International Student/Debut Competition Jury

Hajnal Molnár-Szakács is the Director of Institute Granting at the Sundance Institute, where she heads up development of a comprehensive funding strategy across the Institute’s Artist Programs and oversees nearly $4M in yearly grants. Hajnal serves as industry advisor for international film festivals, pitch forums and funds, and is an active industry panelist, lecturer and juror. Hajnal holds a MSc in Public Management from SDA Bocconi School of Management in Italy, and a Bachelor of International Business and German from Carleton University in Canada. Prior to this role, as the Film Fund Director at the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program she supported over 200 films, including Minding the Gap (Dir: Bing Liu), The Mole Agent (Maite Alberdi), Crip Camp (Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham) and Writing With Fire ( Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh). Prior to joining the Sundance Institute, Hajnal worked for the European Union and the Government of Canada. Hajnal also works with community and arts-based non-profits in LA, and is conversational in Hungarian.

Mihály Schwechtje is a Hungarian film director who made several award-winning short films before making his first feature-length film. His play, The Legacy, was awarded the Contemporary Hungarian Drama Award (Kortárs Magyar Dráma-díj) in 2020. His recent projects reflect his interest in current social problems. His first feature film, Hope You’ll Die Next Time :), talks about young victims of cyberbullying. The film was professionally and critically acclaimed, gained national and international awards, and was a great success with audiences. In 2020, his feature documentary Give Me Shelter was awarded the Best Hungarian Documentary Film at Verzió. He is a former university lecturer at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, having obtained a degree of Doctor of Liberal Arts. He is currently working on several feature film projects, is in pre-production for his next documentary. He teaches film directing at the Eötvös Loránd University; and he is also the head teacher of the film director Master's program at freeszfe. He is currently developing a TV series with Canal+ Poland.

Julie Nederkoorn started working for the Movies that Matter (MtM) Foundation in 2015. She currently coordinates the International Support program. Based on the belief that the film camera is a powerful weapon against social indifference, MtM organizes film screenings in the Netherlands and promotes film screenings worldwide. As program coordinator, Julie manages the grant program and gives training and advice on setting up human rights film festivals or related events in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. For five years she coordinated Activist (one of the main competition programs about human rights defenders) at the annual MtM Festival in the Hague. She obtained a BSc in Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, and a MA degree in Conflict Studies & Human Rights at Utrecht University.

Teréz Vincze is a Hungarian film critic and professor of film studies. She has been editor of the Hungarian quarterly journal of film theory and film history, Metropolis, since 1999. She has taught film studies at the Department of Film Studies of ELTE University since 2002, and received her PhD degree at the same university in film studies in 2009. Her film-related studies have been published in English, German, Italian, Czech, Slovak and Korean, in edited books and film journals. Her first book (Author in the Mirror: Auteurism and Self- Reflexivity in Cinema) was published in 2013, in Hungarian. She has served as a juror on numerous international film festival juries in Europe and Asia, and has been a member of the Hungarian section of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) since 2000.

Giedre Žickyte is a Lithuanian film director and producer. She graduated with a MA in visual arts from Vilnius Art Academy in 2007. Her first documentary, Baras (2009), won the best TV film award at the Lithuanian National Film Awards. Her first feature documentary, How We Played the Revolution (2011), was selected to many international film festivals, and received first prize as the best Baltic States’ film at the Vilnius International Documentary Film Festival in 2012. Master and Tatyana (2014) won four national cinema awards, including the award for best directing.

Nenad Puhovski graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy and Academy of Dramatic Arts (ADU). He began working there as a teacher in the Film and TV Directing Department in 1980. He presently is a Professor of Documentary Directing at ADU, and the founder of the TV Program Department and graduate studies of documentary film. In 1997 he founded the independent documentary production, Factum. He is the director of the ZagrebDox International Documentary Film Festival, a winner of the Albert Kapović Award for outstanding contribution to the art of film in Croatia, and a member of the European Film Academy.