34rd FilmFestival Cottbus 2023
International Festival Jury
Sonora Broka | Artistic Director of the Riga International Film Festival, editor and moderator | LV
In addition to her role as the Artistic Director of the Riga International Film Festival (Riga IFF), Sonora Broka is also the editor and host of the weekly cinema program “Piejūras klimats” (Seaside Climate) on Latvijas Radio 3 "Klasika” and a regular contributor to Latvia's leading cinematic news portal, Kinoraksti.lv. Broka is a member of FIPRESCI, the European Film Academy (EFA), and a Golden Globes International voter.
Currently, she also serves as a live-action films expert at the National Film Centre. Broka has been a member of the EU’s “LUX Prize” selection committee, participated in various international film festival juries for both feature films and documentaries, and served as an expert for the “Czech Film Springboard” industry program at the “Finale Plzen” festival.
Cristina Groşan | Filmmaker | RO/HU
Cristina Groșan is a Romanian-Hungarian filmmaker whose work spans both feature films and television. She recently co-directed the Czech TV mini-series Daughter of the Nation, commissioned by CANAL+ and set for release in fall 2024. Her second feature film, the Czech-language Ordinary Failures, premiered at the 79th Venice Film Festival’s Giornate degli Autori, while her debut feature, Things Worth Weeping For, shot in Hungary, premiered in the main competition at the 2021 Sarajevo International Film Festival. Cristina is a guest lecturer at FAMU International, and a member of both the Association of Hungarian Directors and the Association of Czech Film Directors, Screenwriters, and Script Editors.
Anja Matković | theatre, film and television actress and screenwriter | HR
Anja Matković is a Croatian theater, film and television awarded actress, and screenwriter. She graduated in acting from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb in 2013. In her youth, she was a professional Alpin skier and she competed in FIS races.
Inna Sahakyan | Director and Producer | ARM
For over fifteen years, Inna Sahakyan has directed and produced feature-length documentaries, doc series, and shorts that have been broadcast internationally. She focuses on uncovering untold and forgotten stories, exploring the nature of humanity through intimate and innovative filmmaking. Her feature-length debut, co-directed with Arman Yeritsyan, was the award-winning “The Last Tightrope Dancer in Armenia” in 2010. In 2022, her animated documentary about Armenian Genocide survivor and early Hollywood star Aurora Mardiganyan, “Aurora’s Sunrise,” became a festival favorite. It screened at over 75 festivals and won several awards, including the Asia Pacific Screen Awards 2022 for Best Animated Film, Movies that Matter 2023 for Special Mention and Audience Award, Audience Favorites at IDFA 2022, Audience Awards at Animation is Film 2022, and the Grand Prix at FIFDH - International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights in Geneva 2023, among others. Inna is currently a tragicomedy documentary “Shakespeare Goes Armenian” about a Soviet-era retirement home in Armenia, where the daily strains of old age disappear as the residents stage Shakespeare..” Her other current project, which has just started production, features strong female protagonists and gives voice to victims. It explores the complexities of international law in addressing war crimes and genocide, based on the recent Nagorno-Karabakh humanitarian crises.
Xavier Henry-Rashid | Sales Agent | FR/UK
He is a graduate of the Berlin Talent Campus and the Screen Institute and a member of EAVE and EFA. He has worked in various roles for a number of film festivals including Executive Director of Raindance Film Festival, projectionist for Sheffield Doc Fest, sponsorship for AEG/Sundance London and East End Film Festival.
Short Film Jury
Szilárd Bernáth | Author and director | HU
Szilárd Bernáth is a writer and director based in Budapest. His short film PAY DAY had its international premiere at Clermont-Ferrand in 2017 and won the Hungarian Film Critics' Award the same year. In 2020, his following short film EARWORM premiered in Cottbus. Szilárd’s first feature LARRY had its premiere at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in 2022 and received two awards in Cottbus (Best Debut Film and Main Prize of the U 18 Youth Film Competition). The film went on to screen and win at many international festivals like Camerimage, Cleveland IFF, Skopje IFF, Luxembourg CineÉast IFF. Larry also receiving four prizes at the Hungarian Film Critics Awards in 2023 and the main prize of the Hungarian Art Cinema Network. Bernáth developed his new feature project in the Director's Programme of Berlinale Talents 2024 and was also selected this year for the Nipkow Programm's writing scholarship in Berlin.
