David Bonneville

Head of the Jury

David holds a Directing Diploma (DFFB) and a Screenwriting MA (University of Westminster). He started his career as an assistant to Palme d'Or winner Manoel de Oliveira and Turner Prize-winner Douglas Gordon. David lives between Porto, Lisbon and London, where he has worked at the BBC.

Bonneville has written and directed Gypsy (Locarno, Hamptons, SXSW); L’Arc-en-Ciel (Fantasporto); Heiko (IndieLisboa, MelbourneQueer, Toronto IOut) and Saint John’s Night (currently in post-production).

His debut feature The Last Bath premiered at the Tokyo, São Paulo and Gothenburg Film Festivals. The film won the Academy Award for Best Film, Best Screenplay and Best Art Direction at the Sophia Awards ceremony; it has also garnered the Golden Globe for Best Actress (Anabela Moreira) and the Screen Actors Guild Newcomer Award (Martim Canavarro), among its more than 40 prizes.

Bonneville is writing his next feature film and developing a sci-fi series. He also mentors and lectures on Directing, Screenwriting and Performance for the Screen.

Jelena Maksimović

Jury

Jelena Maksimovic graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade with a degree in film editing. She has been teaching at the Faculty for Media and Communication in Belgrade, Digital Arts Department, since 2015.

As an editor she worked on films such as The Load (2018), You Have the Night (2018), Celts (2021), and Landscapes of Resistance (2021) which screened in Cannes, Venice, Berlinale, Locarno, Rotterdam, Toronto, and many others.

She is a recipient of numerous awards for Best editing. She has directed two shorts and two feature films: Taurunum Boy (2018) and Homelands (Domovine, 2020), which premiered at Cinéma du Réel and FID Marseille, respectively.
In addition to film, she has achieved numerous collaborations in video art, spatial installations, and theatre performances.

Afsun Moshiry

Jury

Afsun Moshiry was born in Shiraz. She completed Culture Studies at Northumbria University in the UK and studied curating in performing arts in Salzburg. She moved back to Iran to strengthen a cultural bridge between Germany and Iran in the field of Cinema. During her stay in Iran, she has programmed in cooperation with Berlinale Shorts,Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Interfilm, Arsenal für Film und Videokunst e.V., and Forum Expanded.
She has done film workshops under the name Film Focus and created a development
Fund for emerging Iranian filmmakers. Since 2020, she has been living and working in Berlin where she has curated film programs for Berliner Festspiele, Akademie der Künste, and Sinema
Transtopia. The production house, Road River Films, was founded by her, where she initiated the project A Sense of Place with the Wim Wenders Foundation.
She is a member of the Selection team at Kassel Dokfest and the director of the
Dokfest Campus. She has been teaching at Kassel University Introduction to Documentary Filmmaking. Since 2023 she has been part of the Berlinale Forum Advisory Board.

Gyula Gazdag

Jury

Screenwriter and director of film, theater, and television. Distinguished research professor at UCLA Department of Film, Television and Digital Media. Artistic Director of the SUNDANCE Filmmakers Lab since 1997.

Gazdag moved to the United States to assume his responsibilities as area head of the newly created Film and TV Production Program at UCLA in 1993. He worked as creative advisor at the Maurits Binger Film Institute in Amsterdam from 2002 until the end of its training program in 2015. He has worked with young screenwriters at the Script Station of the Berlinale Talents since 2006 and with young actors, directors and screenwriters as founding advisor of Film Stage Studio at Sarajevo Talents since 2015. As Head of Studies, he has been instrumental in the creation of the Incubator Phoenix Project, training script consultants in collaboration between The Czech Film Fund and AMU/MIDPOINT. He regularly participates as an advisor in Story Camp organized by Script to Screen of New Zealand screenwriters since 2015.
Gazdag wrote and directed feature films, documentaries, television and theater mostly in his native Hungary, where most of his work has been banned for different periods during Communism and has been denied foreign exhibition, some of them have been banned again in 2012. Gazdag has been named one of the ten best film teachers in the United States of America by Daily Variety in 2010. He is a member of the European Film Academy.

Lenka Tyrpáková

Jury

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 Pragueshorts 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 at Riga IFF, festival consultant at Cottbus FF and programmer at Eastern Neighbours FF in Haag. She collaborates with several other film festivals and is a member of the EFA.

Kristína Žilinčárová

Jury

Kristína Žilinčárová works as a screenwriter, director, and editor. She studied aesthetics at Comenius University in Bratislava. In the past, she worked on multiple short films as a screenwriter (Rheum, Shedding the Mist) as well as a director (Dinner for 2 - Breakfast for 1, Symbol). Her films have been screened at various European film festivals (FEST – New Directors, IFF Warsaw, IFF Karlovy Vary, IFF Tampere, BRNO16).

Kristína's texts about film and culture have been presented in lots of cultural publications (Artalk, Kapitál, film.sk, Kinečko, Circ). Together with her editorial colleagues, she runs the Slovak film magazine Pontón (www.ponton-mag.sk). Kristína is currently co-writing the screenplay for the feature film Dreaming Differences. She is also preparing her feature directorial debut Prometea.