talvensaari began her studies with anthropology and sociology at Helsinki University. While fnishing her master’s degree she switched to flm studies, majoring in documentary directing. Her latest film HOW TO PICK BERRIES opened at Venice Film Festival, and has been awarded in various international festivals such as San Sebastian, Tromsø and Tampere and has been recognized also by Fine Art institutions such as MoMa in New York. She is currently finishing her studies on flm directing at Aalto University, ELO Helsinki Film School.

FILMOGRAPHY
2010 How to Pick Berries, short

Tudor Jurgiu

Romania

Born in 1984, Tudor Jurgiu studied at the Drama and Film University in Bucharest. After shooting several short film, he now works on his first feature film The Japanese Dog, about an old man, Costache Moldu, who tries to connect with his estranged son after a flood has swept away his wife and house.

FILMOGRAPHY
2011 The Japanese Dog, short
2009 Oli’s Wedding, short
2009 Ela, short

Joanna Kos-Krauze & Krzysztof Krauze

Poland

Joanna Kos-Krauze and Krzysztof Krauze are Poland‘s leading film auteurs. Their work is characterised by a deep humanist approach and respect for their protagonists. Their first collaboration was DEBT, directed by Krzysztof and jointly co-written. The film was recently chosen as the most important Polish production of the past twenty years. Altogether, their films have received more than 120 awards in Poland and around the world. Their films include MY NIKIFOR, a story about a forgotten painter (Award for Best Director in Karlovy Vary) and SAVIOUR SQUARE, a drama about a toxic family.

FILMOGRAPHY
2015 Papusza
2006 Saviour Square / Plac Zbawiciela
2004 My Nikifor / Mój Nikifor
1999 Debt / Dług

László Nemes

Bio soon

Cecilia Actis

Argentina

Cecilia Actis, born in Cordoba, Argentina, studied stage and theater technology in Malmö, Sweden. She is a director, animator and currently a light technician at the Opera of Copenhagen.

FILMOGRAPHY
2010 Igelkottsresan, short
2008 Attached to You, short
2006 Blue, Karma, Tiger, short
2003 The Dance of My Text, short

Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk

Ukraine

In 2013 graduated from Kyiv National Karpenko-Karyy University of Theatre, Cinema and Television. During his studies at the university, hi made several short films, which were participating and received awards at different international festivals. Participant of the BERLINALE TALENT CAMPUS 2013.
Contributor of the documentary project Babylon#13 (cinema of civil protest) Kyiv, Ukraine.
Scholarship-holder of the program of the Minister of Culture of Poland “GAUDE POLONIA” 2015, 2017.
Organizer of the Ukrainian Script Platform «TERRARIUM».
Participant TorinoFilmLab (Script&Pitch) 2016.
Member of the National Union of Filmmakers of Ukraine since 2013.
Member of Ukrainian Film Academy since 2017.
Member of EFA (European Film Academy) since 2018.

FILMOGRAPHY
2018 WEIGHTLIFTER, short
2015 INTERSECTION, short doc
2013 KRASNA MALANKA, short doc
2012 THE BEARD, short
2008 ADOLESCENCE, short

Babis Makridis

Greece

Greek director, writer and producer born in 1970. Studied in the Stavrakos Film School. His short film THE LAST FAKIR was awarded to a newcomer’s prize at Drama Short Film Festival in Greece. His first feature debiut was L from 2012 nominated to Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival and Tiger Award in Rotterdam International Film Festival.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Pity, feature
2012 L
2010 The Last Fakir, short

Jasmine Elsen

Aga Woszczyńska

Born in 1984. Director, scriptwriter, anthropologist. Aga graduated from Applied Social Science (2008) and The Polish National Film School in Lodz – Directing Department (2014). For many years she has been working as Assistant Director in Poland and abroad. Her short films were presented and won awards at numerous film festivals, including Cannes Film Festival, Helsinki International Film Festival, T-Mobile New Horizons, Sao Paulo Kinoforum or Warsaw Film Festival and have been brought by national and international TV channels. Her graduation short film “Fragments” had its international Premiere at Cannes Film Festival in Directors’ Fortnight (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs). „Silent Land”, which premiered in Toronto IFF Platform Competition is her first feature film. She is currently working on her second feature „Black Water”.

