Jury & Awards
International Competition Jury awarding the Best Documentary in the International Competition
Daria Badior is a culture editor, critic, and journalist. Since 2017, she has co-curated the Kyiv Critics' Week film festival, which takes place annually at the end of October. In 2018, she co-founded the Union of Film Critics of Ukraine, which awards the best Ukrainian filmmakers with the Kinokolo prize. From 2011 until 2021, she edited one of Ukraine's most prominent online outlets, LB.ua. Since 2016, she has been a culture editor writing about film, and cultural and commemoration policies. Daria was a member of FIPRESCI and the Ukrainian Oscar committee. She works as a freelancer, contributing to Ukrainian and international outlets: LB.ua, Korydor, Osteuropa, The Independent, Der Tagesspiegel, and OKO press.
Bregtje van der Haak is documentary filmmaker, journalist, and since 2023 she is Director of Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. She studied dance in Paris, political science and law at the University of Amsterdam and the New School for Social Research in New York and journalism at Columbia University. Van der Haak directed multiple documentaries on social change, including the VPRO Backlight series as well as Philip Johnson: Two of a Kind (1998), Lagos Wide & Close (2005), Saudi Solutions (2006), Satellite Queens (2007), Grand Paris: The President and the Architects (2009), California Dreaming (2010), Aftermath of a Crisis (2011) and DNA Dreams (2013).
Gábor Hörcher studied Psychology, Law, Film, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Art&Design. He has lived in the US, France and Cambodia, where he taught courses on Human Rights at a local university. He started filmmaking and working with director-producer, Marcell Iványi in 2008. Since then they run a company, KraatsFilm together producing films and theatre performances. Gábor’s first feature film project, Drifter was selected for the European Film Award and won ten prizes including the Best First Appearance Award at IDFA, it went on to attend more than 40 international festivals and was screened in theaters. His latest fiction short, Ricsi was in competition at over 20 festivals and won the Best Short Fiction Prize at the Mediawave in Hungary. He is now finishing post-production on his second feature film, Emma and Eddie (working title). The film was co-produced with HBO and Oscar-winning French producer Christine Le Goff.
Student Jury awarding the Best Human Rights Film in the International Competition
Ádám Dombovári is a student of communication and media studies at the Budapest Metropolitan University. He has been interested in film criticism since his high school years. His favorite documentaries include The Social Dilemma, 100 Years of Warner Bros, and Navalny.
Kardelen Gökçedağ was born in Izmir, Turkey. She graduated from the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Ege in 2014. Later, she received a Master’s Degree from the Department of Film Studies at Eötvös Loránd University. She worked for various media and communications institutions in Hungary and Turkey. She is currently studying communications and media at Budapest Metropolitan University. Apart from research, she is interested in making short films.
Kamilla Klára Joób fell in love with documentaries at ELTE's Department of Communication and Media Studies where she is currently a student. For three years, as a UNICEF Young Ambassador for Hungary, she has worked to empower children and young people to learn about their rights, climate change, and how they can be active agents of positive change.
Magda Kopańska holds a degree in art history and culture management from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and studied anthropology at the University of Warsaw. Currently based in Vienna, Austria, she contributes to magazines and various media platforms (SZUM 2022, ENRS 2022). She is currently focused on expanding her knowledge of ethnographical practices involving visuality and participatory methods. Magda is an MA student in Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Central European University.
Lilian Tánczos is a 23-year-old emerging filmmaker from Budapest, and a student at the Lumiere Film School. She enjoys observational, situational documentaries that show people's everyday lives and challenges. She is particularly interested in documentaries that use animation to make their stories visually richer and more expressive. One of her favorite films is Waltz with Bashir, an animated documentary about the 1982 war in Lebanon.
