Jury members

Competition Jury

Mike Downey

Bio

Mike Downey, producer, and CEO of Film and Music Entertainment (F&ME), launched his independent UK production company 11 years ago. He has produced and co-produced since then more than 40 feature films.

F&ME’s catalogue includes White Lightnin’, Son of Man, Saul Metzstein’s Guy X, Deathwatch, Academy Award nominated Before The Rain as well as Srdjan Dragojevic’s multi award winning Berlinale hit The Parade, which can be seen at TIFF 2012. Serving his eighth year as European Film Academy Board Member, Downey’s tow volume series of books The Film Finance Handbooks - a Guide for European Producers are published by the Media Business School.

Educated in theatre at University of Warwick, with postgraduate studies at the University of Paris - III (Sorbonne), and a Maitrise from Paris - X (Nanterre), he has long taught on the MEGA European Masters programme. He is professor of film at Ohio University, and on the Film Board Oklahoma University, President of the Motovun Film Festival in Croatia and Artistic Advisor to the Zagreb Film Festival working closely with Amnesty International establishing Amnesty Human Rights Awards at international film festivals.

Ana Ularu

Bio

Ana Ularu (aged 26) began acting at the age of nine with a role in Claude-Michel Rome's thriller Proxy Murders, followed the next year by Deadly Passion. Since graduating with a BA and MFA in Acting from the National University of Theatre and Cinematography in Bucharest, she has worked on more than 20 short and feature films, including Cristian Mungiu's segment of the Lost and Found omnibus, Turkey Girl, and Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth. In 2010, Ana received a Boccalino d'Oro award in Locarno and the Best Actress Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival for her portrayal of Matilda in Bogdan Apetri's Outbound. She has since appeared in Daniele Vicari's Diaz and Anca Damian's latest film A Very Unsettled Summer.

Samuel Maoz

Bio

Samuel Maoz is an acclaimed Israeli director. He was born in 1962 in Tel Aviv and fought in the 1982 Lebanon War as a member of a tank crew. In 1987, he completed his studies of cinematography at the University of Arts in Tel-Aviv, and in 1990-1992 he made fifty episodes of the TV Comics Series 008 and his battle against the enemies of the human race.

He made several documentaries – Total Eclipse (2001), The Devil from Moscow (2003) and The Insufferable Lightness of Being (2005) – before directing his feature debut, Lebanon (2009). The film received Golden Lion Award for Best Film at Venice Film Festival, the European Discovery 2010, the FIPRESCI Prize and the Carlo Di Palma & European Cinematographer Award 2010 at the European Film Awards 2010, and Grand Jury Prize & Best Script at Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

Kjartan Sveinsson

Bio

Kjartan Sveinsson (born 1978) is since 1998 keyboardist of the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós. He plays flute, tin whistle, oboe and even the banjo, as well as many of the unorthodox instruments that contribute to Sigur Rós's distinctive sound.

Kjartan Sveinsson composed the score for short and feature films such as: Academy Award nominated short film The Last Farm, Ramin Bahrani's Plastic Bag, Neil Jordan's Ondine and Rúnar Rúnarsson's Volcano, winner of Best Directing Award at Transilvania IFF 2011.

Mark Adams

Bio

Mark Adams has worked in the film industry for more than 25 years. He has written, reviewed and edited for Screen International, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Moving Pictures International, and is also currently Film Critic for The Sunday Mirror. He worked as Director of Programming at the National Film Theatre for six years and was Director of Cinema at the International Council on Archives for four years, and has acted as a consultant programmer to various film festivals around the world, as well as writing several books about cinema.

Romanian Days Feature Jury

Guilhem Caillard

Bio

Guilhem Caillard is a film critic for Panorama-cinéma, a Canadian magazine which features critical reviews and in-depth analysis of mainstream and independent filmmaking. He is currently Director of communication for the same magazine, and publishes reviews and interviews as well as for other publications. In addition, Guilhem is programmer at the Cinemania Film Festival of Montreal, was also involved in film programming at the Cinémathèque Québécoise, and organized a film retrospective dedicated to late American western. He recently contributed toVies et morts du Giallo, the first French-language book ever published on the Giallo Italian genre. He took part in a number of cultural events in France, such as the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival and the Avignon Festival. Holding diplomas in Film Studies and Cultural Development, Guilhem’s main interests are film genres, the international film festival circuit, and the economy of the filmmaking industry. He has served as a member of the jury at several film festivals.

