Jury 2020

Malini Fonseka – Sri Lanka

Malini Fonseka is a veteran Sri Lankan film actress. In her glorious career spanning over 50 years, she has acted in more than 140 films. She has been an integral part of defining the Sri Lankan cinema for what it is right now.
Born on 30 April 1947 as Wanniarachchige Malini Senehelatha Fonseka, she took the stage name Malini Fonseka. Her first notable role was in Tissa Liyansooriya's Punchi Baba (1968). She first became widely known when she won the 'Best Actress Award' at the 1969 National State Drama Festival. This was followed by Sarasaviya Best Actress Awards for Hingana Kolla in 1980, Aradhana in 1982 and Yasa Isuru in 1983.
Some of her successful films are Nidhanaya by Lester James Peiris, Siripala Saha Ranmenika by Amaranath Jayathilake, Eya Den Loku Lamayek and Bambaru Ewith by Dharmasena Pathiraja. She achieved a significant milestone in her artistic career with Sasara Chetana (1984), where she became both its director and producer. Malini has directed few films so far, notably amongst them are: Ahimsa (!987) and Sthree (1991). She has also worked with Indian Tamil legend, Sivaji Ganeshan in Pilot Premnath.
Malini has won numerous National, and International awards. She is the first Sri Lankan film personality to win international awards at such scale. She won Special Jury Award at Moscow IFF in 1975, and Special Mention Award at IFF India in 1977. Apart from this, she received Best Actress Award at IFF India in 2008 for a landmark film - Akasa Kusum.
For a brief period of time, Malini Fonseka was elected representative and a member of Sri Lankan parliament.
Malini still continues to work in Sri Lankan cinema. An actor extraordinaire, a screen legend, she was named as one of Asia's 25 greatest film actors of all time by CNN in 2010.

Dubravka Lakic - Serbia

Biography - Dubravka Lakic (born in Belgrade) is the famous film critic and columnist from Belgrade, Serbia. She is European Film Academy member, Fedeora executive Board member, and Fipresci member. She is known as a film selector of Cinema City International Film Festival – Novi Sad and member of the Board of Serbian Film Center.
She is author of the books Close Up – Masters of modern direction , Monography about Serbian director Goran Paskaljevic, Film and Video, Introducing Youth, Fedeora presents: Dorota Kedzierdzavska- Polish film writer and director, Fedeora presents: Andreas Dresen - German film director and Fedeora presents: Eran Riklis – Israeli film director, Dubravka Lakic is author of the European concept of Palic Film Festival where she was longtime film selector and founder of TOLERANCE AWARD for best films of Eastern Europe.
She was a longtime council member of Belgrade FEST and founder of Eritrocit Award for the best European film and Milutin Colic Award for the best Serbian film. Dubravka Lakic is also known as author of specialized TV program about films – KINO KLUB.

Mazhar Kamran - India

Biography - Mazhar Kamran grew up in the metropolitan cities of India and at first studied engineering before taking up filmmaking. Mazhar started out as a filmmaker with a tiny crew of three - focusing on culture and science for popular television programmes in India, "Surabhi” and "Turning Point” respectively in the 1990s.
His work allowed him to travel widely to far-flung places from Kashmir to Orissa, Almora to Sasaram, which he terms his educative "Discovery of India” journey. His debut in Indian cinema began as a cinematographer for the feature film Satya(1998), which has become a landmark film of Indian cinema.
Thereafter, he shot many successful films in diverse genres, such as "Kaun", "Jhankaar Beats" and “Masti”. He departed from doing cinematography of mainstream motion pictures to make his directorial debut in 2009 with the independent feature film “Mohandas". Critically acclaimed upon release, Mohandas was nominated for several national and international film festival awards. Shot on location in the coal mines, it captured in an unflinching manner the struggles of a naïve young man to prove his identity, usurped by a criminal.
Mazhar’s work gained a lot of recognition as he was nominated for at Grand Prix (Regard d'Or) Fribourg International Film Festival in 2009. In the same year, he was nominated in the Emerging New Directors section at San Francisco International Film Festival. He won a Special Jury Prize at Innsbruck International Film Festival, Austria. Mazhar has also directed and produced documentary films in parallel.
Two films on the life and work of authors, Qurratulain Hyder and Naiyer Masud, who have won India's highest awards for literature, were commissioned by the Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Letters, India). He made an award-winning film on his home-town. 'Uncle- the school in himself' is his most recent documentary film,'The Photographer' and 'Nilani', his recent fiction films. Mazhar Kamran also teaches world cinema and filmmaking at IIT Bombay.

Rajula Shah - India

Biography - Rajula is a Visual artist, Poet and Filmmaker. After a Masters in Literature, she studied filmmaking at FTII, Pune. Her work is located in the interstice of Poetry, Cinema and Anthropology. A keen interest in the indigenous knowledge systems and the changing practices thereof form the core of her study; her practice emerges through a close collaboration with people, their histories and environments.
She has been producing/ directing for well over a decade and continues to explore boundaries of fiction/non-fiction & the emergent new media arts.Her films have screened in festivals, museums and across Academic/ Art contexts, earning critical acclaim.
Among significant awards are the Horizonte Preis at Dokfest Munich Germany for Word within the word 2008; Signs jury award for Beyond the wheel 2005, John Abraham National Award for Best Experimental film 2013 for ReTold by Loknath & for short fiction Jumbled Cans in 2014.She writes fiction and poetry in Hindi; also writes on Cinema. Her poetry collection in Hindi Parchhain ki Khirki se is awarded & published by Bharatiya Gyanpeeth for best New Writing, 2004; Among her translations, Ela Bhatt's We are Poor but so many and selected letters of Vincent Van Gogh Mujh par Bharosa Rakhna are prominent. Has been on the Jury for National Film Awards, on panels for seminars, talks and conferences for Cinema, Fine Arts and Media and continues to mentor young scriptwriters and film directors in various film & media schools including alma mater Film & Television Institute of India, Pune.

