T.J. Demos

T.J. Demos is the Patricia and Rowland Rebele Endowed Chair in Art History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the founding Director of its Center for Creative Ecologies. Specializing in contemporary art and political ecology, Demos is also the author of several acclaimed books. His book The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary During Global Crisis (2013) earned him the College Art Association’s 2014 Frank Jewett Mather Award. 

Demos, a co-editor of The Routledge Companion on Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change and a Getty Research Institute Fellow, directed the Mellon-funded Sawyer Seminar research project Beyond the End of the World and was a guest fellow in the Cinepoetics research cluster at Freie Universität Berlin. Demos has worked as head curator of the Climate Collective, co-curated Rights of Nature: Art and Ecology in the Americas, curated the film program Specters: A Ciné-Politics of Haunting in Madrid and the presentation of the Center for Creative Ecologies at Manifesta 13 in Marseille. Recently he published his new book Radical Futurisms: Ecologies of Collapse, Chronopolitics, and Justice-to-Come (2023).

Participation: Konferenz Filmemachen um jeden Preis?, Elemental Bodies: Ecologies, Media, Extraction

Ada Salomon

Ada Solomon is a Romanian producer, who founded Hi Film Productions and Micro Film. She has produced or co-produced over 80 films (features, documentaries, shorts) such as: DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (Radu Jude, 2023, Special Jury Prize Locarno), BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN (Radu Jude, 2021, Golden Bear Berlin) and CHILD’S POSE (Calin Netzer, 2013, Golden Bear Berlin). She has worked with prestigious filmmakers such as Cristian Nemescu, Ivana Mladenovic, Alexandru Solomon, Răzvan Rădulescu, Federico Bondi, Adriano Valerio, Tomasz Wasilewski and was also the executive producer for Maren Ade’s EFA Winner & Oscar nominated TONI ERDMANN (2016).

She is Deputy Chairwoman of EFA board, Vice-President of the board of EWA Network, EAVE national coordinator, ACE Network board member, a founding member of the Alliance of Romanian Producers, member of the European Producers Club and winner of the EFA European Co-production Award – Prix Eurimages 2013, the Central European Initiative Award 2018 in Trieste IFF, the Underground Spirit of Europe Award 2021 in Palic IFF, as well as the Czech Producers Association World Excellence Award 2022 in Jihlava IFF. She was listed by Hollywood Reporter as part of the Top 40 Most Influential Women in International Film in 2023.

Participation: Konferenz Filmemachen um jeden Preis?

Fee Buck

Producer Fee Buck joined PANDORA FILM Produktion in 2012 as the Head of Production. She has collaborated with renowned filmmakers such as Andreas Dresen, Claire Denis, Christian Schwochow and Ulrich Köhler. Her primary focus is on cinema feature film development and international co-production.
Latest filmography: RABIYE KURNAZ VS. GEORGE W. BUSH by Andreas Dresen (Berlinale 2022), A PIECE OF SKY by Michael Koch (Berlinale 2022), JE SUIS KARL by Christian Schwochow (Berlinale 2021), ONODA by Arthur Harari (Cannes 2021) and HIGH LIFE by Claire Denis (Toronto and San Sebastian 2018).

Participation: Konferenz Filmemachen um jeden Preis?

Cassandre Warnauts

Cassandre Warnauts joined the Frakas Productions team in 2007, where she develops the majority of their feature films and co-produces international projects alongside Jean-Yves Roubin.
Marta Bergman’s SEULE À MON MARIAGE (2018), her first major feature as a producer, was selected in the ACID section at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2021, she completed the production of SANS SOLEIL by Banu Akseki and LA RUCHE by Christophe Hermans. She is currently producing L’ENFANT BÉLIER, Marta Bergman’s second feature film, in Belgium, and is developing KRIEG by Delphine Noels, STANDING ON THE EDGE OF SUMMER by Marie McCourt and MANDELBAUM by Marta Bergman. She currently co-produces several international projects for Frakas Productions, including Emma Benestan’s ANIMALE, Manele Labidi’s REINE MÈRE, Morgan Simon’s UNE VIE RÊVÈE and Teddy Lussi-Modeste’s PAS DE VAGUE, Katell Quillévéré’s LE TEMPS D’AIMER and Stéphan Castang’s VINCENT DOIT MOURIR.

