Expert Jury for 2025

REINHARD BRADATSCH

Austria

Reinhard Bradatsch is a freelance reviewer of the Austrian film magazine Ray. He is a co-founder and co-editor of the former online magazine allesfilm.com. He regularly writes reports from national and international film festivals—e.g., Viennale (Vienna/AT), Crossing Europe (Linz/AT), IFF Bratislava (SK), and was a FIPRESCI juror at international festivals in Cottbus and Bratislava. He was a programmer of the section on Austrian documentaries at the 3rd IFF Cinematik in Piešťany in 2008.

GRÉGORY CAVINATO

Belgium

Grégory Cavinato graduated from the University of Brussels’ ELICIT section (Aesthetics and Philosophy of Cinema / Screenwriting and Film Analysis) in 2004—his thesis supervisor was acclaimed director Luc Dardenne—and has since worked as a screenwriter, translator, subtitler (mainly for the Offscreen film festival in Brussels) and freelance film critic for various Belgian newspapers and websites—most notably for Cinergie.be (since 2005), FilmMagie (2016–2020) and Europe (since 2019). As a film critic, he is a member of the FIPRESCI and the U.P.C.B. (Union of the Belgian Film Critics).

ROBERTO DONATI

Taliansko

Roberto Donati is a Literature and Film professor, writer, and screenwriter. His latest publications include the monograph Once Upon a Time in the West by Sergio Leone (Gremese, 2018), the horror graphic novel L’abisso è ovunque (Weird Book, 2019), the poetry collection postmoderni (Transeuropa, 2020), the collective film essay L’intelligenza delle cose. Il cinema di Mario Martone (ETS, 2021), and some screenplays for various short films, including Cicciolina Pocket (Keep Digging Prod., 2021). He was the creator and curator (2009-2012) of the Bietti Heterotopia film series; he organizes and curates reviews, retrospectives, and events related to literature and cinema on behalf of universities, cultural centers, and institutes in Italy, Europe, and around the world. He is an expert in audiovisual disciplines, both theoretical and practical, and is an independent and certified trainer on behalf of Lanterne Magiche (Mediateca Toscana) and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Tourism.

CARMEN GRAY

Germany

Carmen Gray is a New Zealander who lives in Berlin. A film critic and journalist, she writes for The New York Times, Sight & Sound, and Criterion, among others, often about Central and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. She is a Contributing Critic for The Film Verdict and was previously the film editor of Dazed & Confused magazine in London. She is also a film programmer and is on the selection committees of the Generation section of the Berlin International Film Festival and the Winterthur International Short Film Festival, and is a programme adviser for Open City Docs.

PHILIP ILSON

United Kingdom

Philip Ilson is the Artistic Director of the London Short Film Festival, which he co-founded in 2004. He is the short film programmer at the Dinard British Film Festival in France. He was the short film programme advisor for the BFI London Film Festival for 16 years and has previously worked as a programmer at the East End Film Festival (London), Cork Film Festival (Ireland), Branchage Festival (Jersey), Latitude music festival (Suffolk) and at Curzon Soho Cinema.

AKSEL KIELLAND

Norway

Aksel Kielland is a critic and commentator for the national weekly Morgenbladet and a contributor to Norwegian film publications such as Wuxia, Z, and Montages. Since 2008, he has been a catalogue editor, writer, and associate programmer for the Bergen International Film Festival.

MILJA MIKKOLA

Finland

Since 2005 Milja Mikkola has been part of the Arctic Circle’s legendary Midnight Sun Film Festival where she currently holds the post of Programme Manager. She is also a member of the programming collective of Cinema Orion in Helsinki and co-director of Helsinki’s Viva Erotica Film Festival, which celebrates the history of sex with rare gems screened in their original format. Milja studied Film Theory at Brunel University in London and Visual Journalism at Finland’s University of Tampere. Fully trained as an analogue projectionist decades ago, her celluloid roots are embedded in the film world.

MIKE NAAFS

Holandsko

Mike Naafs graduated in Film Studies from the University of Amsterdam, where he was also editor-in-chief of the student film magazine. After receiving his degree, he worked for a number of film festival newspapers and magazines, including The Dutch Filmkrant, and visited festivals for FIPRESCI in Kyiv, Cannes, Moscow, Cluj-Napoca, and St. Petersburg. He is currently freelancing and working as a chef in a psychiatric institution.

