Denis Côté - Director
Born in New Brunswick in 1973, he began making short films after completing his studies in Cinema. While working as a film critic, Denis Côté finished his first feature-length film in 2005, Les états Nordiques (Drifting States). The film won the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland, and after three years, All That She Wants won the Silver Leopard Award. Carcasses (2009) was presented at the Directors’ Fortnight at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
His films have been shown at more than twenty retrospectives throughout the world. Wilcox (2019) will be Denis Côté’s 12th feature-length film, following great films such Vic+Flo ont vu un ours (Vic+Flo Saw a Bear), and A Skin So Soft, previously presented at TIFF.
Anita Juka – producer
Anita Juka is a successful producer who started her own production company 4Film in 2004. In her career, she has produced 16 films and 8 European co-productions of different genres, including feature fiction, creative feature documentaries, shorts and recently one mini TV series. Her films have been supported by Eurimages, they won more than 70 awards at film festivals including Toronto IFF, Karlovy Vary IFF and Rotterdam IFF and were distributed in more than 190 countries worldwide. She participated at 8 different programs including Producers Lab Toronto, TransAtlantic Partners, eQuinoxe. Noted titles are You Carry Me, directed by Ivona Juka - Slovenian Girl, directed by Damjan Kozole, Bad Blue Boys, directed by Branko Schmidt and Here, directed by Zrinko Ogresta. She had the honor to be part of the jury at six international film festivals and she is a member of the European Film Academy.
Constantin Popescu - Director
Constantin Popescu is a Romanian film director, writer and script writer. He directed a segment from the omnibus Tales from the Golden Age (produced by Cristian Mungiu, film which debuted at Cannes in 2009, in the Un Certain Regard section). His first feature, Portrait of the Fighter as a Young Man, debuted in the Berlin International Film Festival in 2010. His second feature, Principles of Life, debuted in the San Sebastián IFF’s Zabaltegi-New Directors Competition, also in 2010. His third feature, Pororoca debuted in the 2017 San Sebastián’s Official Competition and was awarded the Best Actor prize for Bogdan Dumitrache. Member of the Torino IFF 30th edition Official Competition Jury, in 2012 and of the San Sebastian IFF 66th edition Offical Competiton Jury, in 2018.
Mike Goodridge - Producer
Mike Goodridge has had a wide-ranging 30-year career in the film business, covering finance and sales, festival programming and management, media, and most recently production. He is currently artistic director of International Film Festival & Awards Macao (IFFAM). Simultaneously he is managing a slate of films and series in development under his Groovy Pictures banner. From 2012 to 2017, he was chief executive officer at Protagonist Pictures and under his aegis, the company delivered such hit films as Love & Friendship, Cold War, The Florida Project, The Lobster, God’s Own Country and Maggie’s Plan. Among the films he has executive produced are Andrea Arnold’s American Honey, which won the jury prize at Cannes 2016, The Discovery starring Rooney Mara and Robert Redford, My Old Lady with Maggie Smith and Kevin Kline and Oren Moverman’s The Dinner.
He spent 22 years as a film business journalist and critic, working in senior editorial positions at Screen International for 19 years. He also programmed the Kinoscope section of the Sarajevo Film Festival from 2011 to 2017 and is an advisor to the Locarno Film Festival. He has written several books on cinema including two on film directors. He is a board member of the European Film Academy and is a member of BAFTA.