Guests

Ádám Balázs

Music composer
Ádám Balázs is a Los Angeles and Budapest based film composer. To date, Adam has scored over thirty-five films. In addition to putting a musical signature to all his scores, Adam’s versatility is demonstrated in a wide array of independent and studio projects that include the score for Ildikó Enyedi's 2017 Golden Bear Award winner feature On Body and Soul, and the 2017 Oscar-winner short film, Kristóf Deák's Sing.

Máté Bartha

Director - Downstream
Q&A • Nov 13, 18:00 • Művész
Máté Bartha is a photographer and documentary filmmaker based in Budapest. He obtained two MAs, at the Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design, and at the University of Theatre and Film Arts. His most recent photography project, Kontakt, was awarded the Robert Capa Grand Prize Hungary in 2018.

Saeed Al Batal

Director - Still Recording
Q&A • Nov 17, 16:45 • Toldi
Born in Syria, Saeed Al Batal is a citizen journalist, photographer and filmmaker. He has led numerous trainings in photography and news reporting, and has worked as a reporter on current affairs in Syria for agencies, radio stations and institutions worldwide. He is one of the founders of the online gallery, Sam Lenses, and the Humans of Syria project.

Philippe Bellaiche

Director - Advocate
Born in France, Philippe Bellaiche is an award-winning cinematographer. A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure Louis-Lumière and the Sorbonne, Bellaiche, a cinematography lecturer and master-class instructor, received the Israel Cinema Arts Award in 2013.

Tamás Bodoky

 
Dr. Tamás Richárd Bodoky is an investigative journalist and editor, and nonprofit executive based in Budapest, Hungary. Bodoky has been a journalist since 1996: before joining Index.hu, where he spent 9 years in different journalistic and editorial positions, he was science and technology journalist at the Magyar Narancs weekly paper. Bodoky has won the Gőbölyös Soma Prize for investigative journalism in 2008 for his articles on Hungary's 2006 unrest and police brutality. Bodoky has won the Iustitia Regnorum Fundamentum and the Hungarian Pulitzer Memorial Prize for his investigative articles and freedom of information lawsuits on high level political corruption cases. Bodoky is Marshall Memorial Fellowship alumni, and member of international investigative journalism networks. In 2011 Bodoky co-founded hungarian watchdog NGO and investigative journalism center atlatszo.hu, where he works as investigative journalist, editor, and director.

Árpád Bogdán

Director - Ghetto Balboa
Q&A • Nov 14, 16:30 • Toldi
Árpád Bogdán began his career in acting and stage directing while in college, when he also organized creative workshops for disadvantaged children. His directorial debut, Happy New Life, premiered in the Panorama section at Berlinale 2007, and was awarded the Manfred Salzgeber Award - Special Mention. His latest feature-length fiction, Genesis, also premiered at Berlinale, in 2018, and won a number of awards.

Éva Bognár

 
Éva Bognár is Senior Program Officer and Researcher at the Center for Media, Data and Society at Central European University. Éva has been with the Center since 2006. Since then, she has been managing projects (including projects on Violent Online Political Extremism, Media Pluralism, Press and Media Freedom, Hungarian Media Laws in Europe, Hungarian Media Ownership, and the Business of Misinformation) and events (public lectures, workshops, conferences and the annual summer school) for the Center. Éva is the Hungarian contributor to the Digital News Report, a major comparative project from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. Recently she has been studying Hungarian minorities and their use of online space; and media representation of migration. Her background is in sociology.

Krisztina Bombera

 
Krisztina Bombera J.D. is an anchor, broadcast producer, U.S. correspondent and owner of CauseArt Platform advocacy agency. A lawyer by training, Krisztina has been advocating for human rights and democratic values for twenty years and has volunteered for several NGO's working in these fields. Krisztina has co-founded CauseArt Platform in order to advocate and fundraise for causes that support disadvantaged groups, to enhance social cohesion and promote empowerment. Krisztina designs campaigns that involve large companies and local and global stars leveraging their power to reach young audiences, to amplify impact and call for activism. Krisztina co-anchors the sole Hungarian non-government affiliated television morning show that focuses on politics, social issues and culture.

