Jury members

Competition Jury

Paula Vaccaro

Bio

Paula Vaccaro is an award-winning producer, screenwriter with a career spanning over two decades in international cinema. Born in Buenos Aires and based in London, she is the founder of Pinball London, a production company renowned for its bold storytelling and collaborations with acclaimed directors such as Sally Potter, Luca Guadagnino, Jim Jarmusch, Guillermo Arriaga and Emir Kusturica. Her films have won over 100 international awards, including three Venice Lions, and have premiered at major festivals like Cannes, Sundance, Venice, Toronto, and Berlin. She is a member of BAFTA, the European Film Academy, and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, and serves on the board of the European Producers’ Club. A strong advocate for diversity and mentorship, she has led pioneering industry initiatives, including the first EPC-Netflix training program for women producers. Her latest production, the first feature of Giovanni Tortorici, Diciannove / Nineteen), is an Italy-UK co-production between Frenesy (Italy) and Pinball London (UK), and premiered at Venice 2024, TIFF, and BFI London Film Festival. The film won the Youth Jury Dragon Award at Göteborg Film Festival and it’s being released in cinemas across Europe and the US.

Ciro Guerra

Bio

Born in Río de Oro (Cesar, Colombia) in 1981. His first two feature films, La sombra del caminante / The Wandering Shadows (2004) and Los viajes del viento / The Wind Journeys (2009), were selected in many international film festivals, including Cannes, Toronto, San Sebastian, Rotterdam, Locarno, Tribeca, London, Hong Kong, Cairo, Jerusalem and Havana. Both films were released commercially in several countries and received more than 40 international awards; and are widely acknowledged as two of the greatest Colombian films of all time. El abrazo de la serpiente / Embrace of the Serpent (2015), his third feature, won the top prize at the Director´s Fortnight in Cannes 2015 and became the first Colombian Film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film. It was included in many lists of the year's best films, including the New York Times, Sight & Sound, Time Out, The Guardian, Esquire, The New Yorker and the Chicago Reader.

In 2018, Pájaros de verano / Birds of Passage (2019), co-directed with long-time producing partner Cristina Gallego, was selected as the Opening Night Film of the 50th Anniversary of the Director's Fortnight in Cannes, and won the Fénix Award for Best Iberoamerican Film of the year, as well as top prizes at the London, Havana, Cairo, Chicago, Biarritz, Tromso, Lima and Punta del Este Film Festivals. It also received 9 Macondo Awards from the Colombian Academy of Motion Pictures.

His latest film, Waiting for the Barbarians (2019), starring Academy Award Winner Mark Rylance, Johnny Depp and Robert Pattinson, was nominated for the Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival.

Fabrice du Welz

Bio

After starting Theatre Studies at the Liège Conservatoire, Fabrice Du Welz (1972) studied in the Production section of the INSAS in Brussels. Afterwards, he worked as a television presenter and actor in France and Belgium. He directed a number of short films, including Quand on est amoureux, c’est merveilleux, which won awards at several French and Belgian festivals in 1999. His first feature, Calvaire (2004), was selected for Cannes. Du Welz’s sixth feature, the France-Belgium co-production Adoration, premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival 2019 and screened in the Limelight section of IFFR 2019. His newest feature, Maldoror (2024), premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival.

Agustina Chiarino

Bio

Agustina Chiarino is a renowned Uruguayan producer with more than 15 Latin American feature films that have premiered in some of the most prestigious film festivals worldwide, have obtained more than 100 international prizes, and have been released in over 30 territories. Since 2007 she has been an executive producer and partner at Control Z Films in which she produced the feature films Gigante by Adrián Biniez, Hiroshima și 3 by Pablo Stoll, and Tanta agua by Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge. In 2011, she set up the film production company Mutante Cine with Fernando Epstein through which they produced and distributed El cinco și The Waves from Adrián Biniez, the documentary Madness on Air from Alicia Cano and Leticia Cuba, History of Fear from Benjamin Nahistat, My Friend From the Park from Ana Katz, Benzinho from Gustavo Pizzi, The Heiresses from Marcelo Martinessi, Alelí from Leticia Jorge, and Monos from Alejandro Landes. She is tutor at Biennale College, Br Lab and Puentes. She is part of the selection committee at San Sebastián’s Co-Production Forum and has been project advisor for Sundance Film Institute, Doha Film Institute, Torino Film Lab, and Ventana Sur.