Participation: Konferenz Filmemachen um jeden Preis?

Sara Schurmann

Sara Schurmann is a German freelance journalist and journalism coach. Among other jobs, she has worked as an executive editor, a chief copy editor and a consultant across German publications including Tagesspiegel, VICE Germany, Gruner + Jahr, Zeit Online, funk and SWR. In 2018, Medium Magazin chose her as one of its “Top 30 Under 30” journalists. In 2020, Schurmann published an open letter to her fellow journalists calling for  them to take the climate crisis seriously – anticipating her co-founding of the Climate Journalism Network Germany in 2021. In 2022, her first book, “Klartext Klima!” [is there an English title translation to include in parentheses?], was published, and Medium Magazin voted her “Science Journalist of the Year”. Since January 2024, she has been writing a column for the German news portal T-Online about the climate crisis and options for action.

Participation: Konferenz Filmemachen um jeden Preis?

Mathilde ter Heijne

Mathilde ter Heijne functions as a visual artist, filmmaker and professor of fine arts, specializing in time-based media and performance. She instigates and realizes artistic projects centered around the aesthetics of identity, co-creation, collaboration, and dialogue. Within these projects, she actively fosters, investigates, and constructs temporary communities that provide an alternative to hierarchy-based culture. Delving into historical and ancient contexts, as well as lesser-known present and potential futures, ter Heijne activates more dynamic, egalitarian, and potent conceptions of visual art. Renowned for her intersectional feminist art across a wide range of mediums, including installation, video, sculpture, and performance, many of ter Heijne’s recent endeavors draw upon gender studies, archaeology, and sociology. Through these explorations, she seeks to unravel the interplay between materiality and spirit, testing participatory art as a means to mediate knowledge and redistribute power. Her projects and works have been featured in numerous solo and group shows in museums, galleries, video festivals and non-profit spaces including the PS1 Moma in New York, Singapore Art Museum, Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, MIGROS Museum of Gegenwartskunst Zürich, Berlinische Galerie Berlin, Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Museum für Neue Kunst Freiburg, LagosPhoto, and the Shanghai Biennale.

Participation: Phantom Thread

Srikanth Srinivasan

Srikanth Srinivasan is a film critic, programmer and translator from Bangalore, India. He has been writing on films, with a focus on international art and experimental cinema, for various publications since 2008. His first book: Modernism by Other Means, published by Lightcube in New Delhi in 2021, is the first book-length volume dedicated to the work of Indian filmmaker Amit Dutta. Srikanth’s second book, Nainsukh, the Film, was brought out by the Museum Rietberg Zurich in 2023.

Participation: Phantom Thread

Graham Swon 

Graham Swon is an American producer, writer and director. As a producer, he has worked with many independent filmmakers, including Matías Piñeiro, Ted Fendt, Joanna Arnow and Ricky D’Ambrose. He completed his first film as a writer and director, THE WORLD IS FULL OF SECRETS in 2018. Swon’s work as a producer has been shown internationally at such festivals as Berlinale, Locarno, TIFF, Director’s Fortnight and NYFF. In 2016, he was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” In 2023 he won the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award for his production of Ricky D’Ambrose’s THE CATHEDRAL,  and in 2024 was nominated for the Independent Spirit Producers Award. He holds degrees in Theatre and Philosophy from Carnegie Mellon University. AN EVENING SONG (FOR THREE VOICES) is his second film as writer and director.

Participation: Phantom Thread

Daniel Felstead

Daniel Felstead is an academic and content producer whose practice focuses on the relationship between fashion, technology, and culture. He is the course leader of MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL). Daniel has given talks and presented work internationally, including Ambika P3, Architectural Association, Fundació Foto Colectania, Global Art Forum, PAF, Serpentine Galleries, Tate, and V&A. His PhD explored the work of artist Tino Sehgal in relation to speculative modes of production, materiality and the platform. Most recently Daniel has produced two critically acclaimed short film commissions by DIS.art (THE METAVERSE IN JANKY CAPITALISM and LITERALLY NO PLACE) that explore the myths, ideologies and realities of the metaverse and AI.

