Expert Jury for 2023

REINHARD BRADATSCH

Austria

Reinhard Bradatsch is a freelance reviewer of the Austrian film magazine Ray. He is a co-founder and co-editor of the former online magazine allesfilm.com. He regularly writes reports from national and international film festivals—e.g., Viennale (Vienna/AT), Crossing Europe (Linz/AT), IFF Bratislava (SK) and was a FIPRESCI juror at international festivals in Cottbus and Bratislava. He was a programmer of the section on Austrian documentaries at the 3rd IFF Cinematik in Piešťany in 2008.

GRÉGORY CAVINATO

Belgium

Grégory Cavinato graduated from the University of Brussels’ ELICIT section (Aesthetics and Philosophy of Cinema / Screenwriting and Film Analysis) in 2004—his thesis supervisor was acclaimed director Luc Dardenne—and has since worked as a screenwriter, translator, subtitler (mainly for the Offscreen film festival in Brussels) and freelance film critic for various Belgian newspapers and websites—most notably for Cinergie.be (since 2005), FilmMagie (2016–2020) and Europe (since 2019). As a film critic, he is a member of the FIPRESCI and the U.P.C.B. (Union of the Belgian Film Critics).

ROBERTO DONATI

Taliansko

Roberto Donati graduated in Modern Literature and Film Studies from the University of Siena in Italy and also studied at the University of Warwick in the UK. As a professional journalist, he writes for newspapers, journals, and magazines on culture, film, and literary topics. As a writer, he is preparing screenplays and documentary projects for comics, television, and cinema. Donati’s main publication is a book on the theme of nostalgia in the films of Sergio Leone (Sergio Leone. L’America, la nostalgia e il mito; Falsopiano, 2009) and he is currently a curator of a film book series for Bietti (Bietti Heterotopia). Since 2007, he teaches Film Studies, Italian Literature, and History at several Italian lyceums.

CARMEN GRAY

Germany

Carmen Gray is a New Zealander who lives in Berlin. A film critic and journalist, she writes for The New York Times, Sight & Sound, and Criterion, among others, often about Central and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. She is a Contributing Critic for The Film Verdict and was previously the film editor of Dazed & Confused magazine in London. She is also a film programmer and is on the selection committees of the Generation section of the Berlin International Film Festival and the Winterthur International Short Film Festival, and is a programme adviser for Open City Docs.

PHILIP ILSON

United Kingdom

Philip Ilson is the artistic director of the London Short Film Festival, which he co-founded in 2004. He was the short film programme advisor for the BFI London Film Festival for 16 years and has previously worked as a programmer at the East End Film Festival (London), Cork Film Festival (Ireland), Branchage Festival (Jersey), Latitude music festival (Suffolk) and at Curzon Soho Cinema.

AKSEL KIELLAND

Norway

Aksel Kielland is a critic and commentator for the national weekly Morgenbladet and a contributor to Norwegian film publications such as Wuxia, Z, and Montages. Since 2008, he has been a catalogue editor, writer, and associate programmer for the Bergen International Film Festival.

MILJA MIKKOLA

Finland

Since 2005 Milja Mikkola has been part of the Arctic Circle’s legendary Midnight Sun Film Festival where she currently holds the post of Programme Manager. She is also a member of the programming collective of Cinema Orion in Helsinki and co-director of Helsinki’s Viva Erotica Film Festival, which celebrates the history of sex with rare gems screened in their original format. Milja studied Film Theory at Brunel University in London and Visual Journalism at Finland’s University of Tampere. Fully trained as an analogue projectionist decades ago, her celluloid roots are embedded in the film world.

MIKE NAAFS

Holandsko

Mike Naafs graduated in Film Studies from the University of Amsterdam, where he was also editor-in-chief of the student film magazine. After receiving his degree, he worked for a number of film festival newspapers and magazines, including The Dutch Filmkrant, and visited festivals for FIPRESCI in Kyiv, Cannes, Moscow, Cluj-Napoca, and St. Petersburg. He is currently freelancing and working as a chef in a psychiatric institution.

VUK PEROVIĆ

Montenegro

Vuk Perović is the editor-in-chief of II channel on Radio and Television of Montenegro. He is an art director, programmer, and member of the team that established UnderhillFest—an international film festival of feature-length documentaries in Podgorica, Montenegro. He is a host of a prime-time TV show about film. He has been publishing film reviews and interviews with people working in the film industry for various media. He is a co-founder of CIRCLE Woman Doc Accelerator—a training program for female documentary filmmakers. He is a member of FEDEORA, FIPRESCI and a lecturer and producer.

PAMELA PIANEZZA

France

Pamela Pianezza’s initial plan was to become a spy, but she never found who she would happily spy for. Instead, she became a multimedia artist and a visual arts teacher, researching the various possible shapes of storytelling. She mainly works with images and text (whose relationship she likes to explore) but also with sounds, collages, and performance. Having studied both arts and journalism and having worked as a reporter in the film industry for a while, she found her favourite playground at the border between fiction and documentary. She is based in Bordeaux and doesn’t like to get too far away from the sea.

TRISTAN PRIIMÄGI

Estónsko

Tristan Priimägi studied Semiotics at Tartu University and graduated in 2001, specializing in Film Semiotics. He has been a regular contributor to all bigger press publications, newspapers, and magazines in Estonia, writing about film, music, and, pop-culture in general. He has helped with the translations and promotion work for Estonian films and film events. Since January 2010, he organizes the DocPoint Tallinn documentary film festival—an Estonian branch of the renowned Helsinki documentary festival DocPoint. He works as a film editor in the cultural weekly newspaper Sirp.