Bogdan Mureșanu

Bio

Bogdan Mureșanu (born in 1974) is a director, screenwriter, and producer. An award-winning writer, he transitioned from literature and advertising to cinema with equal success. Since his debut in 2008 with the script for The Human Torch (Best Short Film in the script competition at the Transilvania International Film Festival), his works have included animations, documentaries, fiction films, and TV series. A member of the European Film Academy, Bogdan is best known as the screenwriter of Opinci – an internationally awarded animation – and of The Christmas Gift, a short film nominated for the Oscars in 2020, with 200 festival selections and 72 awards (including the Grand Prix at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival (France); Best European Short Film at Alcine, the European Film Festival (Spain); and three awards at the Tampere Film Festival (Finland)). After The New Year That Never Was (2024) – his feature film debut as a director – he worked on The Magician, a French-Romanian-Croatian co-production (animated short film), and is preparing to enter pre-production for three other Romanian films.

What's Up Doc Jury

Christine Camdessus

Bio

Christine Camdessus launched her production company in 2001. Among more than 60 creative documentaries, distributed in most of the world: Hammer and Tickle, Pakistan Zindabad, The Lost war of the Vatican? Five Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi (Sundance director’s price 2012, Oscar Nomination 2013, International Emmy Award 2013), Divided Korea, The Wonderful Kingdom of Papa Alaev, Erdogan, the making of a sultan, One day in Tehran and Forman versus Forman selected in Cannes Classics in May 2019. Christine is chairwoman of NIPKOW’s jury (Berlin). She has been vice-president of USPA (leading TV producers union in France) from 2014 to 2018, member of E.D.N. and of E.F.A. In 2013, ALEGRIA received the award of best production company of documentaries in France. In 2018, Christine became Managing and Artistic director of Fipadoc - International Documentary Film Festival, a festival dedicated fully to documentaries which takes place in Biarritz, France the last week of January. It brings public and professionals together for screenings outstanding documentary films.

Hanka Kastelicová

Bio

Hanka Kastelicová is the Vice President and Executive Producer of Documentaries for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) in Europe. Based in the Prague office, she oversees the development and production of HBO Originals documentary films and series. She commissions and co-produces documentary programming, focusing on feature-length productions and documentary series that have a strong connection with the countries where MAX broadcasts in Europe. Hanka is passionate about nurturing European stories rooted in the rich local tradition of visual storytelling, resonating with global audiences. The documentaries she co-produces provide deep insights into their subjects, create debates, offer different perspectives, and are daring, creative, and innovative. HBO Originals documentaries are primarily character-driven stories with strong narratives and high production values.

Many of the films she co-produces have achieved worldwide success and won numerous awards at international festivals. Hanka earned a Master of Arts degree from the Faculty of Film and TV Documentary Department at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. She continued her professional career in Slovenia, where she worked for over 25 years as a documentary director and producer, with a portfolio of more than 100 documentaries. She joined HBO in 2012 as an executive producer for European documentary production.

Ivan Bakrač

Bio

Ivan Bakrač (1987, Nikšić, Montenegro) has written and directed films that participated in many international festivals and won awards. He participated in various programs such as Berlinale Talents, Talents Sarajevo, Zurich FF Academy and Slano Film Days. His debut feature After the Winter was premiered at the Karlovy Vary IFF. Apart from filmmaking, he also works as a festival programmer. A member of European Film Academy.

Romanian Days Feature Jury

Fatima Djoumer

Bio

After an experience in festivals and film distribution, Fatima Djoumer joined Europa Cinemas in 1993 as Head of International Relations and Events and has been in charge of the development of the network, its membership and its joint activities and projects such the network conferences, audience development programmes and innovation labs, the Europa Cinemas Label. She developed and set up the Collaborate to Innovate and Training Boot Camps schemes. She’s been appointed Chief Executive Officer of Europa Cinemas in 2023. Europa Cinemas is a film theatre network that supports the circulation of European films outside their country of origin and promotes audience development activities, with a focus on stimulating young audiences’ interest in European films.