International Jury awarding the Best Documentary in the Hungarian Competition
Gyula Gazdag is a screenwriter and director of film, theater, and television, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and TV. He has served as Artistic Director of the Sundance Filmmakers Lab since 1997. He has worked with young screenwriters at the Script Station of the Berlinale Talents since 2006, and mentors young talent at Sarajevo Talents since 2015. He has conducted directing and screenwriting workshops in several countries. Gazdag has directed several films, his documentaries include: A Poet on the Lower East Side – A Docu-Diary on Allen Ginsberg, Hungarian Chronicles, Package Tour, The Banquet, The Resolution [Co-directed with Judit Ember], The Selection and The Long-Distance Runner. Most of Gazdag’s films were banned in Communist Hungary and were denied foreign exhibition.
Natalia Libet is a film producer and a co-owner of the female-led production company, "2Brave Productions," based in Kyiv, Ukraine. She has produced and co-produced several successful feature debuts, including Kateryna Gornostai's Stop-Zemlia (2021 Crystal Bear Berlinale Generation 14+), Mantas Kvedaravičius's Parthenon (2019 Venice FF's International Critics' Week), Marta Smerechynska's Diary of a Bride of Christ (2022 Sarajevo FF), and Anna Buryachkova's Forever-Forever (2023 Venice FF's Orizzonti Extra Competition). She is a member of the European and Ukrainian Film Academies, and an alumna of EURODOC 2021. Currently, Natalia also serves as the program manager of Tatino Films' First Cut+, a semiannual workshop focused on marketing and positioning of feature films.
Anna Petrus is a filmmaker, film critic, cultural researcher, professor, and currently, Artistic Director of DocsBarcelona International Film Festival. She holds a degree in audiovisual communication from Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). She has directed multiple films, including video art, fiction, and documentary, which have toured festivals such as the Cannes Film Festival, Festival des Films du Monde (Montréal), Sitges - Festival Internacional de Cinema de Catalunya, and FicXixón, among many others. She has worked as a film critic for several relevant film magazines and newspapers in Spain (such as Dirigido por, Cahiers du Cinéma -Spain, and La Vanguardia). She is currently a contributor to the newspaper Ara, where she writes about cinema, audiovisuals, and feminism. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Dones Visuals (Visual Women), the association of women filmmakers in Catalonia.
International Jury awarding the Best Film in the Doc Future Student and Debut Film Competition
Dániel Deák was born in Budapest, where he currently lives. In 2007, he founded Daazo.com, an online short film-sharing website supported by the MEDIA program, which made numerous high-quality short films accessible. In 2013, he launched the Friss Hús festival, which has since become Hungary's largest short film forum. Between 2015 and 2020, he served as the professional leader of the Filmalap Incubator Program. Since 2019, he has been organizing the Budapest Debut Film Forum, a workshop for first-time filmmakers in Central Europe. He has been involved in creating various publications and magazines, including World of Shorts, Hungarian Film Magazine, and as the publisher and author of the Friss Hús Future Cinema magazine.
Floris Paalman, Ph.D, is a senior lecturer in film studies at the Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, and coordinator of the MA program "Preservation & Presentation of the Moving Image." He teaches courses on audiovisual archiving, curating, cinema histories, and research methods. He is currently involved with research on the ontology of film archives in regard to social history. He has been trained in cultural anthropology, urbanism, filmmaking, and media studies
Johanna von Websky studied Spanish and English/American Studies at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and at Universidad de Sevilla. From 2008 to 2011 she was project coordinator in the field of visual arts, film and new media at House of World Cultures in Berlin, with a focus on film. She coordinated film festivals, such as Première Brazil and Wassermusik, and film series accompanying different exhibitions. After moving to Munich in 2011, she worked at Prix Jeunesse International, the oldest children's and youth television festival worldwide. In 2015, Johanna joined the DOK.fest München team. From 2015 to 2018, she was head of film administration and joined the management board as an assistant in 2019. She took on tasks in the areas of partner communication and project coordination. Johanna has been a permanent member of the program committee since the beginning, and is responsible for the festival venues.