Ruben Östlund

Sweden

Born in 1974. Ruben Östlund is the co-founder of the production company Plattform Produktion, which produces his films. He started out as a director of skiing films in the 90s, and later went on to study at the film school in Gothenburg. He has directed three dramatic feature-length films, THE GUITRAR MONGOLOID (2004), INVOLUNTARY (2008) and PLAY (2011) that celebrated its world premiere Cannes.

FILMOGRAPHY
2011 Play, feature
2010 Incident by a Bank, short
2008 Involuntary, short
2004 The Guitar Mongoloid, short
2002 Family Again, short

Lisa James Larsson

Sweden

Lisa James Larsson was born in Potsdam and brought up in London. She moved to Stockholm in 2005 to study film directing at Dramatiska Institutet.Lisa studied film TV at Brunel University in London before working for five years as a camera operator/editor and also teaching screen acting. In 2009 she completed her Masters at Dramatiska Institutet in screenwriting.

FILMOGRAPHY
2012 Sex, liv och längtan, short
2010 Little Children Big Words, short
2010 Flera liv, short
2009 Pussyfooting, short
2008 En låda full av minnen, short
2008 Mellan 11 och 12, short
2007 Djur i bur, short

Ognjen Glavonić

Ognjen Glavonić was born in 1985 in Pančevo, SFR Yugoslavia. His short films have been selected for more than 50 international film festivals. ZIVAN MAKES A PUNK FESTIVAL (2014), his first documentary, had its premiere at Cinéma du Réel and has been screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, and IndieLisboa, among others.

Ognjen’s documentary DEPTH TWO (2016) had its premiere in the Forum section at the Berlinale, and was named best film at Festival dei Popoli, DokuFest, Message to Man, Open City Docs Fest, ZagrebDox and Kassel Dokfest. He is the founder of Pančevo Film Festival. THE LOAD (2018) is his first feature film.

FILMOGRAPHY
2018 The Load
2016 Depth Two (doc)
2014 Zivan Makes a Punk Festival (doc)

Hlynur Pálmason

Iceland

Hlynur Pálmason is an artist / filmmaker born in 1984 in Iceland. He started out as a visual artist and continued his career in filmmaking by pursuing education at the Danish National Film School. His graduation film, A PAINTER (2013), won best short film at Odense IFF, Reykjavík IFF and was nominated for The Danish Film Academy. His latest short film, SEVEN BOATS (2014) premiered at Toronto IFF. His debut film WINTER BROTHERS will premiere in the main competition in Locarno in 2017. Hlynur lives in Copenhagen with his fiancé and three children and is currently working on his second feature, A WHITE, WHITE DAY, parallel with exhibiting art work and video installations.

FILMOGRAPHY
2019 A White, White Day
2017 Winter Brothers, feature
2014 Seven Boats, short
2013 En Maler / A Painter, short
2012 En Dag Eller To / A Day Or Two, short

Valdimar Jóhannsson

Hector Herrera

Canada

Hector Herrera is a creative director and animator living and working in Toronto. Having headed the design teams of several award winning studios (Cuppa Coffee Animation, The Studio Upstairs and Trace Pictures) he now freelances as a creative director designer and animator.

With over 13 years’ experience in broadcast design, Hector has created work for a diverse range of clients that include Cartoon Network, SpikeTV, BBC, CTV as well as advertising agencies such as JWT, Ogilvy and FCB among others.

His film and documentary work ranges from David Cronenberg’s Spider, Empire Of The Word, The Antarctica Challenge, The Nature Of Things and Fight Like Soldiers, Die Like Children based on Ret. Gen. Romeo Dallaire’s book of the same name.

He’s a founding partner of the animated content production studio Together: Words + Pictures for Art & Culture where he has designed and directed several animated music videos and short films.

His work has been showcased in several design publications such as Stash, Design In Motion, Applied Arts and Boards magazine and has garnered several BDA gold, silver and bronze awards. Hector is also an instructor in the illustration program at the Ontario College Of Art and Design where he teaches classes in digital mixed media, animated illustration and illustrated activism.

Marisa Ginger Tontaveetong

Thailand

Marisa Ginger Tontaveetong is an animator from Bangkok, Thailand based in Atlanta, Georgia. Currently finishing up her MFA in Animation at Savannah College of Art and Design-Atlanta, she is also the executive director of ASIFA-Atlanta (International Animation Society affiliated with UNESCO), Atlanta Film Society’s filmmaker-in-residence, SIGGRAPH S3 committee member, and co-director of Oscar long-listed animated short STARLIGHT.

