Jurors

Una Gunjak is a Sarajevo born, Paris based writer, director and editor. She studied in Italy and in the UK, where she obtained her MA in Editing at the National Film and TV School. In 2014, her short film The Chicken premiered at the Cannes Film Festival Critics’ Week and won the European Film Award for Best Short. Excursion, Una’s first feature film had its world premiere at Locarno Film Festival 2023, opening the Concorso Cineasti del Presente programme and taking home the Special Mention Award.Una is an editing consultant for First Cut Lab and is currently developing her sophomore project.

Adela Komrzy (1992) studied History of Art at Charles University and documentary department at FAMU. In 2018 she was selected to participate at Berlinale Talents and at the same year she was on an internship at Filmuni Babelsberg Konrad Wolf (directing). She participated at IDFAcademy Summer School 2019, IDFAcademy 2019 and ExOriente Forum 2020. As a production assistant, she worked on TV miniseries “Burning Bush” (prod. nutprodukce, HBO, dir. Agnieszka Holland, 2013). Her film “Teaching war” (prod. Hypermarketfilm, Czech TV, FAMU) about militarization of Czech society was awarded and featured at international film festivals (IDFF Ji.hlava, One World, DocLisboa, ZagrebDox, goEast, etc.). Her latest feature documentary Viva video, video viva (UPP, Czech TV) premiered at IDFF Jihlava 2019 and was released by distributor Aerofilms and Artinii.

Michael Renov is the Haskell Wexler Endowed Chair in Documentary and Vice Dean of Academic Affairs in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He is the author or editor of several books on documentary film including Theorizing Documentary, Collecting Visible Evidence and The Subject of Documentary. In 1993 Renov co-founded the Visible Evidence conference, a series of international and highly interdisciplinary documentary studies conferences that have, to date, been held on five continents. He has served as a jury member at documentary festivals including Sundance, Silverdocs, the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival, Brazil's It's All True, the International Environmental Festival of Film and Video, also in Brazil, DocLisboa in Portugal and the EBS International Documentary Film Festival in Seoul, South Korea. He has taught graduate seminars at the University of Stockholm, Tel Aviv University and Central European University in Budapest, Hungary and has led documentary workshops in Jordan for the Royal Film Commission, in Cyprus and Vietnam.

Christopher Small is a writer, filmmaker, and curator, originally from the United Kingdom and living in Prague, Czech Republic. In addition to his work as the co-editor and publisher of Outskirts Film Magazine, he is the head of the Locarno Critics Academy, a respected workshop in film criticism that runs during Locarno Film Festival. He is also the chief curator of DAFilms, the VOD platform of the festival association Doc Alliance. From 2019-21, he was a programmer at Sheffield Doc/Fest, and curated the festival’s 2020 retrospective strand, Reimagining the Land. He was also the programmer-at-large at Kino Petrohradská, a Prague-based independent cinema that closed in late 2023.

Andri Snær Magnason is an Icelandic writer born in Reykjavík in 1973. His work ranges from poetry to non fiction, children's literature and documentary film. His books are published in more than 40 languages. He has won the Icelandic literary Award in all categories and numerous international awards in fiction, non fiction, science fiction and children's literature. He won the Tiziano Terzani Award in Italy for On Time and Water, the Philip K. Dick honorary mention in USA for LoveStar and the and the Icelandic literary Award in all categories. His film Dreamland 2009 opened in the main competition of IDFA in 2009 and The Hero's Journey to the Third Pole in CPH:DOX in 2021. His latest book "On Time and Water", is a narrative nonfiction about seeking a new language to explain the climate crisis, through science, family stories and mythology, available in 30 languages.

Paris Marx is a Canadian tech critic and host of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast. He also writes the Disconnect critical technology newsletter and is the author of “Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation.”

Robert Kirchhoff (1968) studied at the University Of performing Arts in Bratislava where he works as an associate professor today. He is founder of production company atelier.doc, which during its almost twenty years of existence has collaborated on the most important documentary works in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Besides filmmaking, Robert coaches starting directors and he has given Master Classes for film students. He is a member of European Film Academy.

Lucie Králová was born in 1978 in Rokycany, Czechoslovakia. She is a writer and director, known for Ztracená dovolená (2006), Zlopovestné díte (2003) and Pahrbek ceský (2009). Source: www.imdb.com

Klára Vlasáková je scenáristka, spisovatelka, dramaturgyně a publicistka. V roce 2022 měl na mezinárodním filmovém festivalu v Benátkách film podle jejího scénáře Běžná selhání, za který byla nominována na Cenu české filmové kritiky. Píše scénáře pro rozhlas – hry (Valentýnův první den na Zemi nebo Moje sestra Toyen) a hrané podcasty (Neklid, Rituál). V roce 2020 jí vyšel román Praskliny, letos novela Těla.