International Jury awarding the New Frontier Award in the Viewfinder Competition
Chiara Boschiero is head of educational projects and senior programmer for the Biografilm Festival in Bologna, Italy. She graduated in Film Production at the National Film School of Rome, and received her Master's Degree in Human Rights and Democratization in Latin America (LAT.MA) in Buenos Aires. She has 18 years of experience in the development of international co-production film projects, and is a trainer in cinema and human rights in Italy and Argentina. Before Biografilm Festival, she was the production manager of the International Human Rights Film Festival of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Zhao Liang is an independent documentary filmmaker, as well as a multimedia artist in photography and video art. His 2021 film I’m So Sorry focuses on the historical events and the current situation of humanity’s nuclear disaster in the context of global climate crisis. In 2015, Behemoth made history by being selected for the main competition section of the Venice Film Festival. The 2009 documentary film Petition was featured in the New York Times, was selected for the 62nd Cannes Film Festival and the 61st Locarno Film Festival, as well as won the Humanitarian Award (Documentary) at the 34th Hong Kong International Film Festival and the Best Film Award at the 7th Doclisboa Film Festival.
Helena consults for documentary film programmes in Eastern Europe and serves as programme advisor for MIDPOINT Institute. She is former longtime programme director of the One World IFF Prague, and former co-head of studies of CaucaDoc, a training initiative which supported creative documentaries in the South Caucasus. Helena has collaborated with various film festivals and served as jury member in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, München, Prizren, Tbilisi.
International Jury awarding the Best Environmental Documentary in the Anthropocene Competition
Marion Czarny is a programmer, curator and project manager for educational activities and mentoring programs. She holds a postgraduate degree in arts management from la Sorbonne Nouvelle University, and completed some of her studies in the USA and Ireland. She worked as an editorial assistant for various cinema magazines, and as a programmer for several festivals before joining FIPA in 2008. Head of CAMPUS at FIPADOC, she supervises all editorial content for young audiences, students, and emerging directors. She oversees the various FIPA educational and training programs, such as the Young Europeans Jury or First Films Pitches, and curates the New Talent selection of the festival. She is currently involved in three European film festival networks, developing and designing innovative training programs based on documentary films. With her work, Marion is constantly involved in empowering youth through the prism of documentaries.
Johanna Råman is an experienced arts and culture, communications and creative production management professional with over 10 years of international experience both in Finland and in France. Johanna Råman is currently working as the Executive Director of DocPoint – Helsinki Documentary Film Festival, where she is in charge of the executive management, planning and development of the activities, fundraising, finance and HR. Founded in 2001, DocPoint is one of the largest documentary festivals in the Nordic countries. In Finland, it is the only festival solely dedicated to documentary films. Once a year it brings more than a hundred of the best and most talked-about creative documentary films from all over the world and Finland to the screens of Helsinki. Prior to DocPoint – Helsinki Documentary Film Festival, Råman has broad leadership experiences in a variety of artistic production, communication and consulting roles in the cultural scene and also in the animation and game industry.
Mária Takács is a documentary filmmaker, video journalist and LGBTQ activist. Hidden Years, her first documentary about lesbian stories of the years before the regime change in Hungary, won the Audience Award of the 11th Verzió and the ERSTE Social Award. Her documentaries Hot Men, Cold Dictatorships (2015), More Than a Relationship (2016), and Game On – Queer Disruptions in Sports (2020) have been screened at numerous film festivals in Hungary and abroad. Her film about Márta Bolba evangelical pastor, The Pastor of Mandák House (2019), was fined by the current government for addressing contemporary political issues, but has been screened in cinemas and religious and civil communities. Currently, she is working on a participatory human rights soap opera, The Second Golden Age..., and as a video journalist, she continues to document the events of Józsefváros (the district 8th in Budapest). She received the Hégető Honorka Award in 2020 for her journalistic work and the Emma Goldman Snowball Award in 2023 for her work as a lesbian feminist documentary filmmaker.