With a B.Tech in computer graphics/ multimedia and over 10+ years as web designer/developer working with companies globally such as Unilever in Singapore, she also runs a blog called www.needyanimator.com with a monthly rate of 7-10,000 views focus on soft skill resources for animators and artists including entertainment law, contracts, and film festival tips. She has also been the art director on Atlanta’s Global Game Jam’s 1st place team in 2014, semifinalist of Adobe Design Achievement Award for both motion media in 2015 and animation in 2014, chosen for the ADOBE ICO-D mentorship program and Variety.com’s 110 students who represent the future of film, media and entertainment for 2015. Along with coordinating various children’s animation workshop for ASIFA-Atlanta and the Atlanta Film Society for schools all over Atlanta, she has lead creative panels at the Atlanta Film Festival, Dragoncon and invited to speak at various colleges such as Maryland College of Institute of Technology and Bangkok University International College.

FILMOGRAPHY
2015 Starlight, animated short

Damian Nenow

Poland

Born in 1983. A graduate of the Lodz Film School. His first-year film THE AIM (2005) received an honourable award for artistic virtue at the International Animated Film Festival ReAnimacja in Lodz and the first prize at Dozwolone do 21 lat (No Children above 21) film festival in Tarnow. His second-year film GREAT ESCAPE was screened during numerous international film festivals.

His latest film PATHS OF HATE (2010), whose simplified version constituted his diploma project at Lodz Film School, will soon enter festival circulation. He is a specialist in various fields relating to computer graphics and the author of short animated films, illustrations and concept art. He currently works at Platige Image Film Studio where he directs, creates animation, edits and works on a widely-conceived 3-D graphics.

FILMOGRAPHY
2010 Paths of Hate, animated short
2010 City of Ruins, animated short
2006 Great Escape, animated short
2004 The Aim, animated short

Alicja Jasina

Poland

Alicja Jasina is a Polish film-maker who graduated with a Masters degree in Animation and Digital Arts from University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Before that, she obtained a Bachelors degree in Illustration and Animation at Kingston University in London. Her short films have been awarded at festivals worldwide. In 2014 she won the Royal Television Society Student Award for her graduation LIGHT BULB. Alicja tells intriguing stories about daily dilemmas and captures the everyday life in unusual ways. Alicja is currently working freelance in Los Angeles.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 Once Upon A Line

Barnabás Tóth

Hungary

Barnabás Tóth trained at the Film and TV Academy of Budapest and is an accomplished director. His filmography includes 12 short films, two features Akik Maradtak (Someone to Live For) and Rózsaszín sajt (Camembert Rose). Tóth has also directed some of Hungary’s most popular TV shows, including A mi kis falunk, Csalfa Karma, HBO – Natural Born Loser.

Michael Koch

FILMOGRAPHY
2022 A Piece Of Sky (feature)
2016 Marija (feature)
2009 Polar (short)
2006 Beckenrand (short)
2005 We Are The Faithful (short)

Johan Oettinger

Denmark

Johan Oettinger is a self taught Danish director and filmmaker who has worked on stop-motion and live action productions since his 13th year. A number of commercial productions (music videos and TV spots) are on his filmography. In 2001 he directed his first short film THE KILLING OF EVIL and since that time he has directed and produced 2-3 short films a year, many of them together with the creative partner Emil Brahe, composer and filmmaker. Johan Oettinger also works as a set designer and set builder and on e.g. films for Lego.

FILMOGRAPHY
2012 Seven Minutes in the Warsaw Ghetto, animated short
2011 Singvogel – Strisserne Breder Sig, animated music video
2011 Silja – Sokratæsk, animated music video
2009 Baptised with a double load of pure protein, animated short
2009 Under vand, animated short
2008 Imperium, short
2008 Otrplo Pisce, animated music video
2007 Den Agnostiske Kylling
2007 Maskinen, animated short
2006 Øglen, Blomsten og Dukkehovedet, animated short
2006 Dem Der Forsvinder, short
2005 Fuck Toronto Jungle, live action and animated film
2004 Stjerner, animated short
2001 The Killing of Evil, animated short

Anna Mantzaris

Swedish director and animator based in London and Stockholm. Represented by Passion Animation Studios. I work mainly in stop motion and have a soft spot for things that are sad and funny at the same time.

