Sylvie Vernyuy Njobati, born 1991, is a documentary filmmaker and organiser of artistic and cultural events in Bamenda and Yaoundé, Cameroon. She is the founder of Sysy House of Fame and established a project to empower women in the film industry in Cameroon. During an artist residency at Goethe-Institut Cameroon, she realised the short documentary THE TWIST OF RETURN. NOT A STATUE will be her debut feature documentary.

Marc Sebastian Eils, born 1990, studied International Development Studies in Vienna and Documentary Filmmaking at the self-organised film school filmArche in Berlin. His latest short documentary GERMANY IS A TRAMPOLINE follows two young men before and after their deportation from Germany. NOT A STATUE will be his debut feature documentary.

André Robert is a queer documentary filmmaker, producer and cinematographer born in San José, Costa Rica. He studied Film & Television Production from Loyola Marymount University (USA) and two Master's Degrees in Documentary Filmmaking and Project Management from Pompeu Fabra University (Spain). His production company, Malcriada Films, specializes in independent films from Latin American filmmakers with transgressive narratives and underrepresented voices. At the moment, André is finalizing his debut feature length documentary "The Violent Skin" in co-production with Spanish producer Lluis Miñarro.

María José is a producer and director. She studies literature and film in Paul Valéry, in Paris, France. Works during those years as a production assistant in numerous short films and directs his first documentary: "The wall of the federated". She returned to Costa Rica in 2015 for finishing his bachelor's degree in Audiovisual and Multimedia Communication in the University of Costa Rica, from which he graduated from in 2018. Produces and directs the short film "Rodrigo y el tren" (Rodrigo and the train), which participates in the Muestra Iberoamericana of Short films. She is a graduate of the Bachelor's Degree in Strategic communication and production and defends his thesis around the theme of the female-gaze and women directors Costarican cinema. At a professional level, María José has worked as assistant director, script editor and producer in numerous projects in Latin America and Spain. She is currently dedicated to the development of authorial film projects and is in the Master's Degree in Creative Documentary Filmmaking at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, in the framework of which she is developing her first creative documentary feature film "Susurran las raíces" (The Roots Whisper).

Lluís Miñarro is a Spanish director and producer who received the City of Barcelona Award in 2010. His production company, Eddie Saeta has produced 40 original films, receiving 120 awards at the most important international film festivals, including the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2010. As a producer, Lluís Miñarro has collaborated with directors such as Manoel de Oliveira, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Albert Serra, Lisandro Alonso, Naomi Kawase, Jose Luis Guerín, Marc Recha, Javier Rebollo, Fabrizio Ferraro, among others. Miñarro has directed the documentaries Familystrip (2009) and Blow Horn (2009) and the fiction feature films Stella Cadente (2014) and Love Me Not (2019).

She has a PhD in Cinema Studies (University of Athens), a Master’s Degree in Audiovisual & Cinema (Nouvelle Sorbonne Paris III), Degree in TV & Cinema Directing (Stavrakos Cinema School, Athens), English Literature (Aristotle University, Thessaloniki) and Interior Design (Dimitrelis School of Arts). So far, she has created 6 short films. All of them were internationally awarded. She is a Sarajevo Film Festival talent alumni (2016) and her script “Hansel” was at the Pitch Lab of the same festival. In 2018, her script “Lost & Found” won the Greek Film Academy Award at the Short Film Fund competition. She works at the University of Athens where she teaches Cinema and is in development of her first feature documentary.

Maria Kounavi attended the Intensive Editing Workshop at New York University (Spring 1999). Since then she has edited several short fiction films, documentaries and TV Series. Additionally, she has been working as a freelancer editor for the past seven years at Vice Greece.

Ioanna Petinaraki has graduated from the Film Studies Department of the AUTH Thessaloniki and she is working as a producer. She is a Talents Sarajevo & IDFA academy alumna. In 2017 she started her own production company under the name "Moving Rooster Productions”. In 2018 the feature documentary "Back to the top", which she produced with the support of the Greek Film Centre, had its world premiere at 20th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, where it won the Fischer Audience Award and the ERT Award. She has also received a grant as an artist supporting her work, from the NGO “Art-Works", supported by the SNF (Stavros Niarchos Foundation). In 2022, the short film “5pm seaside”, which she co-produced, premiered at Clermont Ferrand Short Film Festival and was screened in festivals such as Palm Springs and Diagonale Austria, where it won the best short film award. Also, her short film "Magma" premiered at the Drama International Short Film Festival, where it won Best Cinematography and Best Original Music. It also won the Silver Athena Prize at the Athens International Film Festival and had its international premiere at PÖFF (Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival).

