International Documentary Competition

Mark Cousins

Chairman of the Documentary Competition
United Kingdom

He was born in 1965 in the United Kingdom. He is a film director, film critic, cinema fan and a traveller. He is also an author of reportage and documentary films. Cousins has hosted television programmes about films, worked as a university teacher and for many years he was the artistic director of the Edinburgh Film Festival. He is best known for his 15-hour project The Story of Film – an Odyssey in which he presents over 120 years of the history of the world’s cinema. His other pictures, such as The First Movie, The Eyes of Orson Welles and Women Make Film, have won numerous awards at international festivals. In his most recent, spontaneous production made during the lockdown, 40 Days to Learn Film, he takes the spectators on yet another film journey.

Margreth Olin

Norway

She was born in 1970 in Norway, where she studied in Bergen and Oslo. Primarily, she is a feature-length documentary film director, screenwriter and a producer. She also works on theatre projects and writes books. Her films are socially involved and often focus on human weaknesses. In 2002, her picture My Body was widely acclaimed by critics and audiences. Her next documentaries, Raw Youth (2005), The Angel  (2010) and Nowhere Home (2012), have won awards at numerous film festivals. Self Portrait, Olin’s latest award-winning production, was honoured at the Krakow Film Festival in 2020.

Radu Ciorniciuc

Romania

He was born in 1987 in Romania. He is a film director, cinematographer and an investigative journalist. For many years he worked as an author and reporter for a number of the world’s leading newspapers and television stations. His focus is, above all, on human rights, animal welfare and the environment. His debut picture Acasa, My Home was awarded for the best photography at the Sundance Film Festival and as the best documentary production at the Krakow Film Festival in 2020.

Péter Kerekes

Slovakia

He was born in 1973 in Slovakia. He studied film directing at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava where he works as a lecturer at present and, together with Dušan Hanák, has created a feature and documentary film studio. Kerekes is a director, screenwriter, producer and a consultant. In his films, he explores various areas of human life. His filmography includes Velvet Terrorists (2013), Cooking History (2009) and award-winning 66 Seasons (2003). He has been involved in the production the following pictures: Occupation 1968, The White World According to Daliborek (2017) directed by Vít Klusák and The Wind. A Documentary Thriller (2019) directed by Michał Bielawski.

Anna Wydra

Poland

She is the founder and head of Otter Films, a film production company from Warsaw with the focus on artistic feature films and documentaries. Her film and television productions are made primarily for the international market. Together with director Bartek Konopka, she has won an Oscar nomination for the documentary Rabbit a la Berlin. She has been a producer and a co-producer of numerous documentary films, including 6 Degrees by Bartosz Dombrowski, Deep Love by Jan P. Matuszyński, Domino Effect by Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosołowski, The Art of Disappearing by Bartek Konopka and Piotr Rosołowski and Communion by Anna Zamecka. Her productions have been awarded at numerous international film festivals. Anna Wydra collaborates with many education programmes, including IMPAKT and DocLabPoland, and she is a member of the European Film Academy.

International Short Film Competition

Anca Damian

Chairman of the Short Film Competition
Romania

She was born in 1962 in Romania. She studied at the National University of Theatre and Film, where she obtained a Diploma in Cinematography and a PhD in Art, Cinema and Media. After graduation she worked as a director, screenwriter and a producer of several documentary films about art as well as a cinematographer on two feature films and many documentary and short films. Her second picture Crulic – The Path to Beyond (2012) has received over 35 international awards. The Magic Mountain (2015) has been screened at over 60 festivals across the world and has won a few international awards. Her award-winning picture Marona’s Fantastic Tale (2019), which premiered in Annecy, has obtained a nomination to the European Film Awards.

Maciej Bochniak

Poland

He was born in 1984 in Krakow. A graduate of the Scriptwriting Programme at the Film School in Łódź, he works as a director and screenwriter. His film Disco Polo was honoured with the Janusz Morgenstern ‘Perspektywa’ Award for the best debut of 2015. He has directed documentary films screened at numerous international festivals, such as One Billion Happy People, Ethiopiques – Revolt of the Soul and The Party. He has also worked on televisions series, including The Teacher II, Diagnosis and Szadź. His latest picture Magnesium has won 4 awards at the 45th Gdynia Film Festival.

Darya Bassel

Ukraine

She was born in 1985 in Ukraine. After she earned her degree in German Studies in Odessa, she moved to Kiev where she worked as a producer on television productions and commercials. In 2011 she joined the team of the Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Kiev, where she still holds the position of a programmer and an industry head.  Along with her festival work, she has been involved in film production. In 2019, together with Vika Khomenko, she created the Moon Man studio which produces creative artistic documentary and feature films. She has been a jury member at such festivals as Visions du reel, Astra, IDFA, Cinedoc Tbilisi and OIFF.

Laura D’Asta

United Kingdom

She is an award-winning producer, film director, panellist as well as an artistic and programming director. She is a graduate of TorinoFilmLab and belongs to BFI BAFTA. For 14 years she has been working on short and feature films, documentaries and top-rated television series as well as dance projects and installations. In 2011 she received the Silver Dragon at the Krakow Film Festival for Baby directed by Daniel Mulloy. Together with Danish director Suvi Helminen and producer Ulrik Gutkin, she has been involved in the production of Connections, an interactive film developed at CPH: DOX Lab (2020-2021). Recently, she has completed an experimental artistic and dance project, Colours of Soul.

