Joel Potrykus
American writer & director Joel Potrykus lives in Grand Rapids, MI, where he works with filmmaking band, Sob Noisse. His work has screened at SXSW, the Lincoln Center, the MoMA, AFI Fest, and the Cinémathèque Française in Paris. Honors include Best New Director at the Locarno Film Festival, the FIPRESI Prize at the Ljubliana International Film Festival, Films en cours award at the Festival Belfort Entrevue in France, and his screenplay for Buzzard is part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science Permanent Collection.

He teaches filmmaking at Michigan State University.

Serge Bozon
Born in 1972, Serge Bozon initially worked as an actor and film critic (Trafic, Lettre du Cinéma, Cahiers du cinéma, Transfuge, Vertigo) before directing his first feature, L’Amitié (1998). He has also made Mods (2002) and La France (2006), screened in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes and winner of the Prix Jean Vigo. In 2013, Tip-Top received a SACD Special Mention at Cannes.

Konstantina Kotzamani
Konstantina Kotzamani was born and raised in Greece. She graduated from the Film Department after completing her Degree in Pharmacy. Her short movies have premiered in major festivals such as Cannes, Berlinale, Locarno and have received numerous international awards. For her short films Washingtonia (2014) and Limbo (2016), she has been twice awarded by the Greek Film Academy with the best short film award and twice nominated by the European Film Academy for the best short of the year (EFA award).

Her films have been sold and broadcasted in European channels such as ARTE, FRANCE TV, in Asia and USA and have been distributed on platforms like Criterion, MUBI etc. Konstantina, beneficiary of the Onassis Foundation Scholarship recently spent a year in Buenos Aires in order to develop her first feature film script, Titanic Ocean, in collaboration with UCINE (Universidad del Cine de Buenos Aires) under the supervision of the tutor Agustin Mendilaharzu. Her short films have been the theme of retrospectives in festivals like BAFICI, Go SHORTS, Festival du Nouveau Cinema MONTREAL, AMIENS FILM FESTIVAL, Mecal Barcelona Film Festival etc, while she has been invited as a jury member in multiple short film festivals. Her last short film Limbo was qualified for the short films Oscar nomination in 2017.

Johann Lurf
Born in Vienna in 1982. Since 2002 he has studied at Vienna´s Academy of Fine Arts. 2009 diploma at Harun Farocki´s filmclass.

David Thion
Graduated from La Fémis, David Thion started his career at Les Films Pelléas in 1997. He has produced near than 20 feature films in the past 20 years, from directors such as Mia Hansen-Løve, Serge Bozon, Arthur Harari, Katell Quillévéré, Karim Moussaoui and just recently Justine Triet. Most of the films he produced have been selected in category A festivals (Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Locarno).

David Thion is a member of ACE and has coproduction experience with many different countries such as Germany, Belgium, Romania, Austria, Algeria…

Adam J. Minnick
Adam J. Minnick es un cinematógrafo americano que reside en Austin, Texas. Es conocido por su trabajo en Buzzard (2014), The Alchemist Cookbook (2016) y Actor Martínez (2016). Minnick estudió Fotografía en la Universidad Estatal de Colorado y posteriormente, continuó trabajando en más películas. Sus próximos trabajos incluyen colaboraciones en largometrajes de directores como Nathan Silver, Jack Dunphy, Caleb Johnson y su viejo colaborador creativo, Joel Potrykus.

Kazik Radwanski
Studied film at Ryerson University co-founded the production company MDFF in 2008. His short films screened at the Berlinale Shorts Competition for three consecutive years. In 2012 Radwanski directed his first feature film Tower which had its world premiere at the 65th Locarno International Film Festival. The film went on to screen at many festivals including The Toronto International Film Festival, The Viennale, and New Directors/ New Films presented by MoMA. His second feature How Heavy This Hammer had its international premiere at The 66th Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for Best Canadian film of the Year by the Toronto Film Critics Association. Most recently his short film Scaffold was invited to screen at the 70th Locarno International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival and New York Film Festival.

Donal Foreman
Donal Foreman was born in Dublin, 1985. He is an Irish filmmaker living in New York City. He has been making films since he was 11 years old. Since then, he has written, directed and edited over fifty short films, and in 2013 he completed his first feature film, Out of Here. The film was theatrically released at the Irish Film Institute in 2014, receiving 4-star reviews from major newspapers including the Irish Times, the Independent and the Sunday Business Post. The Irish Times praised the film as “profound, humorous and touching” with “note-perfect performances”.