Graduate from Royal College of Art with an MA in Animation. Recently worked on Wes Andersons ‘Isle of Dogs’. My films have been screened in festivals around the world, and won multiple awards including Emile Awards for Best Achievement in Student Film. Walt Disney Award and Audience Award at Ottawa International Animation Festival.

Filmography

2018 Good Intentions

Ivaylo Minov

Bulgaria

Ivaylo Minov has been directing for the past ten years. He worked as a journalist before gaining experience in the film industry as casting director, first and second AD and location manager. He graduated from the London Film Academy in 2007. His main work currently takes place in the field of short films and TV commercials. He’s an established commercial director with several years of experience on the Bulgarian market. In 2014, he has completed his latest short film PARKING.

He is currently writing extensively for his debut feature. He maintains keen interest in theatre, directing plays by William Shakespeare, Yordan Radichkov and Kamen Donev for the independent group “Kunkurigashtite Pemperugi”, at various venues in Sofia, Bulgaria. In 2011, he established his own production company, Morning Glory Film Ltd. Ivaylo lives in Sofia and London.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 Parking, short
2012 Lunch Break, short
2012 The Ground Beneath Her Feet, short
2009 The First, short
2007 The Rabbit and the Woodcutter, short
2006 Beautiful Burglar, short
2004 Hat and Telephone Date, short

Jorunn Myklebust Syversen

Norway

Jorunn Myklebust Syversen (born 1978) works across film, video-art and photography. She graduated from Bergen National Academy of Art and Design in 2005 and her work has shown at numerous international festivals, screenings and exhibitions. She made her feature debut in 2017 with THE TREE FELLER (HOGGEREN) starring Anders Baasmo Christiansen. DISCO is her second feature.

FILMOGRAPHY
2019 Disco
2017 The Tree Feller
2017 Crying Man, short
2014 Cyrk, short
2010 Der Dunkle Mensch, short

Asaf Saban

Israel

Asaf Saban was born in 1979 in Israel. He lives and works in Tel-Aviv. Recently, he graduated from the film department at the “Midrasha” school of arts, Beit-Berl College. His short student films have been screened in film festivals around the world. On Leave is his graduation film.

FILMOGRAPHY
2009 On Leave
2008 Garbage Time
2007 Mapping
2006 The Museum

Tom Hardiman

Tom’s work as writer/director began with a series of short films, including RADICAL HARDCORE, a love story about the history of British carpet making. Released via Dazed & Confused, it was selected as part of Lynne Ramsay’s Electric Shorts series, going on to win the BFI’s Network Pick Series. Following this, with the BFI’s support, Tom recently completed work on the short PITCH BLACK PANACEA. A live action-animation hybrid that charts the progress of two patients undergoing a peculiar corrective treatment fortheir lazy eyes.MEDUSA DELUXE is Tom’s feature debut, it was shot during the covid lockdown in the North of England. Before moving into directing, Tom worked in Film & TV in various roles ranging from Art Director to Assistant and Line Producer.

FILMOGRAPHY
2022 Medusa Deluxe (Feature)
2019 Pitch Black Panacea (Short)
2016 Radical Hardcore (Short)

Chaitanya Tamhane

Chaitanya Tamhane is an independent filmmaker based in Mumbai. His debut feature film, Court, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2014, where it was awarded the Best Film – Orizzonti and the Lion of the Future award. It has since gone on to win over 30 awards at film festivals worldwide. Court won the National Award for Best Feature Film and was India’s official entry for the 2016 Oscars.

Tamhane has been featured in the Forbes “30 Under 30 Asia” list and was touted by The Hollywood Reporter as “one of the world’s most promising film-makers under 30”. In 2016, he was invited to serve on the jury at the 73^rd Venice Film Festival. In the same year, he was selected to be mentored by Alfonso Cuarón as part of the Rolex Mentor-Protégé Arts Initiative. His new film, ‘The Disciple’, was awarded the Sundance Institute Open Borders Fellowship presented by Netflix. The film will have its World Premiere at the 77th Venice Film Festival in competition.