Participation: Elemental Bodies: Ecologies, Media, Extraction

Kevin B. Lee

Kevin B. Lee is the Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts at USI Università della Svizzera italiana. Combining filmmaking, media research and criticism, he has produced 400 video essays exploring film and media. His award-winning TRANSFORMERS: THE PREMAKE  introduced the “desktop documentary” format and was named one of the best documentaries of 2014 by Sight & Sound. His video essays READING // BINGING // BENNING and ONCE UPON A SCREEN: EXPLOSIVE PARADOX received the most mentions respectively in the 2017 and 2020 Sight & Sound video essay polls. His current  feature documentary project AFTERLIVES is supported by the Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Grant, the Eurimages Lab Project Award, the German Federal Ministry for Culture and Media, and Field of Vision. He is leader of the Swiss National Science Foundation research project The Video Essay: Memories, Ecologies, Bodies.

Participation: Elemental Bodies: Ecologies, Media, Extraction

Angela Melitopoulos

Angela Melitopoulos is based in Greece and Berlin and has been making video essays, multi screen installations, documentaries and music pieces since 1985.  

She works on cine(so)matic cartographies in which moving bodies and site traversals create mnemonic milieus. She investigates duration, memory, geography and subjectivity in relation to non-linear narratives and their technical procedures. She tells of deviant, collective memories of subjective resistances and revisions of history, of fascism, imperialist violence and the experience of migrations in the 20th century. 

Her collaboration with sociologist Maurizio Lazzarato in the 1990s led to the book publication Videophilosophy (Edition b_books Berlin, 1997). A retrospective of her work took place in 2023 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in June 2023. 

Her works consist of multi-screen installations (see the research project MATRI LINEAR B (2020, 2022), CROSSINGS (2017), THE REFRAIN (2015), THE LIFE OF PARTICLES (2012), DÉCONNAGE (2012) ASSEMBLAGES (2010)), video-essays (see PASSING DRAMA (1999), THE LANGUAGE OF THINGS (2008), of net-based, collective montage projects (see CORRIDOR X / TIMESCAPES / B-ZONE (2006), activist projects (see UNEARTHING DISASTER I AND II 2015)), performative archive presentations in cinema and installations in public space (see MÖGLICHKEITSRAUM  I-V (2012-2016) and INDUSTRIES OF DENIAL (2022)). Melitopoulos studied at the Nam June Paik Academy of Art in Düsseldorf, at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne with Valie Export. 

She has a PhD in Visual Cultures entitled Ways of Meaning: Machinic animims and the revolutionary practice of geo-psychiatry. (Goldsmiths University of London, Center for Research Architecture, 2016). 

She has taught as a professor of media art at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, a senior researcher at the Akademie der Künste Wien and as also a professor in the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Participation: Elemental Bodies: Ecologies, Media, Extraction

Shambhavi Kaul

Shambhavi Kaul is an experimental filmmaker whose projects speculate on the possibilities for cinematic storytelling to generate new worlds. Her films make temporal and spatial demarcations permeable by reorganizing cinematic space and layering historical, mythical, geological, ecological and cultural timescales. Eventually, audiences consider their own time and space in relation to survival, the environment and these filmic worlds. She has exhibited her work worldwide at film festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival, the Berlinale, The New York Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Edinburgh International Film Festival, the London Film Festival, the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, and Experimenta Bangalore among others. She has presented her work at museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Tate, London. She has also had two solo gallery shows at Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai. She was born in Jodhpur India, and lives in the United States where she is a professor at Duke University.

Participation: Imitation of Life

Éléonore Saintagnan

Éléonore Saintagnan lives and works in Brussels. A graduate of the Le Fresnoy national studio, she makes short and medium-length films that play with the border between documentary cinema and fiction. Her work merges concepts such as belief and knowledge, craftsmanship and new technologies, history and myth, expertise and amateurism. Her films are peopled with both actors and characters playing themselves. CAMPING DU LAC is her debut feature which was awarded Special Jury Prize Ciné+ in the section Filmmakers of the Present at Locarno 2023.

