German

Susanne Regina Meures was born in 1977, in Germany. She studied photography and art history at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London. She holds a Master in Film from ZHdK. Raving Iran, her first feature-length documentary, brought her international festival and box-office success. The film screened at countless festivals and won numerous awards. Saudi Runaway premiered at Sundance, and among other prizes, was nominated for the European Film Award in 2020. Girl Gang is her third feature-length documentary.

Steffen Krones – also known as LAX – is a German director and filmmaker. As a young skateboarder, he started to abstract his surroundings. Architecture, people, weather, and light settings seemed to matter for this kind of sport. It also brought him out into the world to discover new opinions, lifestyles, architecture, vegetation, and of course, other people. He moved to Canada and lived in Vancouver for a year after finishing school. Today he is a freelancer based in Dresden, Germany, without attachment to any locality. He works with several filmmakers and artists who travel the world producing award-winning films, commercials, music videos, and short films.

Bianca Stigter is a historian and cultural critic. She made the short film essays Three Minutes - Thirteen Minutes - Thirty Minutes (2014) and I Kiss This Letter - Farewell Letters from Amsterdammers (2018). She is associate producer of Steve McQueen’s feature films 12 Years a Slave and Widows. In 2019 she published the book "Atlas of an Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945".

Erika Kapronczai graduated from the University of Pécs with a degree in aesthetics, then from the University of Theatre and Film Arts with a degree in film directing. She is co-founder and creative producer of the international audiovisual dream collection DREAMPIRE. In addition to directing short feature films (Well under the Sun; THREESOME), she also produces documentaries and portraits (CEU20; DREAMPIRE; Sajdik; INFORG PORTRAITS; KIM; F - The Man with the Antenna). She is currently working on her first feature film and is supporting first feature projects as a creative producer.

Jan-Christoph Gockel, born in 1982, grew up near Kaiserslautern. He studied theatre, film, and media studies in Frankfurt/Main, and directing at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. He has worked as a freelance director since 2007. His productions usually focus on political issues. Since 2013, Gockel has been intensely engaged with Africa, and the relationship between Europe and former colonies, the effects of colonialism, and economic dependency have become the themes of Congo-Müller, Heart of Darkness, The Mission: Danton’s Death and Coltan Fever. His works have been nominated for the Nestroy Theatre Award (2010, 2016, 2017), which he won in 2017 for The Mission: Danton’s Death. The Revolution Devours Its Children! is his first feature-length film.

Vera Lacková is a Roma director and film producer. Born in Slovakia and based in Vienna, Austria, she is the founder of the Czech-Slovakian production company, Media Voice. Her background working with Roma people, sharing their stories and movements, enables her to bring a unique insider perspective on important and timely ethnic and political Roma themes for the community. A participant of the 2019 IDFA Academy, her feature-length documentary debut film, How I Became a Partisan, attempts to uncover the fate of forgotten Roma partisans. Her own search for and exposure of stories of Romani partisans is primarily based on the life of her great-grandfather, Ján Lacko. The film premiered at goEast Film Festival in Wiesbaden, in 2021. There she received the Federal Foreign Office for Cultural Diversity Award. The project was developed at the Ex Oriente film workshop, pitched at the 2020 East Doc Platform, and is part of the East Silver Caravan distribution program, supported by the Institute of Documentary Film.

Vera Krichevskaya is the co-founder of Dozhd (TV Rain) Russia, the only independent, private television channel in Russia. She is also an award-winning television director, having worked for NTV and 24DOC as a senior producer and director.

Alina Gorlova is a director and film editor. Born and raised in Ukraine, she graduated from Karpenko-Kary Kyiv National University of Theatre, Film & Television. In addition to her focus as a documentary director, Alina is experienced in making fictional shorts, and social and commercial ads.

Susanne Kovács is a TV director from the Danish Media and Journalism School. She previously studied fine arts and narrative storytelling in Germany, and was trained in filmmaking at the European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark. It Takes A Family is her first mid-length documentary, and was part of the Twelve for the Future Workshop in 2015-2016. Susanne participated in the IDFAcademy in 2016 with the film.