Zsűri block

Jury 2023

Jean Marc BARR

International jury 2023

Jean-Marc Barr was born in Germany to a French mother and an American father, a US Air Force officer. He studied at the UCLA and the Sorbonne, completing his drama education at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. He is best to known to U.S. audiences for his roles in Hope and Glory (1987), The Big Blue (1988), Europa (1991) and Breaking the Waves (1996) including many other independent European films. His collaboration with Danish director Lars Von Trier put him on track to start directing his own works. He debuted in 1999 as a co-director, screenwriter and producer with LOVERS, made in harmony with the Dogma 95 Manifesto. This film became the first part of a Free-Trilogy whose two subsequent parts – the drama Too Much Flesh (2000) and the comedy Being Light (2001) – that he co-directed with Pascal Arnold. Their last three films One To Another (2006), American Translation (2011) and Sexual Chronicles of a French Family (2012) have had US releases.
Alexander REINBERG

International jury 2023

Alex Reinberg studied screenwriting at Filmacademy Vienna and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He has realised several short films that have been screened and honored at festivals worldwide. His latest film, ‚Hollywood’, co-directed and co-written with Leni Gruber, received a nomination for the best Austrian short film in 2023. Together with Leni he is currently working on several TV projects for the ORF, a mini-series for the ZDF and their first narrative feature.

BÁLINT Péter

International jury 2023

Péter Bálint he is a film distribution expert, Chairman of Hungarian Film Distribution Association. He is a teacher at the Communication and Media Department at Milton Friedman University. For 23 years he was the General Manager of UIP-Dunafilm, a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures, Universal and DreamWorks Animation Studios in Hungary. For eight years he was a curator of National Cultural Fund’s College of Film Art and for 12 years a member of the National Film Institute Ageing and Classification Committee. He has recently been giving extensive advice on the distribution of Hungarian and European film.

BODNÁR Ágnes

International jury 2023

Ágnes Bodnár is a television professional and film distributor. She studied at the College of Foreign Trade and the College of Applied Arts. She started working in television in 1997 as an editor and then editor-in-chief at Spektrum and HBO. In 2005, he joined RTL Klub as an external collaborator, where he worked as the Eastern European representative of CLT-UFA’s film stock in Luxembourg and later as the program director of CLT-UFA’s Hungarian cable channels. At the same time, she founded her own film distribution company, where she currently represents and sells films from several film rights companies to national and foreign television channels.

Bruno CAETANO

International jury 2023

Bruno Isaac Grade Caetano was born in Portimão, Portugal, in 1979. He is a self-taught animator, who later graduated from CIEAM (Centro de Investigação e Estudos e Multimédia na Faculdade das Belas-Artes de Lisboa) with a specialization in Stop Motion technique. Despite having a strong preference for this technique, his professional career led him to participate in several projects with various animation techniques as well as in other areas of artistic interest. He has worked as an animator, producer and director at various production companies, and is a founding member of COLA Animation, an ever growing international cooperative of united artists, focusing in producing, teaching and divulging animation.

CSUJA László

International jury 2023

Director László Csuja (1984) graduated and received the doctoral degree from the Academy of Film and Drama of Budapest (SZFE). His first feature length documentary titled Nine months war (2018) was about the Ukrainian- Russian military conflict, premiered in Sarajevo IFF and won the special jury prize. His first feature, Blossom Valley (2018) was premiered in Karlovy Vary IFF and won the jury prize. His second feature named Gentle (2022, directed with Anna Nemes) a Hungarian-German co-production premiered at Sundance World Cinema Competition and then won several awards worldwide.

Dr. R. NAGY József

International jury 2023

József R. Nagy, PhD (1966), Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Miskolc, Vice Dean. Since 1993 he has been specializing in visual anthropology, documentary film theory and practice. He graduated with a thesis on documentary film at the University of Miskolc as a student of Gyula Gulyás and János Gulyás, and defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Debrecen. He is a lecturer in documentary filmmaking, media and cinema culture, media and communication studies at the University of Miskolc, and has consulted on several documentaries. In his films, the lifestyle, life and cultural history of workers’ colonies, housing estates and the Carpathian Euroregion are presented.