At age 17, he won the title of Ireland’s Young Filmmaker of the Year, and more recently he has been nominated for the Rising Star award at the Irish Film & TV Awards, and awarded the Discovery Award from the Dublin Film Critics Circle. He’s an alumnus of the Irish National Film School and the Berlinale Talent Campus, and, since 2011, a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective. As a film critic, he has written for many publications including Cahiers du Cinema and Filmmaker Magazine, and as a teaching artist, he was worked with public school students across New York City for the Tribeca Film Institute among other organizations.

Frederick Sølberg
Frederik Sølberg is a Copenhagen based award-winning Danish filmmaker, TV producer, and musician. For more than a decade he had directed music videos, live visuals, documentaries, and commercial films working for record labels, artists, and clients like CZAR Brussels, Henrik Vibskov, Captured Tracks, Canvas, CPH:DOX, and DR. Since 2012 he had also worked as a freelance producer and filmmaker for various TV productions companies like Metronome, DocEye, Monday Media, and Pipeline Production.

His debut feature documentary film DOEL had its world premiere in the NEXT:WAVE competition at CPH:DOX 2018.

Cyril Schäublin
Cyril Schäublin (b. 1984 in Zurich), a descendant of a watch factory worker family, left Switzerland in 2004 to live in Beijing, China. In 2006 he moved back to Europe to study cinema in Paris and Berlin, where he graduated at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin in 2012; here, he was a student of Lav Diaz and James Benning. In 2017 he founded the production company Seeland Filmproduktion in Zurich. His first feature film Dene wos guet geit (Those who are fine, 2017), “depicting everyday life in Swiss capitalism”, premiered in Locarno and Rotterdam to critical acclaim. He lives and works in Zurich.

Antoine Bourges
Antoine Bourges is a Toronto-based filmmaker originating from Paris, France. His shorts Woman Waiting (2010) and William in white shirt(2014), along with his mid-length film East Hastings Pharmacy (2012), have screened in festivals across North America and Europe, including the Berlin International Film Festival, the Viennale and TIFF.

Fail to appear (2017) is his first narrative feature.

Daniela Weber
She was born on October 12, 1961 in Germany. Graduated as a publicist, with theater and film studies from the FU Berlin (Free University of Berlin). For two years she was the correspondent in the area of ​​cinematography, theater and art for the Mexican newspaper El Economista. During 1991 and 1992 she was a recording director at the Deutsche Synchron dubbing company. From 1992 to 1996 she organized the European cooperation seminars for the CECOP in Potsdam, Leipzig, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Brussels. During the 90s and 00s, she directed and produced short films in Super 8mm, stories like: Cupido, L’oiseau de Québec and Il Barbiere di Noto, as well as dance productions: The Pretty Little Horror Show and Strong Suough. Since 1990 she has been working at the Berlin International Film Festival, at the beginning she was in the protocol office and from 1993 to date, she is a programmer; understanding the process of film selection, the programming of the same (in competition and Berlinale Special) and the coordination of the samples.

Emilie Poirier
Emilie Poirier’s current practice revolves around art history/cultural studies, film festival curating and how the two intersect and interact. She is short film programmer at the Festival du nouveau cinema (FNC) where she curates the national competition. She is currently writing her master thesis in Art History at Université de Montréal, where her academic research examines collaborations between pop culture and contemporary art and on the blurred boundaries between different types of cultural production. Poirier holds a BA in political science (international relations) from UQAM (2010) and a certificate in art history from Université de Montréal (2014).

Fog Forest
Fog Forest is a Beijing filmmaker who loves art films and wants to express and share his opinion about Chinese society and the world through his films. He loves independent films rather than commercial movies. His first feature film The End of Wind is a tribute to Jim Jarmusch and Gus Van Sant.

Laurence Garret
After ten years of working in fashion as a stylist and assistant to photographers, Laurence Garret made her first film from super 8 archive footage. She was also trained in documentary cinema and camera in Lussas. Garret made the experimental film Nowhere Luis Buñuel (2013), and after that she directed and wrote Por la libertad (2017).