Zselyke Csáky

 
Zselyke Csaky is the Research Director for Europe and Eurasia and works on Nations in Transit, Freedom House’s annual survey of democracy from Central Europe to Central Asia. Her research interests focus primarily on the politics of Central Europe and media freedoms more generally. She has written extensively on democratic governance in Central Europe and the Balkans and co-hosts In Between Europe, a podcast focusing on the region. Her comments and writings have appeared in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, the New York Times, BBC World News, and Al Jazeera, among others. Prior to joining Freedom House, she served as researcher in different capacities at Amnesty International, the International Service for Human Rights, and the European Parliament. She holds master’s degrees in International Relations and in Human Rights.

Leo de Boer

Director, International Jury
Leo de Boer is a Dutch film director with extensive international experience. He studied history at the University of Amsterdam, followed by a degree at the Dutch Film Academy. Most of his films premiered at either the IDFA or the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Next to his work as a director, Leo works as a film editor and lectures at the Utrecht School of the Arts. He has also coached students in documentary screenplay writing at IDFA, and taught documentary filmmaking at summer schools at the VGIK (Moscow), CEU (Budapest) and Les Ateliers Action in Kinshasa, Congo-DR. His work includes documentaries like The Road to Bresson, Angels of Death, and For Ann Lovett (Dutch Oscar entry for best short film). His most recent film, Booze!, will premiere in Amsterdam, in December.

Margje de Koning

Artistic director (Movies That Matter)
Margje de Koning directed documentaries for various broadcasting companies for twelve years. In 2004 she became a commissioning editor, and from 2012 she worked as Head of TV, Radio and New Media programming at IKON. In 2016 she began work as head of documentaries for EOdocs. And in September 2019, she left the public broadcaster to become the new artistic director of the film festival, Movies that Matter.

András Dér

Q&A • Nov 14, 19:00 • Toldi
András Dér is a freelance filmmaker and theatre director. He has made several documentaries, short and feature-length fiction films, and films for television. He is an assistant professor at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest, where he also teaches film. He was awarded the Béla Balázs and Silver Pen prize.

Christine Dollhofer

Festival director (Crossing Europe), International Jury
Christine Dollhofer has been involved with film and film festivals since 1991. She studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. Between 1992 and 1997, she was the artistic and managing director of the art house cinema, Filmcasino, in Vienna. Between 1997 and 2003, she was the artistic and managing director of the Diagonale Festival of Austrian Films in Graz. Since 2004, she has worked in managing and programming for Crossing Europe Film Festival in Linz, Austria, which devotes its program to idiosyncratic, contemporary and socio-political auteur cinema from around Europe. She has been a board or jury member of several film institutions and film funds in Austria, and a member of the European Film Academy. She is an acquisition consultant for the distribution company, Filmladen, in Vienna, and since 2011 has worked as the program delegate for Austria/Germany/Switzerland for the International Film Festival in San Sebastián, Spain.

Evelyne Faye-Horak

Assistant director - Earth
Evelyne Faye-Horak has worked in Germany, France, Austria and throughout Africa as a director’s assistant, and location and production manager on documentary films. She was responsible for location research and filming coordination for Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s last documentary, Earth. She is currently working on her directorial debut documentary.

Slobodan Georgiev

 
Slobodan Georgiev is a journalist and editor for BIRN Serbia, a media practitioner for 20 years, content creator and content forwarder; investigative journalism, sports and political writer. Lives and works in Belgrade.

Alessandro Gropplero

Forum director (When East Meets West)
Alessandro Gropplero graduated in Communication Studies at the Trieste University. He worked for the Italian production company Pidgin, lthe London based company Number 9 Films, and in 2005 he returned to Italy and started working for the Udine Far East Film Festival. Since May 2007 he is the head of international relations of the FVG Audiovisual Fund. He has managed a variety of initiatives, such as “When East Meets West Co-production Forum”, “Ties That Bind Asia Europe Co-production Workshop” and "Re-Act Co-development Fund”. He is an EAVE graduate, board member of EuroDoc, and member of the European Film Academy.

