Germany

Becoming Roosi

Margit Lillak, the director, graduated from Estonian Academy of Arts majoring in scenography (1999) and worked in animation studio Multifilm after that. In 2002, she received her MA degree in Royal Holloway College majoring in feature screenwriting. After that, her co-operation with production company Allfilm started. Margit has made several short documentaries, such as Beebilõust (2009), Ars Longa (2008) and Pastacas (2009). The latter was awarded Grand Prix in EstDocs film festival in Toronto (2010). In 2012, Margit made her first full length documentary 40+2 Weeks, focusing on her own pregnancy and preparations for home birth, followed by The Circle (2019), her second full length documentary.

Monk in Pieces

Billy Shebar is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker known for High Noon on the Waterfront (2022), with John Turturro and Edward Norton, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and was broadcast on TCM and HBO; and Dark Matter (2007), starring Meryl Streep, which won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at Sundance. He collaborated with animator Bill Plympton on The New York Times viral web series Trump Bites (2018-2020) and with animator Yoni Goodman on the three-part crime series Doctor’s Orders (2021).

The Longer You Bleed

Ewan Waddell is a Berlin-based director whose debut feature, The Longer You Bleed, premiered at Hot Docs 2025. His style blends mixed media and experimental approaches to examine the modernity crisis. Waddell now develops his second film, exploring the therapeutic use of psychedelics in war-torn Ukraine.

Under the Flags, the Sun

Juanjo Pereira is a filmmaker, researcher and producer whose work highlights interdisciplinary research through the creation of essay films and video installations. He is dedicated to researching the Paraguayan film archive, and his projects also use the dérive to examine modern infrastructures and everyday built landscapes. He serves as the artistic director and co-founder of the Asunción International Contemporary Film Festival. He has participated and won awards at festivals and markets such as: Hot Docs Forum, IDFA Bertha Fund, ARCHÉ, among others.

Niñxs

Kani Lapuerta is a trans filmmaker and researcher. He studied a Masters in Documentary Film at the Escuela Nacional de Estudios Cinematográficos de la UNAM in Mexico. His work explores projects and spaces that challenge hegemonies around gender, sexuality and corporealities, while opening new possibilities through the audiovisual medium. In 2023, he wrote and directed “La UNAM sin Límites”, a miniseries produced by UNAM and Procine CDMX, which proposes narratives of sex-gender dissidence within Mexico's largest university. In 2021, he released “La Fuga”, a short documentary film that explores masculinity and the prison experience. The film debuted at the Morelia International Film Festival and received awards at several international festivals. In addition, Kani teaches film workshops in institutions and cultural centers in Mexico and abroad, sharing his passion for audiovisual language as a tool for creation and transformation.

The Shards

Masha Chernaya studied journalism at MSU, poetry at Maxim Gorky Literature Institute, and post-documentary photography at Docdocdoc school of photography. She works as a director-cinematographer, photographer, scriptwriter and tutor. Her filmography includes:
Crooked Ray District (2019) The Well Man (2019) R2CC (2020). Gasping For (2022) Breaking Character, documentary web series (2022) To Kill What Lives Inside Me (2022) Here Is To The Absent Ladies! (2023)"

The Helsinki Effect

Arthur Franck is a documentary filmmaker from Helsinki. He has been making documentaries for over 15 years. He runs the production company Polygraf with producer Sandra Enkvist. His films have been selected for CPH:DOX, HotDocs, True/False, DokLeipzig, the Chicago International Film Festival, and DocsBarcelona. The Hypnotist was nominated for Best Documentary and Best Editing at the 2020 Jussi Awards in Finland and won Best Feature Film at the 2019 Tampere Film Festival. Franck was a member of the board of trustees of the 2019-2021 Docpoint Film Festival and is currently chairman of the Finnish Documentary Guild. 

With Hasan in Gaza

Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker and artist. Aljafari has taught at The New School and DFFB in Berlin and was a Film Study Center fellow at Harvard. Currently a fellow at Columbia University's Institute for Ideas and Imagination. The feature film “A Fidai Film” (2024) was shown in over hundred festivals and won 15 international awards. His most recent work, “With Hasan in Gaza” (2025), premiered in the International Competition at Locarno Film Festival.

The Family Approach

Daniel Abma was born in 1978 in Westerbork, Drenthe, Netherlands. After a degree in primary school education, he moved to Berlin to be a youth media worker. Then he studied film directing at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF in Potsdam, where he realised the feature-length documentaries Beyond Wriezen (Nach Wriezen, Grimme Award, 2012) and Transit Havana (2016), The Family Approach (2024). His documentary films about social themes are observatory and based on people. Since 2017, Abma has taught documentary film directing. He also tutors pitching workshops at European film festivals and is still a freelance youth media worker.

9-Month Contract

Ketevan Vashagashvili is a documentary filmmaker based in Tbilisi. She is a Chevening alumna with an MA in Digital Documentary from the University of Sussex (UK). Her main interest lies in social and human rights issues. Ketevan has 14 years of experience working at various Georgian TV channels and online platforms, directing and producing TV documentaries and programmes.

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