Jury

Aksel Kielland is a critic and commentator for the national weekly Morgenbladet. Since 2008, he has been a catalogue editor, writer and an associated programmer for the Bergen International Film Festival.

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 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.

Gregory 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 Off screen 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 Agence 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).

Kata Anna Váró is a lecturer at the University of Debrecen in Hungary, 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 Eotvos Lorand 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. She holds regular film club events and conducts Q&As at the local arthouse cinema and in film festivals.

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. He is a co-author of books Encyclopedia of Action Films and The Nineties in Film. Encyclopaedia of Action Cinema and The Nineties in Film.

Mike Naafs graduated in Film Studies from the University of Amsterdam, where he was also an 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 Kiev, Cannes, Moscow, Cluj-Napoca and St. Petersburg. He is currently freelancing and working as a chef in a psychiatric institution.

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.

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 Montpellier, south of France.

Philip Ilson is the Artistic Director of the London Short Film Festival, which he co-founded in 2004. He is the short film programmer at the Dinard British Film Festival in France. 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.

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.

Roberto Donati is a Literature and Film professor, writer, and screenwriter. His latest publications include the monograph Once Upon a Time in the West by Sergio Leone (Gremese, 2018), the horror graphic novel L’abisso e ovunque (Weird Book, 2019), the poetry collection postmoderni (Transeuropa, 2020), the collective film essay L’intelligenza delle cose. Il cinema di Mario Martone (ETS, 2021), and some screenplays for various short films, including Cicciolina Pocket (Keep Digging Prod., 2021). He was the creator and curator (2009–2012) of the Bietti Heterotopia film series; he organizes and curates reviews, retrospectives, and events related to literature and cinema on behalf of universities, cultural centers, and institutes in Italy, Europe, and around the world. He is an expert in audiovisual disciplines, both theoretical and practical, and is an independent and certified trainer on behalf of Lanterne Magiche (Mediateca Toscana) and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Tourism.

Tristan Priimagi is an Estonian film critic and journalist, working as Head of the cinema section in a cultural weekly Sirp. He is a founder and programmer of DocPoint Tallinn Documentary Film Festival. Member of FIPRESCI and European Film Academy.

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

Christopher Small is a writer, film programmer, and publisher from the United Kingdom but living in Prague. He works as an editor of publications for the Locarno Film Festival, where he also leads the Critics Academy. He is the founder and co-editor of Outskirts, a print magazine and podcast dedicated to the cinema of the past and present. Outskirts, which are dedicated to the cinema of the past and present.

Michaela Čajková is the founder and managing director of Filmotor—a globally recognized brand in independent documentary distribution. With a Master’s degree in Economic Policy and International Relations alongside degrees in Film Production from Prague’s FAMU and Film Theory, she combines strategic business expertise with a deep cinematic foundation. Her professional background includes key distribution roles at Taskovski Films and Berlin-based missingFILMs, as well as an international residency at the Bezalel Academy. A Berlinale Talents alumna, Michaela has dedicated the past ten years to championing visionary filmmakers and securing their place on the global stage.