Glória Halász

Director - Alla Zingara
Q&A • Nov 13, 18:30 • Toldi
Glória Halász studied Film and Media Studies at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. Several of her documentaries have been distributed internationally and won important prizes, including the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary at the UNAFF (United Nations Association Film Festival). She has also produced numerous video clips and commercials.

Zuzana Kovačič Hanzelová

 
Zuzana Kovačič Hanzelová Works for Denník SME since November 2018, as a video reporter. She worked for 7 years for Slovak public TV. Last year she left the company with 11 other reporters, as a protest against management, that was trying to favour Russian propaganda and one governing party in the news. She covers mainly politics, but also topics about minorities and social issues.

Péter Hegedűs

Director - Lili
Q&A • Nov 13, 20:30 • Toldi
Péter Hegedűs is an award-winning filmmaker and academic whose films have received critical acclaim and have been broadcast around the world. After establishing his production company, Soul Vision Films, he made Inheritance: A Fisherman’s Story, based on an ecological disaster in Hungary. The film was shortlisted for the 2003 Academy Awards. He is currently program director for the Master of Screen Production program at Griffith Film School, in Brisbane, Australia.

Renátó Horváth

Synch agent (Eastaste Music)
Founder of the agency, Eastaste Music, Horváth Renátó has worked with musical royalties and counseling since 2012. Besides Hungarian films and series, he has contracted music for productions on Netflix, FX, and HBO, as well as numerous commercials from England to China by lesser-known contemporary bands, superstars or even evergreen, Polish tango singers.

Jonathan Hunter

Director - Free University
Q&A • Nov 14, 18:00 • Művész
Born in the UK, Jonathan Hunter moved to Budapest in 2016, and studied documentary filmmaking and philosophy at Central European University. Hunter has made educational content, several commercial videos and short documentaries. He now works as a freelance filmmaker and videographer in Florence, Italy.

Johanna Huth

Director, distributor (Yangon Film School Myanmar/Berlin)
Johanna Huth,a Berlin based documentary filmmaker, grew up in former East Berlin and studied Social Anthropology, History and Political Science in Berlin and Bordeaux. She has been distributing films made by students of the Yangon Film School in Myanmar for 10 years. Her documentary films have screened at film festivals world wide and won several awards.

Małgorzata Imielska

Q&A • Nov 14, 18:30 • Művész
Malgorzata Imielska graduated with a degree in Film and TV Directing from the Department of Radio and TV at the University of Silesia, Poland. Imielska works as a director and screenwriter of documentary films, feature films, and theater and radio plays. Her documentary films have been shown at numerous film festivals in Poland and abroad.

Svetlana Ishevskaia

Film historian, assistant researcher in the Anniversary of the Revolution restoration project - Anniversary of the Revolution
Nov 16, 14:00 • Blinken OSA
Svetlana Ishevskaia is a Russian film historian and graduate of VGIK. In 2008, together with Dar’ia Kruzhkova, she edited and provided commentary for a collection of texts by Dziga Vertov (Dziga Vertov: Iz naslediia. Vol. 2: Stat’i i vystupleniia). In 2017–2018, she worked as assistant researcher for the Anniversary of Revolution restoration project.

Nikolai Izvolov

Archivist, head of the Anniversary of the Revolution restoration project - Anniversary of the Revolution
Nov 16, 14:00 • Blinken OSA
Nikolai Izvolov was a Head of the Department of Russian Film History at the Scientific Research Institute for Cinema for more than 20 years. His publications include the book, Fenomen kino. Istoriia i teoriia (The Cinema Phenomenon. History and Theory, 2001), and numerous articles on early Russian and Soviet cinema published both in Russia and abroad. He is particularly renowned for his work in the reconstruction of “lost” films by Aleksandr Medvedkin, Dziga Vertov, Lev Kuleshov and others. Izvolov is the editor of Ruscico’s “Academia” series of classic Russian films on DVD, with scholarly commentaries in Hyperkino format.