Lenka Tyrpáková

Bio

Lenka Tyrpáková is a programmer, festival consultant, and the Artistic Director of the Finále Festival in Pilsen. From 2005 to 2023, she was part of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival as a member of the selection committee and a programmer in charge of films from Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Since 2008, she has worked as a programmer for the Prague Shorts Film Festival. In 2023, she became the Artistic Director of the Czech national festival Finále in Pilsen, the largest competitive showcase of national cinema in the Czech Republic. She is a curator of SHORT RIGA Test Screenings for Riga IFF and consultant for Cottbus IFF. She collaborates with several other film festivals and is a member of the EFA.

Tomasz Żygo

Bio

Festival coordinator, programmer and national distributor, since the start of his professional career in film industry in 2009, a member of New Horizons Association. Took part in organizing over 30 editions of BNP Paribas New Horizons International and American Film Festival, both ran by New Horizons Associations. Involved in the domestic releases of more than 100 arthouse titles in Polish cinemas as well as on VOD and in TV.

Associated with other projects, co-organized 5 editions of Podlasie Slow Fest in Suprasl, a festival dedicated to art and nature. Recently a launching member of Timeless Film Festival Warsaw, presenting classic films to Polish audience.

He has a wide network of relations with sales agents, producers and festivals all over the world, as well as with the cinemas and industry members in Poland. Regularly extending his expertise in the field of arthouse and classic movies and cherishing his love for cinema.

Romanian Days Short Jury

Arnaud Chevallier

Bio

Arnaud Chevallier is the founder of the sales agency B-Rated International, based in Paris and Madrid. A graduate of INSAS and former sales executive at Mediawan, he recently handled titles like The Silent Run (dir. Marta Bergman) and Maria Callas – Monica Bellucci: An Encounter (dir. Yannis Dimolitsas). B-Rated is also active in co-producing documentaries and fiction features, supporting new voices in cinema.

Réka Lemhényi

Bio

Réka Lemhényi is a Hungarian film editor with over 20 years of experience in cinema and television. She has worked with acclaimed directors including Oscar-winner István Szabó, Jerzy Skolimowski, György Pálfi, and Tudor Giurgiu (Why Me?, Libertate).

Christoph Thoke

Bio

Christoph Thoke is a renowned German producer whose films have been selected at over 530 festivals and have won more than 120 awards. He has worked with major directors like Bruno Dumont and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His films Lorna’s Silence (dir. Jean-Luc & Pierre Dardenne) and Tropical Malady (dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul) received awards at Cannes.

FIPRESCI Jury

Mihai Fulger

Bio

Mihai Fulger has been a film critic since 2002, a member of the Romanian Filmmakers’ Union (UCIN) and the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) since 2008, as well as the European Film Academy since 2018. He is currently a researcher at the Institute of Art History of the Romanian Academy, Department of “Dramatic Art and Cinema”. He served as a FIPRESCI Jury member at several major international film festivals (Berlin, Busan, Gijón, Karlovy Vary, Ljubljana, Stockholm, Warsaw, etc.). He has been an editor of the quarterly magazine “Film” since its first issue in 2013 and has been coordinating its online content since 2024. He collaborates with several Romanian and international print and online publications. He was awarded by the Film Critics’ Association within UCIN the “George Littera” Prize for the best film book of the year (The “New Wave” of Romanian Cinema), in 2007, and the “Ion Cantacuzino” Prize for his writings on film in 2020.

Ladislav Volko

Bio

Film publicist, sociologist, former diplomat, university teacher, poet. The author of many articles and books published in the field of cinema, sociology, culture, literature and media. For example ˗ Problems of the Film Critic (1979), Greatest Film Personalities (1986), The Culture of the Film Audience in Slovakia (1986), Sociological Aspect of Media Culture (2015) etc. He lives in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Pierre Charpilloz

Bio

Pierre Charpilloz is a journalist and film critic. He works in France for the television channels Ciné+ (Canal+ Group) and Arte, as well as for the magazines So Film and Acumen. In parallel, he teaches film at Paris-8 University and the University of Strasbourg, and writes books on cinema.