Eglė Vertelytė | Screenwriter and director | LT
Eglė Vertelytė is a screenwriter and director with a diverse background. She holds a bachelor's degree in History from Vilnius University, studied at the European Film College in Denmark, and earned an MA in Screenwriting from the National Film and Television School in the UK.
Her documentary UB Lama, filmed in Mongolia, won six international awards and was screened at over 20 festivals. Vertelytė's feature debut, Miracle, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was showcased at over 50 festivals, earning multiple awards, including the Lithuanian "Silver Crane" for Best Film, Director, Writer, and Actress.
Eglė has also worked as a screenwriter for several TV shows, as well as for feature films 9th Step (dir. Irma Puzauskaitė) and Southern Chronicles (dir. Ignas Miškinis). Tasty is her second fiction feature film.
Magdelena Ilieva | Director | BG
Magdelena studied Film in NYU Tisch and Bulgaria. She produced the feature THE LESSON (Toronto, Warsaw, Tokyo) and the shorts THE SON (Tampere, Cottbus), JUMP (Clermont-Ferrand, EFA nom), among others. HOLE, aka MONEY FOR A FUNERAL, was a Best Short nominee at Oscar-qualifying Edmonton IFF and was awarded at the Bulgarian Golden Rose FF. ETERNITY PACKAGE is her directorial debut feature.
U18 Jury
Natálie Čečrlová, CZ Grammar School Teplice
Lenka Dvořáková , CZ Grammar School Teplice
Leah Maerksch, DE Ludwig-Leichhardt-Grammar School Cottbus
Hermine Jähne, DE Ludwig-Leichhardt-Grammar School Cottbus
Lucie Loichen, DE Lower Sorbian Grammar School
Suzanna Sikorski, DE Lower Sorbian Grammar School
Dialog Jury
Daniel Abma
Daniel Abma (born 1978 in the Netherlands) moved to Berlin after finishing his studies in Primary School Education. He worked as a media-literacy teacher before beginning his studies in Film Directing at the Film University Babelsberg. His feature length documentaries BEYOND WRIEZEN (2012), TRANSIT HAVANA (2016), and AUTOBAHN (2019) were shown at film festivals worldwide like Karlovy Vary FF, IDFA and DOK.Leipzig, and won several awards. Abma focuses on observational, character-based documentaries about social issues.
Inga Pylypchuk
Inga Pylypchuk is a documentary filmmaker and author. She was born in Ukraine in 1986 and studied German and comparative literature in Kyiv and Berlin. From 2012-2014 she completed a traineeship at the Axel Springer Academy, from 2019-2023 she studied documentary film directing at the filmArche in Berlin. She has worked as an author, reporter and film critic for German media and wrote the weekly column ‘Film nach Gefühl’ for ‘Welt Kompakt’ from 2012 to 2014. In 2023, her first medium-length autobiographical film ‘Wie fern ist nah’ (32 min.) premiered at the FilmFestival Cottbus. In 2024, she presented her new film ‘Teen Angst’ (38 min.) in the ‘Specials’ section in Cottbus. Inga Pylypchuk lives and works in Berlin.
Tamás Tóth
Graduates from the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography – Moscow (VGIK) and acquires a degree as film director. Debuts as a film director in a Russian feature film „Children of Iron God” (1993). Directs a number of feature films, documentaries, short films, commercials in Russia and Hungary. Directs documentary-fiction film in India. Participated in projects as First Assistant Director in Kazakhstan. Creates graphic series, oil paintings and book illustrations. Works in several fields of film industry.
Debut jury - members from the award-giving institutions BTU and Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF
Prof Dr Stefanie Kiwi Menrath
Stefanie Kiwi Menrath is a cultural anthropologist and cultural mediator. In practice and research, she is interested in cultural education in open settings, pop music cultures, radio/audio work & empowerment, transculturality and critique of discrimination as well as the collaboration of art and science.Since 2020, she has been Professor of Media Education: Aesthetic Practice in Social Work at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. She is co-founder of the Initiative for a Free Radio for Cottbus and the AG Utopia Kulturelle Bildung.