Participation: Imitation of Life

Khaled Abdulwahed

Khaled Abdulwahed, born 1975 in Homs, Syria, is an artist, photographer and filmmaker based in Leipzig. Since 2011 he has realized numerous video art works as well as experimental documentaries, which have been shown worldwide at both film festivals and art institutions, some of which have received multiple awards. His videos BULLET (2011), TUJ (2012) and SLOT IN MEMORY (2013) have been shown in places such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Berlin Art Biennale and on Arte. Since 2015 he has been collaborating with the Berlin-based production platform pong film. In 2016, his first feature-length film JELLYFISH, about the Syrian civil war, was invited to the Berlinale Forum. His current works include the short film BACKYARD (2018), the feature-length documentary film PURPLE SEA (2020) by Amel Alzakout, which Khaled co-directed, and his own second feature-length film BACKGROUND (2023).

Participation: Imitation of Life

Tomás Guarnaccia

Born in 1996, Tomás Guarnaccia is an Argentine film critic based in Buenos Aires. Prior to entering the world of arts and criticism, he briefly pursued a career as a racing driver. He holds a degree in Audiovisual Arts from the National University of the Arts (UNA). During the initial COVID pandemic lockdown he co-founded Las veredas, a multimedia platform dedicated to Argentine cinema, featuring a weekly newsletter, video interviews, reviews, and coverage of national film festivals. With Las veredas entering an indefinite impasse in late 2021, he joined the staff of Con los ojos abiertos. At this publication he continues to develop his craft as a film critic. Throughout this period, his work has also appeared in publications such as Taipei, Jacobin América Latina, Variety and Swissinfo, among others.

Participation: Imitation of Life

Natalia del Mar Kašik

Natalia del Mar Kašik attended the independent film and the artistic photography class at the Friedl Kubelka School, and studies video and video installation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In her artistic practice, she explores ideas around female identity, and reflects on how notions of femininity emerge in a post-feminist media culture.

Participation: Imitation of Life

Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp

Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp are the stars, writers and executive producers of DICKS: THE MUSICAL. A24’s first musical feature is adapted from Josh and Aaron’s long-running off-off-Broadway production, F*cking Identical Twins.  Together, Aaron and Josh have appeared as a correspondent duo on THE OPPOSITION W/ JORDAN KLEPPER for Comedy Central. Josh also starred in Netflix’s THE ILIZA SHLESINGER SKETCH SHOW, and Aaron’s debut novel, The Astonishing Life of August March, was published by HarperCollins. Aaron is originally from North Richland Hills,Texas and currently lives in Manhattan. Josh is originally from Morganton, North Carolina and currently lives in Brooklyn. Josh and Aaron met and started performing and writing together at New York’s famed Upright Citizens’ Brigade Theatre.

Participation: Sound and Fury

Chloé Galibert-Laîné

Chloé Galibert-Laîné is a researcher and filmmaker. They hold a PhD from the Ecole normale supérieure de Paris, and work as tenured Assistant Professor in Film at the American University of Paris. Their video essays and desktop documentaries, which have been selected for festivals such as IFFRotterdam, IDFA and FIDMarseille, explore the intersections between cinema and online media, with a particular interest in questions related to embodied spectatorship, gestures of appropriation, processes of knowledge production and mediated memory.

Participation: Sound and Fury

Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp

Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp are the stars, writers and executive producers of DICKS: THE MUSICAL. A24’s first musical feature is adapted from Josh and Aaron’s long-running off-off-Broadway production, F*cking Identical Twins.  Together, Aaron and Josh have appeared as a correspondent duo on THE OPPOSITION W/ JORDAN KLEPPER for Comedy Central. Josh also starred in Netflix’s THE ILIZA SHLESINGER SKETCH SHOW, and Aaron’s debut novel, The Astonishing Life of August March, was published by HarperCollins. Aaron is originally from North Richland Hills,Texas and currently lives in Manhattan. Josh is originally from Morganton, North Carolina and currently lives in Brooklyn. Josh and Aaron met and started performing and writing together at New York’s famed Upright Citizens’ Brigade Theatre.