Fiona ZIEGLER

International jury 2023

Fiona Ziegler graduated in literature, history and international politics before studying film directing at the Prague Film Academy FAMU. She has written and directed seven short films that have been screened and awarded at international festivals. Her debut fiction Lost in Paradise, being the first Swiss-Czech co-production, was released in 2022, both in the Czech Republic and in Switzerland. Her tragic-comedy features the themes of emigration, belated coming of age and identity. Fiona is member of the Bern Film Fund in Switzerland, lives in Prague and works on her first feature length documentary as well as on her first series project Palace of Worries.

HAJNAL Gergely

International jury 2023

Gergely Hajnal director, producer. He graduated from Péter Pázmány Catholic University in Aesthetics, Communication and Media Studies and Pedagogy. In addition to filmmaking, he has organised film festivals, film clubs and many other film programs. He was involved in the establishment of the István Szőts Film Workshop. He has created or worked in most cinematographic genres, while documentary is what he loves most. The subjects of his films are often people on the margins, trying to move in a positive direction. He writes reviews, participates in juries of festivals in Hungary and abroad. He is a featured editor of Duna Msz Nzrt. His feature-length documentary „Szabadító” was awarded the Hungarian Cinema Prize this year.

Joan PARSONS

International jury 2023

Joan Parsons is an experienced cinema professional with over 20 years of work in the cinema sector, across all operational roles and in more recent years working in senior leadership positions. Currently Interim Head of Culture and Arts for Queen’s University Belfast, Joan leads Cinema and Gallery teams for the University while developing wider cultural projects and plans. Joan has successfully delivered financial and cultural excellence and has been involved in organising and delivering significant UK-wide partnership projects. Joan is well known in the cinema sector, attends multiple festivals annually and is often asked to speak to audiences at events and students studying film at various levels.

Kim SOYOUNG

International jury 2023

Kim Soyoung is one of South Korea’s most respected independent documentary filmmakers. Professor of Film Studies at the National University of the Arts Korea, Director of the Trans-Asia Screen Culture Institute, and founding programmer of the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival, she has been a visiting professor at Duke University, UC Berkeley, Irvine University, the Free University of Berlin, among others. She is editor of History of Korean Cinema and author, editor or co-editor of several books on colonial modernity, gender and cinema. Her latest film trilogy explores the history of the Korean diaspora in Central Asia and Russia.

PARASZKAY György

International jury 2023

György Paraszkay designer, graphic artist, photographer has been making movie and theater posters, record and book covers since 1980. He has had solo and group exhibitions around the world over the decades. In the 2000s, he was the official photographer and graphic designer for the Hungarian Cultural Seasons (Magyar Kulturális Évadok). Between 2009 and 2020, Mr Paraszkay acted as graphic designer, cinematographer, exhibition organizer and cultural manager of the P’ART cinema in Szentendre. From 2012 to 2019, he was official photographer of the Szentendre Theatre. His photo album titled A SLICE OF TEATRUM (EGY SZELET TEATRUM) was published in 2022. Currently he works as a freelance artist.

Szakonyi Noémi

International jury 2023

Noémi Veronika Szakonyi is a freelance film director and producer. She studied International Relations in Hungary and Political Science in Germany. Noemi started her film studies on a scholarship at Beijing Film Academy. After leaving China, she applied to the University of Theater and Film Arts in Budapest for the directing documentaries master course, from where she graduated in 2015. Noémi is the founder of Match Frame Productions, a boutique film production company based in Budapest, focusing on documentaries. As a director, she is working on her first long-term feature documentary Afterglow and premiered her first film Six Weeks in main competition at Sarajevo Film Festival in 2022. Six Weeks won the Just Film Grand Prix at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Noémi is currently writing her second feature, Bite into the Soul.