Susanne Eichner
Susanne Eichner is Professor of Analysis and Aesthetics of Audiovisual Media at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, where she teaches seminars in media analysis and media criticism and supervises the student film festival ‘Sehsüchte’. Before coming to Babelsberg in 2022, she was a professor at Aarhus University in Denmark and a member of a research project focussing on Danish and Scandinavian television series and their global success.
Her other research areas include reception aesthetics and audience research, media industry studies, as well as media sociology and agency.
Mimi Zak
Mimi Zak was born in Cologne. After graduating from high school, she travelled through South-East Asia and moved to Vienna. Studied political science and cultural and social anthropology. In 2019 she returned to Cologne to study directing at the Cologne International Film School. Since 2023 she has been studying documentary film directing in the Master's programme at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf.
FIPRESCI Jury
Armando Russi
Armando Russi, Colombian, is currently pursuing a PhD in Performing Arts and the Moving Image at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon. He is Professor of Film Studies - Theory and History. He is Film Critic, FIPRESCI Member and Journalist specialized in cinema under the direction of the Alucine 98.5fm program of the National University of Colombia station.
Silvia Bahl
Silvia Bahl is a media and cultural scientist and has been a freelance author and film critic for various print and online media for over ten years, including Freitag and Filmdienst with regular reports from Cannes, Venice and Berlin. In her doctorate at the graduate programme ‘Das Wissen der Künste’ at the Berlin University of the Arts, she dealt with the role of documentary and essay films in the legal processing of violence and the problem of justice from a media ethics perspective.
Jana Bébarová
Editor-in-chief of the Czech online film magazine 25fps and lecturer at Audiovisual Art Studio at FMC TBU Zlín, Czech Republic.
Ecumenical Jury
Christian Olding
Christian Olding (*1983) received in 2011 the ordination to the priesthood and is currently working as pastor in the parish St. Maria Magdalena in Geldern. His services are events full of medial and digital surprises for people of every age. His ambition: to communicate Jesus Christ’s message in a modern way of presenting, with video sequences and through sermons. He is convinced if Jesus would come back he had to create a new series on a movie platform to touch peoples heart with his parables. Since ever he has been inspired and moved by the aesthetic possibilities that movies offer. That made him ambitious to connect both worlds: cinema und church, faith and movies.
He already manages to do this in his project ‘Vision von Hoffnung’: church and cinema services, believer’s evenings, Dinner, religious excerises in cinema – all these events are components of this projects as well as various cooperations with photographers, artists and physiotherapists. And all these events focus on one goal: to convey belief in its relevance for daily life.
Gabriella Rácsok
Gabriella Rácsok (*1971) is an ordained minister of the Reformed Church in Hungary. She studied theology at the Sárospatak Reformed Theological Academy (1991-1996) and at Calvin Theological Seminary (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1998-2000). She holds an MA in English language and literature from the Debrecen University. She earned her PhD at the Debrecen Reformed Theological University in 2013 on the subject of theology and film. At present she is an associate professor and the vice rector of the Sárospatak Reformed Theological University. Besides teaching systematic theology, she also teaches film seminars. Board member of Interfilm Hungary. Member of the Ecumenical Jury at the Jameson Cinefest Miskolc (Hungary) 2018 and Locarno Film Festival 2019 (Switzerland).
Ines Gil
Dr Katrin Rudolph
Dr Katrin Rudolph (*1975) is superintendent in the church district of Zossen-Fläming, south of Berlin. She studied theology at Humboldt University in Berlin and Charles University in Prague and completed her doctorate in contemporary history (at the Centre for Research on Anti-Semitism, TU Berlin) in 2004. During her vicariate and as a parish priest, she worked in various Berlin parishes. Before becoming a pastor, she worked as a historian, in particular on the attitude of the church towards Jews and Christians of Jewish origin. What she particularly appreciates about film is the art of storytelling as a model for all kinds of communication. She was a member of the Ecumenical Jury in Zlín 2022.