Teilnahme: Sound and Fury

İdil Baydar

Teilnahme: Sound and Fury

Margarita Tsomou

Prof. Dr Margarita Tsomou is a Greek cultural scientist and works from Berlin as an author, dramaturge, moderator and curator. She is a curator for theory and discourse at HAU – Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, is one of the founders and editors of the pop-feminist magazine “Missy Magazine” and is a professor of “Contemporary Theatre Practice” at Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences. Examples of her curatorial work include the series Burning Futures: On Ecologies of Existence, the conference Feminisms reclaiming Life: an Internationalist Gathering at HAU-Hebbel am Ufer and the Apatride Society series of events in Paul B. Preciado’s discursive programme at Documenta 14.

Teilnahme: Sound and Fury

Nastia Korkia

Nastia Korkia is a Germany-based artist and filmmaker of Russian origin. She received her MFA from the DocNomads Erasmus Program, delivered by a consortium of three universities in Portugal, Hungary and Belgium. Her documentary feature film GES-2 premiered at the 78th Venice Film Festival. Her works were screened at festivals and venues such as IDFA, DOK Leipzig, True/False, Sheffield DocFest, Kasseler Dokfest and Metropolitan Museum, NY.

Participation: Hangover

Anna Narinskaya

Anna Narinskaya is an author, journalist, curator and documentary filmmaker whose work has been recognised with awards from Intermuseum and the Leipzig Book Fair. While living in Moscow, she engaged in civil rights activism. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she emigrated to Germany.

She now resides in Berlin, where she writes for the Tagesspiegel and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspapers. Her play The Last Word, based on recent statements by Russian political prisoners, premiered last year at the Maxim Gorky Theatre. In November 2023, she curated the exhibition Such People Are Not Here at Pride Art Berlin, which tells the story of the oppression of LGBTQ+ people in Russia.

Participation: Hangover

Jinyan Zeng

Jinyan Zeng, scholar and documentary filmmaker, is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology, Lund University, Sweden. Zeng specializes in culture and politics, gender and sexuality, intellectual identity and activism, and ethnicity, with particular emphasis on the transnational China. Her academic work has been published in journals such as Studies in Documentary Film, Film Quarterly, and Journal of Chinese Cinemas. Her documentaries [CN, EN, FR, ES, IT, KO, and DE] are archived and exhibited in various universities, museums (e.g. Smithsonian Institution Museums [Washington DC], Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum [New York], SFMOMA [San Francisco], and Deutsches Historisches Museum [Berlin]), and international film festivals (e.g. International Film Festival Rotterdam, Visions du Réel [Nyon], and Cinema du Réel [Paris]). She also publishes short stories (CN and FR) and poems and prose (CN and EN). 

Participation: Hangover

Zhenming Guo

Zhenming Guo  (or  Guo Zhenming)was born in Hunan Province in 1980, and currently lives in Yunnan Province, China.

He received a BA in literature from Hunan Normal University in 2003, and an MA in art history from the Fine Arts Department of Yunnan University in 2007. Afterwards, he taught art history at Xinjiang Academy of Arts until 2010 when he went on to become a freelance artist. His body of work includes photography, video works, and film. TEDIOUS DAYS AND NIGHTS  is his first feature film.

Participation: Hangover

Omer Fast

Omer Fast was born in Jerusalem in 1972. He holds a BA in English from Tufts University, a BFA in Visual Arts from the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts and an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. He has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Jeu de Paume in Paris, Museum of Modern Art in Vienna, Guangzhou Times Art Museum and Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. Group exhibitions include dOCUMENTA13, the 52nd Venice Biennale, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Fast received the Bucksbaum award for his work “The Casting” at the Whitney Biennial in 2008, and also won the National Galerie’s Prize for Young Art in Berlin in 2009 with his work “Nostalgia”. His short film CONTINUITY won the German short film award LOLA in 2013. ABENDLAND is Omer Fast‘s third feature film. Fast teaches at the HfbK Hamburg.

Participation: Carnival of Souls

Massimo Perinelli

Massimo Perinelli is a historian, author, podcaster and activist in post-migrant initiatives. He has been working as a senior adviser of migration at the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung in Berlin since 2016. From 2001 to 2015, he taught and researched the history of the body and sexuality, the history of film and US history at the University of Cologne, where he also helped to set up the History and Film Working Group (AGuF). In 2009, he completed his doctorate with a thesis on the history of the body in post-war Italian cinema. In 2013, together with the group Dostluk Sinemasɪ, he organized a film series on Keupstraße in Cologne to come to terms with the NSU attack, as well as programming other anti-racist film series. Publications on film include Liebe ’47 – Gesellschaft ’49 (1999), Fluchtlinien des Neorealismus (2009), together with Maren Möhring and Olaf Stieglitz (ed.) Tiere im Film – eine Menschheitsgeschichte (2009) or Queering Bestiality – Visual Pleasure and the Obscene (2014).

