Jury 2023

Nicoletta Romeo (IT)

artistic director Trieste Film Festival

From 1999 to 2006 Nicoletta Romeo worked as Head of Programming for the Venice International Critics Week, an autonomous section of the Venice Film Festival.  From 2000 to 2007 she worked as a programme advisor for the Thessaloniki Film Festival and 4 Ecrans, Paris. Since 1996 she has been collaborating with the Trieste Film Festival as Programme manager, and in 2016 she was appointed Artistic Director. She has served as jury member in several European festivals and has collaborated with Midpoint Feature Launch, First Cut Lab and Czech Film Springboard as a consultant.  In 2012 she funded the production company Mansarda Production with two other partners. Among others, she produced the documentary THE LAST RESORT by Thanos Anastopoulos and Davide Del Degan, which premiered in May 2016 at Cannes in the Official Selection-Special Screenings.

Dennis Ruh (DE)

director European Film Market

Dennis Ruh has been director of the European Film Market since 2020. He studied cultural sciences, audiovisual communication, social science and history in Bremen, Germany and Valencia, Spain. During his studies, he began working for the Oldenburg International Film Festival in 2008 and became a co-director in 2011. Starting in 2010, he also worked for Independent Partners Film. From 2012 to 2020, he was department head for International Festival Relations & Producers Liaison at German Films. He regularly appears as a guest lecturer at film schools and panelist at industry conferences and film festivals and served on various juries.
 

Norika Sefa (XK)

film director, scriptwriter (NË KËRKIM TË VENERËS, CE22)

Norika Sefa is a Kosovo born filmmaker. Her films are heterogeneous in style, merging fiction and documentary, pieces that create atmosphere rather than stick to a conventional narrative. Sefa directed the short DESDE ARRIBA (2020) shot under the guidance of Werner Herzog at the Peruvian Jungle, and KISS ME, NOW (2020), both hybrid documentaries. LOOKING FOR VENERA (2021) is her debut feature, premiered at IFF Rotterdam, winning the Special Jury Award in the Tiger Competition. The film was shown and awarded at other important festivals, such as : Hong Kong International Film Festival (Best Director, Best Actress) or Sarajevo Film Festival (Special Award for Gender Equality). Norika is now writing her next feature film, set to be shot in Kosovo in 2024 and is in post-production of her newest project.

Mariam Chutkerashvili (GE)

program coordinator, film critic CinéDOC-Tbilisi International Documentary Film Festival

Mariam Chutkerashvili is a film critic with a BA in Film Studies and a master’s degree with a thesis on feminist film theory and its representation in contemporary genre cinema. Since 2018 she has been working for CinéDOC-Tbilisi International Documentary Film Festival as a program coordinator and is also involved in other educational training organized by NOOSFERA FOUNDATION. To date, she has been involved in the planning and implementation of numerous projects, she is the author of several reviews and articles. She also works for DOCA – Documentary Association Georgia as a project coordinator. Recently Mariam has been on a documentary jury at two different film festivals, – one is held in Tbilisi annually and another one in Kazakhstan.

Vitaly Mansky (UA/LV)

film director, festival director Artdocfest Riga (RODNYE, CE17: CROSSING EUROPE
Social Awareness Award – Best Documentary; SHIDNIY FRONT)

Born in Lviv in what is now Ukraine in 1963. He studied at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. As a director, he has made over 30 films which have screened and won awards at festivals around the world. He is the founder and was for many years the director of Artdocfest, a festival for experimental Russian-language documentary films. In 2022, the festival ceased its activities due to Russian censorship and the war against Ukraine. Since 2014, he has lived in Riga in Latvia where he founded the international documentary film festival Artdocfest Riga. (Berlinale)

Serpil Turhan (DE)

film director, scriptwriter (KÖY, CE22)

Serpil Turhan studied theater at the Freie Universität Berlin from 2001 to 2004 and then worked as an assistant director. At the same time, she began making documentaries herself, attending the study course Media Art/Film at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design with Thomas Heise. She graduated in 2013 with her documentary DILIM DÖNMÜYOR – MY TONGUES DOES NOT TURN. Her first feature-length documentary after studying, RUDOLF THOME – FLOWERS EVERYWHERE, premiered at the Berlinale 2016 in the Forum section. In 2021, her film KÖY opened the 45th Duisburger Filmwoche. She has been a guest professor in the study course Media Art/Film at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design since 2019.

Nicola von Leffern (DE/AT)

film director (PETRICHOR – MOTSA, CE17)

Nicola von Leffern, born in Hamburg in 1986, is a German-Austrian director and filmmaker. She studied at the Film Academy Vienna and currently splits her time between Austria and Lebanon. She holds a special place in her heart for courageous female rebels and poetic cinema. This is also mirrored in her own works, where female empowerment and the question of identity frequently play a big part. Influenced by the NGO work in her youth, Nicola is drawn time and again to places and stories that she considers to be underrepresented. Driven by the idea to amplify these voices and to immerse them in the enchanting power of cinema, she writes, observes, and directs.

Markus Reindl (AT)

artistic director, curator Stream Festival Linz

Markus Reindl is the Artistic Director of Stream Festival for music, pop culture, and digitalization of the City of Linz. From 2011 to 2023 he worked for the OK Linz and the OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH as curator for contemporary art. Only recently, the publication “Meta.space – Visions of Space from the Middle Ages to the Digital Age”, which he co-edited, was released. Markus Reindl lives in Freistadt, Upper Austria.

Anna Spanlang (AT)

Artist, filmmaker (Auto – KLITCLIQUE, CE20: CREATIVE REGION Music Video Award; CEREAL / Soy Claudia, soy Esther y soy Teresa. Soy Ingrid, soy Fabiola y soy Valeria., CE22)

Anna Spanlang was born in 1988 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts with Dorit Margreiter & Constanze Ruhm, and at CENART/Mexico City. Her video works move in the field of film and visual art. She headed the YOUKI International Youth Media Festival from 2013 to 2015 and was Project Coordinator of the FC Gloria Film Awards from 2018 to 2021. Her works are currently on display at Kunsthaus Graz (“Baby better have my menstruation. I ain’t no museum”) and Belvedere21 (“Über das Neue”).