FILMOGRAPHY
2020 The Disciple
2014 Court
2011 Six Strands, short

Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson

Iceland

Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1978. He is a graduate of the prestigious film program at Columbia University, New York. His first feature film Á ANNAN VEG (Either Way) screened at film festivals all around the world and was re-made in the US as Prince Avalanche (starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch). Hafsteinn was selected as “Variety’s Ten European Directors to Watch” in 2012.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Under The Tree, feature
2014 Paris of the North, feature
2011 Either Way, feature

Matt Porterfield

USA

Matt Porterfield studied film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and teaches in the Film & Media Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University. His first feature, HAMILTON, was released in 2006. Named “one of the finest American independent films ever made” by New Yorker film editor Richard Brody, it was recently acquired for the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. His most recent feature, PUTTY HILL, premiered at the Berlinale’s International Forum of New Cinema in 2010 and was released in the U.S. by Cinema Guild in 2011. Matt has two projects in development, METAL GODS (IFP No Borders, 2012) and SOLLERS POINT (IFFR’s CineMart, 2013).

FILMOGRAPHY
2013 I Used to Be Darker, feature
2011 Putty Hill, feature
2006 Hamilton, feature

Paul Wright

In 2007, Screen International named Paul Wright as a UK ‘Star of Tomorrow’ following the success of his first short film, Hikikomori. Made whilst Paul was a student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, the film won numerous awards, and was nominated for Best Short Film at the UK BAFTAs.

In the summer of 2008, Paul wrote and directed Believe, a short film produced by Rhianna Andrews (Young Films), with finance from Scottish Screen. The film won the Golden Leopard for Best International Short Film at the 62nd Locarno International Film Festival in August 2009. Paul is one of the writer/directors involved in the ‘Advanced Party 2’ scheme (Sigma Films/Zentropa Films).

FILMOGRAPHY
2010 Photos of God, short
2010 Until the River Runs Red, short (2010)
2009 Believe, short
2006 Hikikomori, short

Andrei Cretulescu

Romania

A former film critic, in 2007 Andrei became Creative Manager of HBO ROMANIA’S “Original Production” department and went to produce In deriva (an adaptation of HBO US’s In Treatment) and nine original documentaries. In 2011 he left HBO and started his own production company, Kinosseur. He wrote and directed BAD PENNY and KOWALSKI (winner of the Golden Pram – Zagreb Film Festival 2014). RAMONA is his third self-financed short film. Andrei is currently in pre-production with his first feature, Charlton Heston, which he’ll shoot in Fall 2015.

FILMOGRAPHY
2015 Ramona, short
2014 Kowalski, short
2013 Bad Penny, short

Arnaud Demuynck

Trained as a scriptwriter, an author, director and producer of animated films. At the same time, active in the direction of actors for the voices of animated films, specializing in children’s voices, and artistic direction. The author of books and editorial director of a collection of albums and Ebooks for children, La Collection de la Chouette du Cinéma.

Bartosz Kędzierski

Poland

Bartosz Kędzierski was born in 1976 in Wrocław. He is a Polish screenwriter and director. He studied Film Directing at the Radio and Tv Faculty of University of Silesia. He gained recognition in Poland thanks to his animated series LORDZ OF FLYS. The huge success of the series allowed him to produce a feature version of it. Kędzierski has also created other animated series: 1000 BAD DEEDS, PARAPET and DADDY! DADDY! DADDY! which were broadcasted by many TV channels. He also works as a film director in the advertising market.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 Wollen Cogwheels, animated short

Dara Van Dusen

Dara Van Dusen is a writer and director from New York, currently residing in Oslo, Norway. She is the recipient of the coveted Norwegian Film Institute Fellowship, and has received numerous development and production grants from the Norwegian Film Institute. Her 2008 Short, SIGNIFICANT OTHERS competed in Cannes Official Selection. Her most recent short, THE BLIND MAN – an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s short story, – was nominated for Best Nordic Short and selected in the Nordic Panorama. After studying at the famed Polish National Film School in Lodz, she has split her time between developing her own material and working as a script supervisory across Film and TV.

Evi Kalogiropoulou

Evi Kalogiropoulou is a film director and visual artist working in Athens and London. She has a Masters from the Royal College of Art in Moving Image. Her projects explore ideas associated with inclusion/exclusion, cross-culture identity, female figures in Ancient Greek mythology frames, and post-apocalyptic environments. She is currently developing her debut feature Cora, (Eurimages Development Award, Cinemart 2021, ARTE Award at Atélier Cinéfondation in Cannes 2021).