Olena Fedyuk was born and grew up in Ukraine but in the last 20 years has been moving around Europe pursuing her professional interest – research in gendered migration flows, migrant labor, and the moral economy of migration. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the Central European University in Budapest. Since 2012, she’s turned to film as a medium for both research and outreach, and a way to grasp humor and contradictions of migration stories. Both of the films are not about migration per se but about people who have embarked on complicated life journeys, both emotionally and geographically.

Olena’s previous films include Road of a migrant (2015) and Olha’s Italian Diary (2020).

Polina grew up in a Ukrainian family in Moldova and emigrated in 2005 first to the US, then London, Budapest and Berlin - her current base. She is a specialist of Eastern Europe (UCL, UK) who after a career in public policy turned to visual storytelling in 2015.

Polina produced No Country for the Poor (HU/DE 2017, 52’ SWR/ARTE), produced, directed and filmed You Have to Be Here to Believe (DE 2022, 50’ OneWorld, WatchDocs 2023), as well as filmed a number of narrative shorts as DOP (including Suite, DE/2021, Winner of German Generations Film Award). She is currently working on Funeralzzi (doc feature in production) and researching for a docu series about European ideological refugees.

In 2022 she co-founded Studio Onaleap - a film and visual media production house focused on stories that explore and amplify universal humanism and justice.

Mykola Bezkrovnyi is a Ukrainian editor and director. He is currently studying at the Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Karyi University of Theatre, Cinema and Television.

Mykola previously worked on many music videos, commercials, short fiction films and documentaries. The main inspiration for making films is telling incredible stories that can echo in many human hearts.

Maryna is a young Ukrainian indie documentary film-director. She completed her studies at National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (Kyiv, Ukraine) and initially was trained as an architect. Maryna combines her own artistic practice with pedagogical activity. In 2020 she founded own one-year school for young artists, Shcrab Visual Arts School. As an educator, Maryna has experience of collaboration with Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, School of Visual Communication, Maibutni Democratic School. Her experience with these organizations lied in designing short or long term art courses and mentoring. At this moment, Maryna’s filmography includes short documentaries. Based in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Florent is the founder, executive producer and manager of VraiVrai Films created in 2011. He has produced around thirty documentary films that have been selected and awarded in numerous festivals around the world - Berlinale Forum, Visions du réel, Hot Docs Toronto... The editorial line that he has instilled in VraiVrai Films bears witness to his roots in Saintonge, a mainly rural territory where he grew up, and to his experience in Cameroon and Syria for several years. This experience led him to question the stakes of the relations between the North and the South, still deeply marked by the history of slavery and colonization, and the evolutions of the rural world. He is particularly sensitive to film projects which offer an intimate and political look at these societal issues.

Diana Groó is a DLA, film director, script writer, and university teacher. Since 2014, she has been teaching at METU, where she became head of department in 2017 and university docent in 2022 as well as the head of Film and Media Studies. Her main professional interest is the relationship between documentary and fiction in films. She is founder of Katapult Film Studio and co-founder of DunaDOCK Masterclass. Her films won several Hungarian and international awards.

EFA-nominated producer and founder in 2011 of Éclipse Film, focusing on creative documentaries for the Hungarian and international markets. She has produced A Woman Captured, Easy Lessons and The Next Guardian, screened, nominated and awarded at festivals including Sundance, IDFA, Locarno, Hot Docs and Sheffield. In 2019 she was selected to Producers on the Move in Cannes. Since 2013 she teaches at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Documentary MA studies and is working on her doctoral thesis there. A Eurodoc and an EAVE graduate, president of the Hungarian Documentary Association (MADOKE), founder of Documentary Association of Europe (DAE) and a member of the Hungarian and the European Film Academy. Holy Dilemma is her first film as producer and director.

I've been a journalist for 12 years and started documentary filmmaking when I was working as a television news editor. I directed a TV documentary about four artists who were real rebels under communism. 2 years later, I also directed a short documentary with a journalist whose career was ruined by politics. I now report for Deutsche Welle, and last year I won a prestigious Hungarian media prize for videos showing different faces of war.

László and Speakeasy are involved in filming documentaries, social and cultural projects, works with a number of NGOs, commercial clients, and recently with fiction projects as well. 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. László's second feature length doc, Ghetto Balboa won the Hungarian Film Award for best documentary in 2019.

Ádám has been working as a video journalist focusing on Hungarian underground music and portrait-related short videos since 2014. Working with larger crews, he became interested in producing. Since successfully selling their first independent documentary to HBO, his goal is to help the workflow as a documentary film producer.