A film director, editor and photographer born in Kiev, Ukraine. Anna graduated from of the Centre for Audio-visual Studies at Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU, Prague). She previously studied theatre directing at KNUTKT and alternative theatre directing at Prague’s DAMU. Her films and performances were screened at Ji.hlava IDFF, Fluidum Festival, Visions du Reél and DOK Leipzig. Her found-footage film Silently Like a Comet won her the prize for the Best Experimental Act at Famufest 2014. Her last film Listen to the Horizon won the Best Czech Experimental Documentary award at the Ji.hlava IDFF 2015. Her feature debut My Unknown Soldier premiered and was awarded in the main competition at ZagrebDOX 2019. Her newest feature work in progress project Sun of the Living Dead was presented at Marche Du Film by Cannes Film Festival 2020. Her newest short films Easier Than You Think won the Jury Award of Other Vision competition 2022 (PAF, Czech Republic).

ryna Kryvenko se narodila v Kyjevě (Ukrajina), kde žila do roku 2022. Vystudovala lingvistiku na Kyjevské národní univerzitě, které se od té doby věnuje profesionálně. Je odbornicí na angličtinu, španělštinu a francouzštinu. V posledních letech se věnuje překladům z oblasti historické literatury a výuce cizích jazyků.

Ivo Bystrican (*1980) graduated from Sociology and Social Policy-Social Work. Currently he is studying the last grade of Documentary Filmmaking at Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Czech Republic. He focuses especially on social topics. His author documentary films were screened by festivals in China, Izrael, Canada, Brazil, France, Spain, Moldovia, Germany and many other countries. For CEE Bankwatch Network he directed his last feature documentary film Copper Age which reveals paradoxical nature of European development help in Zambian copper mining industry. Ivo Bystrican as a director also cooperates with Czech Television and with variety of NGOs. Source: dafilms.com

Czech novelist and journalist Platzová is the author of The Return of a Friend (2004), Aaron’s Leap (2006), and The Recycled Man (2008), plus the short story collection Salt, Sheep, and Stone (2003) and the children’s book Toník and the Cave of Dreams (2010). Her novel The Attempt was published in 2013, and in 2018 she published The Other Side of Silence. She has worked as an actress and translator, and also as a journalist and editor for Literární noviny and Respekt, where she still publishes today.

Gugi is currently based in Jakarta and Berlin, where he is currently appointed as an Executive Director for an award-winning organisation: In-Docs, the non-profit behind Docs by the Sea and Good Pitch Asia and VitaminDocs. Moreover, the Documentary of Association of Europe (DAE) has elected him to its Executive Board since 2022. His work includes mentoring/consulting on projects and impact campaign strategies. He has also often delivered talks about equitable international co-production practices with focus on Asia. As part of his diverse experience, he has been involved as a film curator, guest programmer, selection committee member, and jury member for several reputable regional and international film festivals and film funds. The following are among them: International Documentary Association (IDA), Purin Pictures, DOK Leipzig, Sunny Side of the Doc, Cannes Docs, IDFA Forum, Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM), CPH:DOX, Points North Institute, Dokufest etc.

Gita is the Director of FilmAid, a global project of Internews that uses film to engage and empower marginalized voices across the globe. She joined FilmAid after producing and programming documentary films for many years, most notably with Chicago-based film collective Kartemquin Films. She series produced the acclaimed series The New Americans, a multi-part Independent Lens series and impact campaign following immigrants and refugees from across the world through their first years in the US. After producing and editing for many years, she pivoted to serving as Executive Director of the Big Sky Film Institute and the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, where she led thematic programming initiatives around Indigenous storytelling, youth programming and environmental justice. She currently sits on the board of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and as a Grants Advisor to The Redford Center.

Gyöngyi Bujdosó is an associate professor at the Faculty of Informatics, University of Debrecen, Hungary. She also worked as a database programmer, web developer, and web designer. She researches the use of Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality and other disruptive technologies in education, such as eye tracking. She is the founder and the leader of the Women in Informatics group in Hungary. She is a member of a number of professional communities in CS. She has post-graduate degrees: DEA (Université de Savoie, France), Ph.D. and habilitation in Computer Science and Mathematics (UD and ELTE, Hungary).

Krzysztof Pijarski is a visual artist/researcher/educator/translator. He is associate professor at the Film School in Łódź, where he founded and co-directs the Visual Narratives Laboratory (https://vnLab.org), a media lab focused on the evolution of visual storytelling into such areas as XR, stereoscopic 3D, interactive web-based pieces, or the film essay. A big part of his work at the vnLab is focused on the Interactive Narratives Studio, where he works on developing webdocs and other narrative and archival interactive pieces, especially in the transmedial space. His interest lies above all in exploring convincing visual forms of thinking: visual essays, atlases, analogies. Out of his engagement with bound content, he initiated the PubLab Collective around his vision for web publications as an evolution of the printed book. he has published books on Allan Sekula, Michael Fried, Thomas Struth, and Zofia Rydet. He is a founding editor at View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture (https://pismowidok.org).

Vojtěch Radakulan (1991, Praha, CZ) absolvoval sochařství na UMPRUM a architekturu na AVU Praha. Doktorand na ČVUT, zaměřuje se na počítačovou grafiku a interakce. Jeho práce spojuje výtvarné umění, architekturu a herní design s důrazem na simulace a tvorbu fikčních světů (worldbuilding). Využívá ruční kresby, text, instalace a herní technologie. Návštěvníci mohou prozkoumat komplexní témata, jako jsou nové technologie, asymetrické vztahy a globální problémy, z různých perspektiv. Prezentoval své práce na významných výstavách, včetně Benátského bienále architektury (2021), Ars Electronica (2018) a galerie Husslehof.