Ivana Šebestová

Slovakia

She graduated in animated film from the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts, Bratislava, where she currently teaches.

Her master’s degree film LIONARDO MIO (2005) gained an award at the Bologna European Festival of Film Schools. She won twelve domestic and international awards for her début film FOUR (Štyri, 2007). She took part in the production of the animated musical Stones (Kamene, 2010) by director Katarína Kerekesová. Together with her, she also created an educational film for the Slovak National Museum called HOW I WENT WITH GRANDPA TO VISIT THE ANCESTORS (Ako som šiel s dedkom na návštevu k predkom, 2010).

FILMOGRAPHY
2013 Snow, short
2010 How I Went with Grandpa to Visit the Ancestors, short
2007 Four, short
2005 Lionardo Mio, short
2001 My Love, short

Hallvar Witzø

Norway

Hallvar graduated from The Norwegian Film School in 2010. He won the Student Academy Award, and received an Oscar nomination with his diploma film, TUBA ATLANTIC. His first professional short film, YES WE LOVE, is in the short film competition and is premiered at Cannes film festival 2014. Hallvar is now in development of his first feature movie.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 Yes We Love, short
2010 Tuba Atlantic, short

Hanne Berkaak

Norway

Hanne Berkaak is a freelance illustrator and animator currently based in Oslo, Norway. She has a Master in Communication Art & Design from Royal College of Art, London and a BA in animation from Parson’s School of Design, New York. Berkaak has directed animations for clients such as Playstation, Channel 4, Yo Gabba Gabba and Save The Children. As a child, Berkaak spent her summers with her family in Lapland. With her short film debut, THE MARATHON DIARY, she has been inspired by the landscapes and memories of these childhood summers.

FILMOGRAPHY
2016 Marathon Diary, short

Tomasz Popakul

Poland

Born in 1986 in Trzebież, Poland. He made his first films FRUSTRATU:HERZLEID (2004) and LIFE 1.0 (2006) at the art school in Szczecin, before he started studying animation at the renowned film school in Lodz in 2007. In 2011, he signed up for the parallel study of scriptwriting at the same school. ZIEGENORT is his graduation film.

FILMOGRAPHY
2012 Zigenort, animated short
2009 Martwe pole, animated short
2009 Rewolucja W Chronopolis: 64 złote kule i jedno klaśniecie, animated short
2008 1000 wiader wody, animated short
2008 Auge, animated short
2006 Życie 1.0, animated short
2004 Frustratu:Herzleid, animated short

Ben Pearce

Ben Pearce is a London born filmmaker.
His work includes: A Few Miles South 2021, Waterloo 2020, Nurtured 2019 and Silent Woods 2012. All of which have screened internationally and garnered him a number of awards. He is a member of BFI Bafta Crew and is currently developing a number of film and TV projects, including his debut feature for Revolution Films. Prior to this, Ben studied filmmaking at UCA before beginning his career working for filmmakers such as David Yates, Bryan Burk and David Koepp on films including Star Wars, Mission Impossible and JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts.

Filmography

A Few Miles South (2021)
Waterloo (2020)
Nurtured (2019)
Silent Woods (2012)

Tudor Giurgiu

Romania

Tudor Giurgiu is a member of the European Film Academy, founder and President of the Transilvania International Film Festival, founder of the production company Libra Film and of the film distribution company Transilvania Film, co-founder of Cityplex – local exhibitor (11 screens) – and initiator of the Gopo Awards Gala.

Tudor’s debut feature LOVE SICK was selected in Panorama section of 2006 Berlinale and awarded in several int’l festivals. Between 2005 and 2007, he served as General Director of Romanian National Television (TVR). In 2008, he directed for HBO the documentary WEDDINGS, MUSIC AND VIDEOTAPES. Tudor was involved as main producer in Katalin Varga by Peter Strickland, awarded with a Silver Bear in 2009 Berlinale and with the European Discovery of the Year at EFA Awards.