VUK PEROVIĆ

Montenegro

Vuk Perović is the editor-in-chief of II channel on Radio and Television of Montenegro. He is an art director, programmer, and member of the team that established UnderhillFest—an international film festival of feature-length documentaries in Podgorica, Montenegro. He is a host of a prime-time TV show about film. He has been publishing film reviews and interviews with people working in the film industry for various media. He is a co-founder of CIRCLE Woman Doc Accelerator—a training program for female documentary filmmakers. He is a member of FEDEORA, FIPRESCI and a lecturer and producer.

PAMELA PIANEZZA

France

Pamela Pianezza’s initial plan was to become a spy, but she never found who she would happily spy for. Instead, she became a multimedia artist and a visual arts teacher, researching the various possible shapes of storytelling. She mainly works with images and text (whose relationship she likes to explore) but also with sounds, collages and performance. Having studied both arts and journalism and having worked as a reporter in the film industry for a while, she found her favourite playground at the border between fiction and documentary. She is based in Montpellier, south of France.

TRISTAN PRIIMÄGI

Estónsko

Tristan Priimägi is an Estonian film critic and journalist, working as Head of the cinema section in a cultural weekly Sirp. He is a founder and programmer of DocPoint Tallinn Documentary Film Festival. Member of FIPRESCI and European Film Academy.

XAVIER GARCÍA PUERTO

Spain

Film and video curator, he has organized exhibitions and programs in Brazil, Israel, Colombia, the US or China and collaborated with institutions such as KunstWerke (Berlin), Caixaforum, Instituto Cervantes or the Cineteca Nacional de México. Jury member in festivals in South Africa, Hungary, Italy, Costa Rica, Lithuania, France, or Siberia, including the Berlinale (Generation). He is a programmer at Tallinn Black Nights FF (www.poff.ee), a delegate for Spanish-speaking countries, and an editor of “Rebels with a Cause” competition. During 2014–2018, he was the main curator of the project Off the Wall, which brought European films on tour in over thirty cities in nine countries in Europe and America. Cofounder of REC International Film Festival of Tarragona in 2001 and its artistic director since 2006 (www.festivalrec.com), where he in 2014 founded “Primer Test”—an Industry LAB that is the push behind most filmmakers from the Spanish new wave. His last adventure is Panoramica.film—a service from programmers to programmers which aims to bring new film talent to festivals around the world.

MATEJ SVOBODA

Czech Republic

Matej Svoboda comes from Liberec, Czech Republic. Although he studied Czech and English language at the Faculty of Pedagogy, he has never worked for the educational system. He currently lives in Prague and works as a movie publicist for MovieZone.cz and as an editor for TV magazines TV Max and Týdeník Televize. He is a co-author of books Encyclopedia of Action Films and The Nineties in Film.

KATA ANNA VÁRÓ

Hungary

Kata Anna Váró is a lecturer at the University of Debrecen in Hungary, and she also works as a film and theatre critic. She holds a degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Debrecen, then she completed a degree in Film and Media Studies at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. She holds a DLA from the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. She has published numerous reviews, festival coverage and essays in various national and international publications. She has been a juror—including FIPRESCI juries—at various international film festivals. She holds regular film club events and conducts Q&As at the local arthouse cinema and in film festivals.

ESTHER GEISLEROVÁ

Czech republic

Ester Geislerová is the youngest of the artistically gifted Geisler sisters. She studied design at art school, but during her career she has devoted herself to modeling and currently mainly to acting in films and TV series. She appeared in films as a child and in 2002 she won the Czech Elite Model Look competition. Her most notable film roles include the lead role of Agnes in F. A. Brabec’s film The Pied Piper and Dorli in Milan Cieslar’s film Blood of the Disappeared. She is currently also involved in a project of lectures and podcasts called Therapy through Sharing, which focuses on relationships and communication.

DANIEL RIHÁK

Slovakia

Daniel Rihák is a graduate of film directing at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. His master’s short film The Trip (2018) won the award for best director at the ÁČKO student festival, the IGRIC creative award, and was shortlisted for the BAFTA Student Film Awards. He is currently preparing his debut film My World Upside Down.

DANIELA HANUSOVÁ

Czech republic

Daniela Hanusová is the curator and project manager of the international VOD platform DAFilms.com, which focuses on documentary and experimental film. She is also the executive director of the Prague festival of augmented reality and immersive art ART*VR and the coordinator of the film criticism workshop Critics Academy for the Locarno Festival. She occasionally writes for the Slovak slow film magazine Pontón. She graduated in film studies from the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague and is currently completing her master’s degree in gender studies at the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University.