Felipe Montoya

Columbia

He was born in 1993 in Columbia. He graduated from Audiovisual Communication at the University of Antioquia and completed a postgraduate programme in Film Curating at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola. Since 2015 he has been the programming director of BOGOSHORTS – Bogotá Short Film Festival. He took part in Talent Press workshops as part of Talents Latin America 2020 and in ICO’s Developing Your Film Festival courses as well as in  EAVE’s Marketing Workshop in 2019. He has been a producer and press officer at Columbian film events, such as VARTEX Video Art and the Experimental Film Showcase.

National Competition

Jan P. Matuszyński

Chairman of the National Competition
Poland

He was born in 1984. He is a graduate of Film Directing at the Krzysztof Kieślowski Radio and Television Department of the University of Silesia in Katowice and the Documentary Programme at the Wajda School in Warsaw. His films have been screened at numerous festivals in Poland and abroad. His feature-length documentary Deep Love has won the Silver Hobby Horse at the Krakow Film Festival and the best documentary film award at IFF in Moscow. His full-length feature debut The Last Family has been honoured with numerous awards in Poland and abroad and considered ‘the most artistically mature debut of the recent seasons’. His latest feature film Leave No Traces tells the story of Grzegorz Przemyk.

Katarzyna Janowska

Poland

She is a press and television journalist who also works online. Until 2015 she was the director of the TVP Kultura channel and prior to that – the editor-in-chief of the Przekrój weekly. As the editor-in-chief of the Onet Kultura online service she founded O!Lśnienia, a cultural award of the year with an aim to promote Polish culture. She has co-authored the book ‘W którą stronę zmierza świat’. Since March 2021 she has been the chief producer of cultural contents in the ONET RASP media group. She is a laureate of many journalism awards and has been honoured by the Art Museum museum in Łódź for art promotion. She is a nominee to the  MediaTory Award in the category of InicjaTOR for her own programme ‘Rezerwacja’.She is an author and co-host of ‘Hala odlotów’, a talk show at TVP Kultura which was the Grand Press winner in 2015.

Krzysztof Czyżewski

Poland

He was born in 1958. He is a graduate of Polish Philology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He has lectured at many universities in Europe and the US and currently works as a professor at the University of Bologna. He is an animator of intercultural dialogue programmes in Central Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Indonesia, Bhutan and other borderlands of the world. He co-creates the Borderland Foundation, the ‘Borderland of Arts, Cultures and Nations’ Centre in Sejny and the International Dialogue Centre in Krasnogruda. He has been honoured with the Ambassador of New Europe Award for his latest collection of essays ‘W stronę Xenopolis’.

Piotr Bernaś

Poland

He was born in 1973. A graduate of the Wajda Film School in Warsaw and the National Film and TV School in the United Kingdom, he is a director and a cinematographer who used to work as a war photographer. A double laureate of the Golden Frog at Camerimage, for Paparazzi (2011) and The Whale from Lorino (2020), he was nominated to the European Film Award in 2011 and the Grierson Award in 2018. He has taught at the cinematographic workshop at NFTS in England and at the Reportage Laboratory at the University of Warsaw. In his films, he emphasises visual elements and the metaphor of a single image. He combines camera observation with feature narration focusing on details and authenticity of the situations captured.

Adriana Prodeus

Poland

A graduate of Art History at the University of Wrocław, she works as an art and film critic. In the KINO monthly she is responsible for an editorial theme selection and develops a reportage series about animation studios. She writes a column, Demontaż atrakcji, for Vogue. She has hosted cultural programmes in public media, such as WOK. Wszystko o Kulturze in TVP2 (MediaTory Award in 2013), Weekendowy Magazyn Filmowy in TVP1 and O wszystkim z kulturą in PR2. Her articles have been published in many newspapers and magazines. She is an author of the book ‘Themersonowie. Szkice biograficzne’ (2009). She is a lecturer at the Art Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She specialises in film avant-garde and animation. She works as a curator of the adaptation review at the International Short Story Festival in Wrocław and of the programmes at the New Horizons festival in Wrocław as well as the  Anthology Film Archive in New York.

FIPRESCI

Vladimir Seput

Croatia

Film critic and curator. For over 10 years he has been translating articles about cinematography for various European newspapers. He also edits books on philosophy, critical theory and contemporary art.

Dieter Wieczorek

France

Film critic. He publishes in European magazines. He has been a co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Interference, the International Independent Journal of Film and Festival Review. He has also created an audiovisual festival, Festival International Signes de Nuit.

Piotr Czerkawski

Poland

Programme curator of Cinema New Horizons in Wroclaw and film critic. He has won the award of the Polish Film Institute in the category of film reviews. He is an author of the book ‘Drżące kadry. Rozmowy o życiu filmowym w PRL-u’ and a member of the European Film Academy.

Jury FICC

  • Igor Dąbrowski

    Poland
  • Nóra Sándor

    United Kingdom
  • Rajbhushan Shyamsundar Sahasrabuddhe

    India

Students’ Jury

  • Jędrzej Kościński, Joanna Krygier, Emilia Kutrzeba, Mateusz Leśniak, Paulina Gandor, Monika Pietras, Krzysztof Strumiński, Olga Trembach, Agnieszka Wójtowicz