Istvan Kovacs - Hungary

Biography: Born in 1985 in then-Yugoslavia as a Hungarian minority, István Kovács spent most his youth in the Southern Hungarian town of Szeged, where he graduated at the Faculty of Law. He got enrolled to the University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest in 2011, where he got his Director BA degree in the class of János Szász. ‘The Sound of Concrete’ was his graduation film which had won many prizes and selected by A-list festivals such as Montreal World Film Festival or Cairo International Film Festival. In 2018, he finished studying at the school’s Director MA training in the class of Ildikó Enyedi. His graduation movie A SIEGE has won many prizes including the Student Oscar, the CILECT Prize, the AFI Special Jury Award, Gold YDA at Cannes Lions and more.

Vishka Assayesh - Iran

Biography: Vishka Asayesh was born on November 7, 1972 in Tehran. She is an Iranian actress, set designer and an art director. She obtained a degree in set design from the U.K. She is also a sculptor and has exhibited her art works at Etemad Gallery in Tehran in 2012. VishkaAsayesh is an Iranian actress, performer, art director, and sculptor. She became a household name following her portrayal of a femme fatale in the epic hit TV series Imam Ali. She has been nominated 3 times for the best actress award of the Fajr Film Festival and won the Crystal Simorgh for best actress in a leading role in 2011 for No Men Allowed. This was the first time this award was bestowed to a female in a comedy role in the history of this festival.
Her most successful films include No Men Allowed (2011), Sperm Whale (2015), Me and Sharmin (2017), The Good, the Bad & the Corny (2017), and Sly (2018). Her latest role is in The Badger (2019) and is a total shift from her comedy performances in recent years. Her stage performances include The Beauty Queen of Leenane (2013), a dramatic play written by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, and Mississipi Dies Seated (2016), based on a play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Vishka was also nominated for the best leading actress award for her role in The Beauty Queen of Leenane by the 11th Iranian Theater Actor Festival. Sculpting is one of Vishka’s main passions apart from cinema and theatre and she has already exhibited her art at Etemad and Assar galleries in Tehran and is currently working on her next exhibition due in 2020.

Lutz Konermann - Germany

Biography: Lutz Konermann is a multiple award-winning freelance film professional and film faculty with more than thirty years of international work experience in the production, consulting and training landscape. As a cinematographer, director, screenwriter, script and editing consultant as well as producer he has so far been credited on more than a hundred fiction and documentary films, including international co-productions.
Being a co-founder of the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg in Ludwigsburg (Germany), Lutz has been the designer and coordinator of the interdisciplinary curriculum of one of Europe’s most renowned film schools. Today, he is heading the Filmakademie’s fiction department with a record of developing and mentoring more than two hundred student film productions, including four Student Academy Award™ winners as well as A-Festival and German National Film Award winners and nominees. As a board member of FOCAL , the Swiss foundation for professional training in cinema and audiovisual media in Lausanne (Switzerland), he has been designing and heading script development programs and talent-scouting fellow trainers in all fields of audiovisual media production for twenty years. Lutz is a multiple German National Film Award winner, a winner of the German Camera Award, the Max-Ophuels-Award, the City of Munich Film Award, the Adolf-Grimme-Award (German Emmy), and he has received numerous awards at international festivals.
He is member of both the Swiss and the German Film Academy and has been a long standing board member of the Swiss Film Directors and Screenwriters Guild. Recently, Lutz has once again devoted himself increasingly to camera work and, in addition to his own projects, has produced and photographed the films of the Indian filmmaker Farida Pacha. Her acclaimed documentary My Name is Salt (2013) won him several recognitions, amongst which the main awards at Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) and CMS Vatavaran Film Festival, New Delhi, for best production and best cinematography.

Marie-Pierre Brêtas - France

Biography: Marie-Pierre Brêtas is a French filmmaker who works on films that are niche in their own way - as they depict the true essence of their surroundings. Her films blur the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction. Born in Toulouse in 1961, she stayed for two years in Oran, Algeria between 1969 and 1971. After coming back to France, she discovered the cine clubs and with them, John Ford, Glauber Rocha. While spending her youth in the Parisian suburbs, she did a freshman year course at the Claude Monet high school and studied Modern literature at the Sorbonne, Upon completing that she became a journalist and worked in at Le Matin de Paris.
She moved to New York in 1986 where she worked few odd jobs and then eventually working on film sets. She worked as an intern on production design department of some films, including The Spike of Bensonhurst by Paul Morrissey. From 1988 to 1989, she studied cinema at 3IS and then in 1997 studied directing at Ateliers Varan. There she met Raphaël Girardot and Laurent Salters with whom she directed a documentary for Arte, called My Work Is Important. It showcased the life and troubles of many employees, in fact, entire town when a long running big factory closed down. While working as a filmmaker, she continued her journalism work with the international editorial staff of France 2.
In 2009, she toured in the northeast of Brazil, while shooting and doing the sound alone when she made, La Campagne de Sao José (The Forest of San José), and then later on a documentary Hautes Terres (Highland). It won her Special Mention Award at 2014 Cinema du Reel FF. The film was released in theatres in 2014.

Jury 2020

Jury 2020

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