Tuki Jencquel

Director - Está Todo Bien
Q&A • Nov 14, 20:45 • Művész
Born in Caracas, Tuki Jencquel holds a BA in Film and TV from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and an MBA from IESA, Venezuela. He was the first assistant director on Secrets of the Tribe, by Jose Padilha, and has worked as an assistant director in film and advertising. He is currently working on his next documentary, an intimate portrait of his mother, who campaigns to legalize euthanasia in France.

László Józsa

Producer (SpeakEasy, Hungary)
László worked at Café Film as an agency producer on TV productions and commercials, short films and documentaries. His first feature-length documentary as a producer ULTRA was co-produced by HBO Europe and was in the selection for the best documentaries for the EFA in 2017. His second documentary, Ghetto Balboa won the Hungarian Film Award for best documentary in 2019.

Narius Kairys

Film critic, program curator (Inconvenient Films)
Introduces Lithuanian poetic documentaries • Nov 14, 16:15 • Kino
Introduces Lithuanian poetic documentaries • Nov 15, 17:00 • Kino
Introduces Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania • Nov 16, 16:15 • Kino
Narius Kairys is a film critic, lecturer in formal and non-formal education, translator, and programmer for the human rights film festival “Inconvenient Films”. He is also a PhD candidate at Vilnius Academy of Arts. In his academic work, Kairys explores the interactions between film and the social sciences. His interests lie in visual anthropology, film history and philosophy. Kairys occasionally writes fiction (his novel, Farther than the Ocean, was published in 2019) and exorcises ghosts.

Csaba Kalotás

Music composer, sound designer
Csaba Kalotás is a film music composer, sound designer and university lecturer. He was born in Szekszárd in 1982. He has been composing music for feature films, animation films, documentaries and commercials since 1982. He has received several international awards.

Sang-woo Kang

Director - Kim-Gun
Q&A • Nov 15, 21:15 • Toldi
Sang-woo Kang is a filmmaker whose work spans both fiction and non-fiction, and explores the political, social, and emotional worlds of minorities in Korean society.

Gábor Kardos

 
A full carrier digital media manager, Gabor started at Index.hu in 2000, and soon became publishing director and later COO, running publications primarily based on advertising revenues. Moving towards strategy, investment and financing he also picked up business development at CEMP, launching and acquiring other digital media services (such as Blog.hu or ETARGET). After working for two years on legacy outlets' online presence (Nepszabadsag, Nemzeti Sport) as Chief Digital Officer at Ringier Hungary, he founded his own publishing house Magyar Jeti with his partners in 2013, where they publish 444.hu, one of the leading independent public affairs news outlets in Hungary.

Anna Kaslová

Ex Oriente Film & East Doc Forum Manager, Institute of Documentary Film
Anna Kaslová graduated with a degree in Theory of Interactive Media from the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University in Brno. Since 2006, she has worked at the Institute of Documentary Film on the East Silver Market, East Doc Market and Czech Docs projects. As the manager of the year-round Ex Oriente Film program, and the East European Forum for pitching, she mainly works with projects in development or at the production stage.

Elita Klavina

Q&A • Nov 15, 17:00 • Művész
Elita Klavina is a former journalist, and an actress at the New Riga Theatre. She graduated as a film director from the National Film School of the Latvian Academy of Culture in 2019. Her short film, Pinokio (2017), was nominated for the Best Student Film Award at the Latvian National Film Awards.

Anna Korzh

Q&A • Nov 13, 18:00 • Művész
Anna Korzh is a graduate of the Kyiv National University of Theatre, Cinema and Television. She represented the Ukrainian film school at Interaction/Interdoc 2016 in Serbia, and is one of the curators of the documentary program at Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema. Since 2015 she has organized a film school for teenagers from frontline zones.