Participation: Carnival of Souls

Riar Rizaldi

Riar Rizaldi works as an artist and filmmaker. His artistic practice focuses mostly on the relationship between capital and technology, labor and nature, worldviews, genre cinema, and the possibilities of theoretical fiction. His works have been shown at various international film festivals (such as Locarno, IFFR, FID Marseille, Viennale, BFI London, Cinema du Reel, Vancouver), as well as Centre Pompidou Paris, NTT InterCommunication Center Tokyo, Taipei Biennial, Istanbul Biennial, Venice Architecture Biennale, Biennale Jogja, National Gallery of Indonesia, and many other venues and institutions. In addition, solo exhibitions and focus programs of his works had been held at Batalha Centro de Cinema, Porto and Centre de la photographie Genève, amongst others.

Participation: Carnival of Souls

Şirin Fulya Erensoy

Şirin Fulya Erensoy is a film and media scholar and curator based in Berlin. Her research focuses on video activism, women in film, documentary filmmaking and genre cinema. She has worked as a lecturer in Film and Television at various institutions in Turkey, and completed her  Marie  Curie  Individual   postdoctoral   fellowship  at  the  Film  University  Babelsberg Konrad Wolf (September 2021 – August 2023). She supplements her academic work with ongoing practices in documentary film production, film curation and journalism. Şirin has curated numerous art and film events in cooperation with institutions in Berlin, including the Maxim Gorki Theatre, and the Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, and has also been involved in festivals such as the Hive International Short Film Days and the Sehsüchte International Student Film

Festival. Her professional journey also includes a role as anchor for the English news-bulletin This Week in Turkey on the alternative digital media platform Medyascope TV. 

In addition to her roles in media and academia, Şirin has worked on international film projects in various capacities such as editing, producing, translating, and researching. Furthermore, she has directed her own short films and videos, some of which have received funding from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey, the Turkish Foundation of Cinema and Audiovisual Culture, and Goethe Institut Istanbul.

Participation: Carnival of Souls

Davide Oberto

Born in Alba (Italy) in 1970, he moved to Turin in 1989 where he studied Philosophy, Human Sciences and Film History at the Università di Torino. In 1999 he started the collaboration with the Torino Film Festival where in 2005 he became the curator of the Italian competitions (Short Films and Documentaries). Three years later he created a new section devoted to international documentaries in the endeavor to introduce the most interesting and relevant films from a very specific and cinematic perspective to Italy: TFFdoc.

From 2002 until 2009 he’s been programmer of From Sodom to Hollywood – Turin GLBT Film Festival, for which he also edited several retrospectives – notable examples are one dedicated to Fassbinder, programs about queer cinema in the arabic word, spaghetti westerns, and J-ender: Big Bang Love in Japan – as well as tributes to Alain Guiraudie, and Adolfo Arrieta. From 2015 to 2018 he was director of Doclisboa with Cíntia Gil, and also curated a retrospective dedicated to Jocelyne Saab for Doclisboa in 2019. He moved to Berlin last year, working as a freelance film curator and publicist.

Participation: City Lights

Susanne Sachsse

Susanne Sachsse is an actress who has worked internationally in performance, film and art contexts with Yael Bartana, Jonathan Berger, Zach Blas, Phil Collins, Keren Cytter, Vaginal Davis, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Bruce LaBruce, Laibach, Ligia Lewis, Josiah McElheny, Vegard Vinge & Ida Müller and Xiu Xiu. Sachsse is co-founder of the artist collective CHEAP. She is the winner of the Premio Maguey Queer Icon Award at the Guadalajara International Film Festival. Her first solo exhibition I Was a Formalist Pensioner. An Anti-Opera was presented at Participant Inc. gallery, NYC. With CHEAP she produces a monthly radio show on the artist radio station reboot.fm.