FILMOGRAPHY
2015 Why Me?
2012 Of Snails and Men
2011 Superman, Spiderman, or Batman
2008 Wedding, Music and Videotapes, documentart
2006 Love Sick, feature

Kateřina Karhánková

Czech Republic

Kateřina Karhánková graduated from the Animation Department at FAMU, Prague. She focuses on films for children, often visiting schools to interview kids. Her graduation film THE NEW SPECIES competed at Annecy 2014, was presented at the MoMA in NYC and was selected at several international festivals where it won awards from both juries and audiences. Her following film, TONY AND MR. ILLNESS, won several awards including the 2015 Gold Panda.

FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Hurá na borůvky! / Hurrah for blueberries!, animated short
2017 Plody mraků / The Fruits of Clouds, animated short
2015 Tonda a Bacil / Tanny and Mr. Illness, animated short
2013 Nový druh / New Species, animated short
2010 Držet krok / Keep pace, animated short
2010 Žhavá noc / Hot night, animated short
2009 Dárek / Present, animated short
2009 Poštovní etuda / Post etude, animated short

Aislinn Clarke

Aislinn Clarke is an Irish Writer/Director. She holds the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesGold Fellowship for Women 2020. She is also the first Irish woman to have made a horror feature film.

Her debut feature film THE DEVIL’S DOORWAY was released in the USA by IFC Midnight in 2018. It has also been released in Brazil, Japan, the Middle East, Germany, Canada, the U.K. and Ireland. The film premiered in the Official Competition at the Seattle International Film Festival and had itsEuropean premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh, where Aislinn was nominated for the Bingham Ray New Talent Award.

The film played at many of the premiere horror film festivals worldwide (Frightfest, Sitges etc). Shewas nominated for Screen International’s Rising Genre Star Award at Frightfest. She has beendescribed as a “real genre talent” by noted British genre critic Kim Newman and as “one of the mostbrilliant directors ever” by Oscar nominated director Lexi Alexander (The Punisher and Green Room)

FILMOGRAPHY:

TITLE	YEAR	SHORT / FEATURE / DOCUMENTARY
The Devil’s Doorway	2018	Feature
Childer	2016	Short
Short Sharp Shocks	2015	Short
In The Darkroom	2013	Short
The Lighthouse Keepers	2012	Short

Jens Blank

Germany

Born in Cologne, Germany, Jens decided to come to the Uk at the age of 21. He studied art and design, creating a bunch of animated shorts eventually starting to work as a freelancer for Nexusproductions. The last project Jens worked on at Nexus before joining the NFTS for a 2 year MA in animation direction was the 2009 oscar nominated short THIS WAY UP. His graduation film COOKED has screened as part of the official selection of the Cannes film festival in 2010. Since then it has been shown in over 30 festivals worldwide. He is currently developing a new short project and looking to get representation as a director within the animation industry.

FILMOGRAPHY
2010 Cooked, short
2009 This Way Up, short

Magnus von Horn

Sweden

Magnus von Horn was born in 1983 in Sweden, Gothenburg. He is living and working in Poland. He graduated from the Polish National Film School in Łódź in 2013, where he now teaches directing. Magnus made a successful entrance with his short films: Echo (2010) premiered at Sundance FF and Without Snow (2011) premiered at Locarno FF.

His debut feature The Here After was premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight 2015 – Cannes FF and won two Swedish Guldbagge Award for Best Film & Best Director and traveled along the festivals such as Toronto, Karlovy Vary, San Sebastian and was sold to more than 10 territories. With Sweat, his second feature length fiction he took part in Torino Film Lab.

FILMOGRAPHY
2020 Sweat, feature
2015 The Here After, feature
2011 Without Snow, short
2008 Echo, short
2006 Radek, documentary

Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson

Iceland

Guðmundur was born in Reykjavik, Iceland 1982. He graduated in fine art from the Icelandic Art Academy. There after he moved to Denmark and studied screenwriting. Guðmundur works as a filmmaker and a part time teacher in film and fine art. His short films have collected 20 international awards and over 100 nominations. WHALE VALLEY received among others, a Special Mention in the Official Competition of the Cannes Film Festival, Best Short film at Hamptons I.F.F. and a nomination for Best Short film to the European Film Awards. ÁRTÚN received f.x. the Grand Prix for Best Short Film at Brest S.F.F and The Golden Plaque for Best Live Action/Narrative Short at Chicago I.F.F.

FILMOGRAPHY
2014 Ártún, short
2013 Whale Valley WHALE VALLEY (15 min)