Dávid Kresalek

Q&A • Nov 14, 16:30 • Kino
Dávid Kresalek has been working in films since 1997, first as a screenwriter than since 2000, as a director. He has worked on many documentary films and TV-series as a director and editor. He has been the co-leader of the film and media vocational training group at the Green Rooster Secondary School.

Anna Kryvenko

Q&A • Nov 16, 14:15 • Művész
Anna Kryvenko is an artist working with video and fine art photography. She studied theatre directing at KNUTKT (Ukraine), and alternative theatre directing at DAMU (CZ). She is currently a student at the Centre for Audiovisual Studies at FAMU. Her films and performances have been screened at the Fluidum Festival, Jihlava Documentary Film Festival, Intermedia BB, and Visions du Reél.

Askold Kurov

Director - Novaya
Q&A • Nov 14, 20:15 • Művész
Q&A • Nov 16, 16:30 • Művész
Born in Uzbekistan, Askold Kurov has lived in Russia since 1991. He earned a degree in documentary filmmaking at Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov’s School of Documentary Film and Theater in Moscow. His films Winter, Go Away!, Leninland and Children 404 won critical acclaim and were screened at numerous festivals. His work focuses on human rights and social conflict in contemporary Russia.

Daniel Lambo

Director - Breathless
Q&A • Nov 15, 19:30 • Művész
Q&A • Nov 17, 16:00 • Kino
Daniel Lambo is a filmmaker from Belgium. He started his career as a writer for theater, television and cinema. As a director, Lambo shifted his attention towards social themes. His renewed approach to filmmaking—both intuitive and socially engaged—inspired him to start his own production company, Lambo Films.

Andrius Lekavičius

Andrius Lekavičius is a multimedia storyteller directing commercial and non-commercial audiovisual productions. His latest animated documentary, Delta Zoo, was screened in cinemas across Lithuania and at festivals around the world. Growing up in the 1990s, his creative focus is on this period of essential change.

Georgy Molodtsov

Georgy Molodtsov is an award-winning director and producer who specializes in production of 360/VR content, as well as organizing cinematic VR events as part of film festivals that showcase 360 content. He is the co-founder of the VRability social project and Russian VR Seasons initiative. He is also the curator of the goEast film festival’s Open Frame Award and VR Scientific Festival in Sweden.

Bojana Moric

Sweet Spot Docs, co-founder
Bojana Moric is the co-founder of the Swiss-based, Sweet Spot Docs – Sales, Distribution and Marketing agency. Her agency is committed to powerful documentary storytelling. They seek films with the capacity to push the limits of perception, question important topics and move the audience deeply.

Klára Muhi

Q&A • Nov 14, 19:00 • Toldi
Klára Muhi is a filmmaker, scriptwriter and film aesthete. She has wrote and directed several documentaries and fiction films.

Anikó Mária Nagy

Director - Above the Line
Q&A • Nov 17, 15:30 • Toldi
Anikó Mária Nagy graduated as a broadcast director from the University of Theatre and Film in Budapest, in 2004. She worked as an art director for Film.dok, a Hungarian-Romanian documentary film festival between 2005 and 2007, and has directed for Duna Television.

Alexander Nanau

Director - Colectív
Q&A • Nov 15, 20:45 • Toldi
Alexander Nanau is a German-Romanian filmmaker, born in Romania, who studied directing at the Academy of Film and Television in Berlin. His documentary film, The World According to Ion B, won an Emmy Award in 2010. His feature documentary film, Toto and His Sisters, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2015. Nanau worked as Director of Photography for the French-German documentary, Nothingwood (Sonia Kronlund), that was shot in Afghanistan, and which premiered in Cannes in 2017.

Dina Naser

Director - Tiny Souls
A Jordanian director and producer with Palestinian roots, Dina Naser graduated with a BA in Art and Graphic Design. In 2013, she received the DocNomads scholarship to pursue a Master's Degree in Documentary Filmmaking. Naser’s devotion for documenting is inspired by seemingly ordinary people and stories that spring from her homeland in Palestine.