Participation: City Lights

Francisco Bouzas

Francisco Bouzas was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the summer of 1989. He is a graduate of the National University of Arts Film Editing program, and has participated as director of the Berlinale Talents BA. In 2019 he completed the Master in Creation coordinated by Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola, UPV, SSIFF and Tabakalera CICC. His film LOS LOCOS NO SE OCULTAN (2015) was presented at Ciudad Oculta in a screening for 500 neighbors. LA CUARTA DIMENSIÓN (2018), his debut feature, was premiered and awarded at the 20th BAFICI. His films have been screened at festivals, exhibitions, parks, schools and theaters in countries such as Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, United States, Mexico, South Africa and Japan. He is a member of the Cultura Oculta, a culture focused NGO, and of the experimental film collective Antes Muerto Cine.

Participation: City Lights

Catarina Vasconcelos

Catarina Vasconcelos, born in Lisbon in 1986, is a Portuguese filmmaker whose debut short-film METAPHOR OR SADNESS INSIDE OUT premiered in 2014 at Cinema du Réel, where it was awarded Best Short Film. Her debut feature documentary THE METAMORPHOSIS OF BIRDS premiered in 2020 at the Encounters program of the 70th Berlinale, where it received the FIPRESCI Award, the first of an impressive total of 40 prizes. NOCTURNE FOR A FOREST premiered at the Pardi di Domani – Corto d’Autore of the 76th Locarno Film Festival.

Participation: Hard, Fast and Beautiful

Clara Winter and Miiel Ferráez

Clara Winter studied fine arts at Kunsthochschule Kassel, with exchange semesters in Toulouse and Brussels. Their practice engaged within leftist subcultures while still open for the infiltration of neoliberal institutions. 

Miiel Ferráez is a multifunctional tool born in Mexico. They learnt English in Venezuela and became a small-town emo-punkstar in Ocoyoacac, before studying film and screenwriting. 

Winter and Ferráez have been working together regularly since 2014. Mixing research, documentation and performance, they deal with power-dynamics and historical hierarchies, while trying not to lose focus on the power of the image itself, and the logistics behind its creation. Their work has been influenced and expanded by antiracist-, trans-, and decolonial struggles that cross the communities they are part of and collaborate with. In 2019 they won the German Short Film Award (Experimental) and in 2021 they received a Master’s degree from the Dutch Art Institute.

Participation: Hard, Fast and Beautiful

Eytan Ipeker

Eytan Ipeker is a Berlin-based editor and filmmaker. He was born in Istanbul and studied filmmaking at NYU. He has received numerous awards for his editing work, including the 2022 European Film Award for Best Editing for BURNING DAYS, directed by Emin Alper. Films he edited have screened at Cannes, Berlinale, Sarajevo, Visions du Réel, DOK Leipzig, documenta, Viennale, and programmed by Tate Modern. More recently, he edited DRIFTING which won the 2023 DokuFest Balkan Dox Prize. As director, his credits include THE PAGEANT (2020) which premiered at Visions du Réel’s International Feature Competition and screened at Sarajevo, Jerusalem and Odessa Film Festivals. He’s one of the producers of ALBÜM (2016), winner of the France 4 Visionary Award at Cannes Critics Week, followed by Best Feature Award at Sarajevo Film Festival. He lives in Berlin and is a member of BFS (Editors Association of Germany) and KUDA (Film Editor’s Society of Turkey).

Participation: Hard, Fast and Beautiful

Gala Hernández López

Gala Hernández López is an artist, filmmaker and researcher whose interdisciplinary work spans docu-fiction films, video installations, and performances on new modes of subjectivation specifically produced by computational digital capitalism. She critically explores discourses in virtual communities through a feminist and critical lens. Her projects, exhibited at Berlinale, DOK Leipzig, Cinéma du Réel, and others, include the award-winning film THE MECHANICS OF FLUIDS, a César awards 2024 selection. A Ph.D. candidate at the University Paris 8, she teaches and has received accolades such as the Experimental Work Award 2023 from la Scam (France). Gala has been an Associate Professor at the University Gustave Eiffel, and a visiting researcher at Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf (Germany) with a DAAD research grant. Currently, she is an artist in residence at the French Academy in Spain and co-directs the collective “After Social Networks”.

Participation: Hard, Fast and Beautiful