XAVIER GARCÍA PUERTO

Spain

Film and video curator, he has organized exhibitions and programs in Brazil, Israel, Colombia, the US or China and collaborated with institutions such as KunstWerke (Berlin), Caixaforum, Instituto Cervantes or the Cineteca Nacional de México. Jury member in festivals in South Africa, Hungary, Italy, Costa Rica, Lithuania, France, or Siberia, including the Berlinale (Generation). He is a programmer at Tallinn Black Nights FF (www.poff.ee), a delegate for Spanish-speaking countries, and an editor of “Rebels with a Cause” competition. During 2014–2018, he was the main curator of the project Off the Wall, which brought European films on tour in over thirty cities in nine countries in Europe and America. Cofounder of REC International Film Festival of Tarragona in 2001 and its artistic director since 2006 (www.festivalrec.com), where he in 2014 founded “Primer Test”—an Industry LAB that is the push behind most filmmakers from the Spanish new wave. His last adventure is Panoramica.film—a service from programmers to programmers which aims to bring new film talent to festivals around the world.

MATEJ SVOBODA

Czech Republic

Matej Svoboda comes from Liberec, Czech Republic. Although he studied Czech and English language at the Faculty of Pedagogy, he has never worked for the educational system. He currently lives in Prague and works as a movie publicist for MovieZone.cz and as an editor for TV magazines TV Max and Týdeník Televize. His texts also appear in the magazine XB-1 and he is a co-author of the books Encyclopedia of Action Films or Encyclopedia of Comic Book Films.

KATA ANNA VÁRÓ

Hungary

Kata Anna Váró is an associate professor at the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, Budapest and she also works as a film and theatre critic. She holds a degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Debrecen, then she completed a degree in Film and Media Studies at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. She holds a DLA from the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. She has published numerous reviews, festival coverage and essays in various national and international publications. She has been a juror—including FIPRESCI juries—at various international film festivals.

JOSHUA JÁDI

Nemecko

Joshua Jádi je nemecko-maďarský spisovateľ, režisér a programový dramaturg festivalov so vzdelaním v oblasti psychológie a psychoanalýzy. Študuje réžiu na Filmakademie Wien pod vedením Jessicy Hausner a scenáristiku pod vedením Götza Spielmanna. Jeho krátke filmy získali uznanie kritiky a premietali sa na medzinárodných filmových festivaloch, kde boli aj ocenené. Joshua sa zúčastnil prestížnych podujatí pre mladých tvorcov, akými sú Sarajevo Talents a letná škola Locarno Academy. Popri filmovej tvorbe sa tiež venuje funkcii zástupcu programového riaditeľa na filmovom festivale Cottbus, kde každý rok vyberá viac ako 100 celovečerných a krátkych filmov z východnej Európy. Okrem toho bol aj členom poroty Európskeho filmového festivalu Palić 2022 po boku Katriel Schory, Lorny Tee, Katariny Radivojevic a M.J. McMahona.

ADAM PAPLINSKI

Poľsko

Adam Paplinski sa už takmer 35 rokov venuje rôznym oblastiam vizuálneho umenia, z toho viac ako 25 rokov dokumentárnemu filmu. Za ten čas získali filmy, na ktorých sa produkčne podieľal, vyše 60 prestížnych ocenení. Je producentom, manažérom produkcie, konzultantom, vedie medzinárodné workshopy a je tiež členom poroty na rôznych filmových festivaloch. V roku 2016 založil prvú online platformu na trhu pre dokumentárne projekty „Pitch the Doc,“ ktorá sa zaoberá vzdelávaním v oblasti prezentácie a pitchingu projektov. Je členom Asociácie poľských filmárov a Asociácie dokumentárnych filmov Európy.

PATRIK PAŠŠ

Slovenská republika

Narodil sa v Bratislave, kde študoval v rokoch 1964 až 1968 na SPŠE. Ešte počas strednej školy sa stal externým asistentom kamery, strihu, zvuku a produkcie v ČST Bratislava. V roku 1972 sa etabloval ako strihač v ČST. Na pražskej FAMU študoval v rokoch 1978 až 1983 Filmovú a televíznu strihovú skladbu. Neskôr sa stal riadiacim pracovníkom všetkých strihačov v STV. V roku 1989 založil produkčnú spoločnosť TRIGON PRODUCTION s.r.o., ktorej konateľom je dodnes. Ako producent realizoval vyše 1800 diel a získal viac ako 300 ocenení doma i v zahraničí. Medzi najvýznamnejšie patria niekoľkonásobné národné nominácie na Oskara, národné ceny Slnko v sieti, Český lev, Prix Europa, Prix Italia, International Emmy Award. Roku 2005 bol inaugurovaný ako profesor na VŠMU v Bratislave, kde pôsobí v Ateliéri strihovej skladby. Garantuje ateliéry kamery, animácie a FX efektov. Strihal také významné a oceňované dokumentárne filmy, ako sú Papierové hlavy, Nicolas G.Winton – Sila ľudskosti či Nickyho rodina. V hranej tvorbe sú to dnes už tiež kultové diela ako Tisícročná včela, Perinbaba, Sedím na konári a je mi dobre, Všetci moji blízki, Bathory, Colette či Malá z rybárne. Je iniciátorom a spolutvorcom legislatívnych zákonov o STV, Audiovizuálneho fondu, Zmluvy so štátom, zakladajúci člen a prvý predseda Audiovizuálneho fondu SR, člen SFTA, viceprezident SAPA, člen International Documentary Association USA a člen European Producers Club.