Mirela Neag

journalist (Libertatea, RO)
Mirela Neag has 27 years experience in journalism, of which the last 10 are in investigative journalism. She has been working in team with Catalin Tolontan and Razvan Lutac at Gazeta Sporturilor. After the newspaper was bought by Ringier, in September 2018, they have started to publish their investigative reports in the newspaper Libertatea. The team's disclosures led to the prosecution of over one hundred persons with public functions: 31 have already received definitive prison sentences, including 4 ministers. Other 30 await conviction after having confessed guilty. The main theme of their investigative work is corruption. Following the tragedy at Colectíve music club (where 64 people died in November 2015), the team focused specifically on corruption in the medical system.

Fleur Nieddu

Producer
Fleur Nieddu is a freelance producer, impact producer and marketing strategist based in London, UK. She’s worked on a variety of impact campaigns for films including the BAFTA/Academy Award® nominated documentary Virunga (2014), Even When I Fall (2018) and ISLAND (2019).

Enrico Parenti

Director - Soyalism
Q&A • Nov 16, 16:30 • Művész
Enrico Parenti is an Italian-American filmmaker who has lived in the UK, Brazil and the US. He studied filmmaking in Barcelona. Since 2004, he has made documentaries, short films, music videos, and worked regularly with Italian and foreign television broadcasters. His feature-length documentary, Standing Army, was aired by fifteen television broadcasters, including Al Jazeera, Rt-TV, Fox, Zdf and the History Channel. His documentary, Container 158, was funded by the Open Society Foundation and won three awards for best documentary.

Hanne Phlypo

Q&A • Nov 14, 20:45 • Kino
Hanne Phlypo is a producer from Belgium, with years of experience as a location hunter, production manager and assistant director. She is the co-founder of the production company Clin d'oeil films with Antoine Vermeesch. The company focuses on creative documentaries and author-driven films with a preference for films with a social or political statement by innovative filmmakers.

Lars Rummel

XR programmer, Dok Leipzig
Lars Rummel is a freelance curator and programmer for immersive and interactive content. He has an MA in Media Culture from the University of Leipzig, and a BA in Media Science and Psychology. He currently works for DOK Leipzig as a programmer for the DOK Neuland exhibition, and the XR conference, DOK Exchange. Previously a filmmaker, Rummel now sees himself as a junior expert in playful, new media storytelling.

Nicole Schafer

Director - Buddha in Africa
Q&A • Nov 16, 14:00 • Művész
South African director Nicole Schafer has lived in Malawi, where she produced award-winning stories for Reuters’ pan-African magazine show, Africa Journal. Schafer is the director of the production company, Thinking Strings Media. She has an MFA degree in Film and Television Production from the University of Cape Town.

Vivian Schroder

Producer, impact campaign strategist (Good Pitch)
Vivian Schroder has a professional background in documentary filmmaking. She has worked on building partnerships and networking for Good Pitch, in Germany, since 2018. Good Pitch focuses on Eastern European countries, especially Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, in order to inroduce impact campaigns in the region and to build sustainable partnerships.

Nimrod Shanit

Director - Holy City VR
Nimrod Shanit is an award winning director and producer of feature-length fiction and non-fiction films. A veteran executive producer of international co-productions and a pioneer of the first completely integrated mixed reality production company, blimey, in Jerusalem.

Réka Szabó

Q&A • Nov 15, 19:30 • Művész
Réka Szabó studied mathematics and informatics, while pursuing contemporary dance. She is the artistic director of The Symptoms, a contemporary dance-theatre company in Hungary. After making two experimental shorts, The Euphoria of Being is her first feature-length documentary.

Mária Takács

Q&A • Nov 15, 17:30 • Művész
Mária Takács is a freelance film-maker. Since graduating from the University of Theatre and Film Arts, she has worked as a director for Hungarian Television, and as a video journalist for Népszabadság online and origo.hu. She has also made a number of videos for civil society organizations.