Michel Ciment

Bio

Michel Ciment, honorary associate professor of American Studies at the University of Paris 7, member of the editorial board of Positif magazine, radio journalist and producer at France Culture (Projection Privée) is the author of some fifteen books on cinema. He is also the co-author of film portraits, A 65% perfect man, Billy Wilder with Annie Tresgot, Elia Kazan, an outsider, All about Mankiewicz with Luc Beraud, Chronicle of a film foretold on Francesco Rosi with Christine Lipinska.

Vincenzo Rossini

Bio

After graduating in film studies in 2007, Vincenzo Rossini started working at Milano Film Festival as coordinator for the film department. After two years of training, he moved to the programming department of the Festival and joined the selection commission. He was curator for many retrospectives and tribute to filmmakers like Terry Gilliam, Ermanno Olmi, Jim Jarmusch and collective works about contemporary Japanese authors, Gypsy Cinema and rock documentaries. In 2011, at age 27, he was nominated Artistic Director of Milano Film Festival, together with Alessandro Beretta. Besides his activity at the festival, he writes about design, architecture and environmental issues on several paper and web magazines.

Romanian Days Short Jury

Bogdan Mirică

Bio

After receiving his Journalism degree, Bogdan worked as a publisher, copywriter and novelist until 2005 when, only 27 years old, he became the youngest creative director in the European advertising industry. His passion for cinema took him to the Westminster University from London where he studied Screenplay Writing and Production. He began his new career as a script reader for Slingshot Studios from London, and afterwards came back to Romania where he worked as a script writer, having so far produced two feature films and a TV series.

In 2010 he wrote and directed his first short film, Bora Bora, which won the award for Best Short at the 2011 Transylvania International Film Festival, got selected in the Locarno International Film Festival and also won the award for Best European Short at the Premiers Plans Festival from Angers, France.

Bogdan is currently working on his debut feature film and another TV series.

Nóra Lakos

Bio

Nóra finished her studies as a film director at the Hungarian Film Academy in 2010. She makes short fictions and documentaries. Recently she has been working on her first feature script. Beside that she does casting for international productions. Her most recent short film, Edina (2011), was shown in international film festivals like Encounters, Sarajevo Film Festival, Sofia Film Festival, Alternative, and Hungarian Filmweek. She won the British Council Award and Sarajevo City of Film special mention for Edina in 2011. She was nominated for Robert Bosch Co-production Prize with her most recent documentary titled Hungarian Moustache in 2010. She was selected as a director participant at Sarajevo Talent Campus in 2009 and Sarajevo City of Film in 2011. Nóra was also the director of the SZEMezz International Short Film Festival, an open air multidisciplinary festival that took place in 2005 and 2006 in Budapest.

Tihomir Rachev

Bio

Tihomir Rachev was born in 1978 in the city of Varna, Bulgaria. At the age of 17, with his father's Zenit camera in hand, he started taking pictures of street culture and extreme sports. A few years later he graduated the Advertising and Art Photography section from the New Bulgarian University, in Sofia, and started his career as a professional photographer. Now he works for fashion magazines like Elle, Max, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Men's Health and many others. He is the photographer behind many advertising campaigns for companies and brands in various fields of business like fashion, communication, technology, tourism and entertainment.

Tihomir is interested also in underwater photography and video. In 2010 he made his debut in directing videos. His works can be found at www.floor5studio.com.

FIPRESCI Jury

Salome Kikaleishvili

Bio

Cinema critic and journalist from Tbilisi, Georgia, Salome worked in daily newspaper 24 Hours and monthly art magazine Tskheli Shokoladi covering the events of contemporary cultural life and publishing articles on cinema, creative personalities, interviews and critical essays on modern cinema. In the same period of time she was delivering the course of Cinema History at the Tbilisi State Institute of TV and Radio and at the Tbilisi State Academy of Fine Arts.

