SELECTION COMMITTEE 2025

Hamed Soleimanzadeh is a film critic, filmmaker, and lecturer at the University of Göttingen in Germany. He holds a Ph.D. in Art Research with a focus on Film Studies from the Nazar Research Center in Tehran and a postdoc in Film and Philosophy from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin). He has served as a jury member for over twenty prestigious international film festivals and events, including the Golden Globe Awards, Cannes Film Festival, Berlinale, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Gothenburg Film Festival, Istanbul International Film Festival, and more. Additionally, he is the founder and director of the Abbas Kiarostami International Short Film Festival. Soleimanzadeh has directed seven short films and has published hundreds of articles and several books on cinema, theater, philosophy, and culture. He is a member of the renowned International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI).

Călin Boto is a film curator, programmer, and writer based in Bucharest, working as an associate curator for Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival, BIEFF. Trained as a film critic, he writes for several publications, including Filmexplorer (Switzerland) and Films in Frame (Romania). A member of FIPRESCI and an alumnus of film criticism & history workshops organized by film festivals, including those in Sarajevo, Warsaw, Locarno, and Pordenone. He has curated series of screenings at the Romanian Cinematheque, and festival retrospectives of experimental cinema, queer cinema, silent cinema, etc. In 2023, he participated in RAW, a workshop organized by Short Waves (Poznań), dedicated to emerging film programmers. In 2024 he curated the first Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour in Bucharest.

Lucía Salas is an Argentinian film critic, programmer, editor, and filmmaker based in Spain. Her work navigates cinema, past and present. She is one of the editors of La vida útil magazine. She studied Image and Sound Design at the University of Buenos Aires and Aesthetics and Politics at CalArts and is currently a PhD candidate in the Communications-CINEMA program at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. As part of the filmmaking collective LaSiberia Cine she made the films Implantación (2016), Los exploradores (2016), and Implantación (2011). She edited the books “Una luz revelada. El cine experimental argentino” by experimental filmmaker and writer Pablo Marín (La vida útil, 2022) and, together with Ricardo Matos Cabo, “Se acercan otros tiempos. El cine de Peter Nestle” (Caniche Editorial/Punto de Vista, 2023).

Petra Palmer. Born 1969 in Cologne. Studied theatre/film and media studies and philosophy in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. Freelance film curator and moderator. Film education at the German Film Museum Frankfurt. Programme director of the Japanese film festival Nippon Connection (2009-2015) in Frankfurt and the Jewish Film Festival Berlin-Brandenburg. Programme coordination at the goEast film festival (2015-2017) and projectionist at the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation (2016-2017) in Wiesbaden, collaboration at the International Forum of New Cinema at the Berlinale 2019 and at the Interfilm Festival Berlin (2022/23). Head of the festival office of the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (2020). Currently, member of the selection committee and moderator at the International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg (IFFMH).

Dennis Vetter works as a freelance film critic, moderator, film educator, curator and editor, mainly in Berlin. Texts have been published since 2009 in Film Comment, taz – Die Tageszeitung, Kolik Film, Filmbulletin, epd film, Der Tagesspiegel, SPON, Jungle World, Senses of Cinema, Filmexplorer, among others. He hosts film conversations at international festivals and worked as a film educator at bi’bak Projektraum Berlin, Filmfest Dresden, BFMAF, among others. Since 2023 advisory board member of the German Film Critics Association, previously a board member since 2013. Co-founder of the Critics’ Week, conception, organization, and film/debate programme of the event since 2014, Artistic Co-Director since 2020. Since 2023 member of the feature film commission of the Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival. Organisation of retrospectives with the Filmkollektiv Frankfurt on Nikos Nikolaidis and Annette Frick. Co-founder of the Hungry Eyes Festival (film/performance/installation) as part of the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies Giessen. Founding member and former co-editor of the online magazine NEGATIV (2010-2015).