Max Tuula

Born in Russia, Max Tuula is an Estonian producer. Max was a participant of the 2014 Berlinale Talents and selected as one of the Emerging Producers 2016 at the 2015 Jihlava IDFF. In 2016 the film My Friend Boris Nemtsov was named Best Documentary at the Krakow Film Festival and screened at Verzio. At the 2017 Berlinale the documentary The Trial: The State of Russia vs Oleg Sentsov produced by Max was selected for a Special Screening and received the Audience award at Verzio. The most recent film produced by Max, How Big Is the Galaxy? by Ksenia Elyan premiered at IDFA in 2018, received multiple awards at different festivals and also screens at Verzio.

Bernadett Tuza-Ritter

Director
Bernadett Tuza-Ritter is a Hungarian director and editor. Her special interest is creative documentaries and fiction films. She is a member of HSE, the Hungarian Film Academy and the European Film Academy. Her first feature-length documentary (A Woman Captured, 2017), was invited to the competition program of the 2018 Sundance Festival. In 2018 the film was nominated for the European Film Academy Award and broadcasted in over 70 television channels worldwide.

Ivanka Uhrikova, Lubo Kurthy

Activists - The Siege
Q&A • Nov 13, 20:00 • Kino - Big Hall
Luboš and Ivana are inhabitans of an ancient medieval town Kremnica in Slovakia. In the 14th-15th century, the town was the main gold producer in the Hungarian Kingdom. From 2005 they both, along with a few others, have struggled against gold mining companies and against the Slovak bureaucracy. Luboš is the leader of the NGO „Kremnica Beyond Gold“ whose members include most of the city's residents. Reasons for their resistance are not only on environmental base. They also try to protect private properties of inhabitants and their civil liberties. The Siege captures the situation in which citizens deal with the pressure of the PR agencies of the mining company and the offices. The main reason why the territory is not yet mined is the persistent legal struggle, numerous litigation and obstruction. 

Ágota Varga

Q&A • Nov 13, 16:15 • Toldi
Ágota Varga has received the Balázs Béla Prize, the UNESCO Prize, the Tolerance Prize, the Prize of Film Critics, the Ember Judit Prize, and several awards at Hungarian and international film festivals and competitions. She has made over 100 documentaries, including several films focusing on unearthing the past, which have contributed to a movement that started in the 1980s.

Dmitri Vologdin

Director - Russian Dreamer
Q&A • Nov 15, 17:00
Dmitri Vologdin was born in Russia in 1988. He graduated from the St. Petersburg State University of Film and Television with a degree in Film and TV Directing, and studied at the Cinema School of Krzysztof Zanussi in Warsaw.

Tomislav Žaja

Director - Neighbors
Q&A • Nov 15, 17:15 • Toldi
Tomislav Žaja is a producer, writer and director with 25 years of experience in film and television productions. Wrote, directed and produced about fifty documentaries, few shorts and experimental films, two TV adaptations of theatre plays and three fiction films. He is the managing director and founder of the production company, Gral Film. He is a member of the European Documentary Network.

Anna Závorszky

Executive Producer (HBO Hungary)
Anna Zavorszky, Executive Producer of HBO Hungary, has worked in the Hungarian film industry for almost 20 years. Her passion is to create outstanding and engaging creative works. She joined the HBO Europe Original Production department in 2013. Since then, she has produced five seasons of television series and many Internationally-acclaimed documentaries.

Dorottya Zurbó

Director, International Jury
Dorottya Zurbó graduated from the DocNomads Joint Master for which she was awarded full Erasmus Mundus scholarship in Lisbon, Budapest and Brussels. Her latest short documentary, Distance (2017) was premiered at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival. Her first feature-length documentary, The Next Guardian (2017, co-director) premiered at IDFA in the First Appearance Competition. Easy Lessons (2018) is her directorial debut. The film received The Hungarian Critics Award for Best Documentary in 2019, and the Movies that Matter Award at ZagrebDox for the best film promoting human rights. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, where she also teaches for the Documentary Film Directing Master and Docnomads Joint Master programs.