Since 2005 she was executive editor of the Cinema magazine reviewing international film festivals. Since 2006 she has been editor-in-chief of Dialogue magazine. From 2010 Salome Kikaleishvili is working for the weekly magazine Tabula as executive editor and editor of cultural department.

Salome Kikaleishvili was FIPRESCI jury member at Berlin, Setubal, Athens, Dhaka, Tbilisi, Cottbus, Istanbul and Almaty international film festivals.

Alberto Castellano

Bio

Italian essayist and film critic, Alberto has been publishing since 1989 for the Naples Il Mattino journal. Writer of multiple essays and extended analyses on Franchi and Ingrassia, Douglas Sirk, Carlo Verdone, comedies and understudying, between 1997 and 2000 he was a member of the selection committee of the Critics’ International Week for the Venice International Film Festival and taught film semiotics at the Fisciano-Salerno University.

Captivated by American genre cinema and B series Italian comedy, he has also studied the narrative patterns, style and currents of the Asian cinema (China, Japan, Korea, Iran). His latest work is an updated publication of a 1988 monograph on Clint Eastwood.

Angelo Mitchievici

Bio

Born on the 5th of November 1972 in Drăgăşani, Vâlcea County, Romania, Angelo Mitchievici is currently lecturer at The University of Arts, “Ovidius” College, Constanţa, where he teaches comparative literature classes. In 2008 he received his PhD in Philology with a Summa cum laude distinction at the Bucharest University.

He received awards from the Cuvântul magazine in 2005 for the volume Explorations in Romanian communism (vol. II, Polirom, 2005, co-authors: Paul Cernat, Ion Manolescu, and Ioan Stanomir), the debut award from the Observator Cultural magazine in 2007 for his work Mateiu I. Caragiale - decadent physiognomies, and in 2008 the Ion Cantacuzino Award of the Filmmakers Union in Romania for the professionalism of his entire publishing career.

Since 2010, he’s been a member of USR and UCIN. He is also a member of RAAS (Romanian Association for American Studies), film critic, and assistant editor for the România literară and for the Ex Ponto. Text, imagine, metatext magazines.

Shadows Shorts Jury

Daniel Cohen

Bio

A fan of genre cinema and fantastic worlds since his teen years, he began his career at an art house cinema in Strasbourg in 1999, where he worked principally as a projectionist. In 2006, he founded Spectre Films and organised his first festival, a retrospective of the legendary Hammer Studios. In 2008, with Spectre Films, he founded the current Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival. His other activities range from scouting international film markets, participating in festival juries, holding student film conferences and running a genre cinema club throughout the year.

Andy Stewart

Bio

A lifelong horror fan, Glasgow-born journalist Andy Stewart made the move from sports journalism into horror blogging and started the popular blogsite AndyErupts.com in June 2011. In the intervening months, and thanks to its informative and humourous news articles and reviews, readership of the site has continued to increase and attract interviews from high profile actors, directors and authors. In October 2011, Andy was also asked to contribute to UK-based horror magazine "SCREAM" and has had several articles featured since November and has been fortunate enough to be able to travel the length and breadth of the UK, writing about his passion. In addition to horror journalism, Andy has penned several scripts and is currently in production on his first film, "Dysmorphia", the first of three short "body horror" films. Andy hopes to go into production on his first feature film in Summer 2013.

Joachim Luetke

Bio

Joachim Luetke is one of the world's top designers in the field of Dark Fiction and Heavy Metal. Born in 1957 in Germany, he studied art in Switzerland during the late seventies, and improved his unique, disturbing talent at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria from 1980 to 1986. He still lives in Vienna as a successfull multimedia artist, creating and producing artworks, videos and DVDs for bands such as Dimmu Borgir, Kreator, Pain, Arch Enemy, Sopor Aternus, etc. He currently works on his first feature film, a Dark Fantasy opus in tight collaboration with PRISMA FILM, Vienna.