Jury

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION OF FEATURE FILMS

Stéphane Aubier

Stéphane Aubier, graduate of the La Cambre Academy of Audiovisual Arts in Brussels, is considered one of Europe’s leading contemporary animators. He formed a creative duo with Vincent Patar and, right after his studies, achieved success with a trio of animated slapsticks known as the PicPic André Shoow. After experimenting with hand-drawn and cut-out animation in several short films and music videos, he returned to his original concept of A Town Called Panic and his puppetoon series became an immediate hit. A spinoff animated feature film of the same name was also a huge success with the audiences and was nominated for the César Award for the Best Foreign Film in 2010. Animated comedy Ernest and Celestine created by Aubier and Patar together with Benjamin Renner won the César Award for the Best Animated Film in 2013. 

Pavla Janoušková Kubečková

Graduated in Journalism from Charles University and in Film Production from FAMU in Prague. She co-founded the production company nutprodukce. Her first film Graffitiger (2010) was nominated for the Student Oscar. She was the producer of the highly successful HBO miniseries Burning Bush, directed by Agnieszka Holland. She is a producer of many documentary films, e.g. Show!, (Czech Critics’ Award), Great Night or FC Roma (both awarded as best Czech Documentary at Jihlava IDFF 2013 and 2016). Last year she produced new TV series for HBO Europe – Wasteland (international premiere at Toronto IFF as a part of Primetime selection) and animated web series Deep in Moss. She was one of the co-producers of Spoor, a new film by Agnieszka Holland, which premiered in Competition at Berlinale 2017. 

Mihai Mitrică

Mihai Mitrică studied Public Management and has been involved in film festivals for the last fourteen years. He is one of the founders and the director of Anim’est International Animation Film Festival, the only animation film festival in Romania and the biggest in Bucharest with international follow-ups.
He is a short film curator for various festivals, his main areas being animation, Romanian short film and horror film in general.
An enthusiastic supporter of new projects on animation who encourages building bridges between Romanian animators and film directors, and major film studios and production companies.
Since 2011, Mihai has been a freelance producer of Romanian animation short films, working with some of the best representatives of the new generation of local animators. His productions include The Scream (2011) and World War Cup (2017) both directed by Sebastian Cosor.

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION OF SHORT FILMS AND STUDENT FILMS

Chiara Magri

Chiara Magri has worked at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (National Film School) as the coordinator of the Animation Dept. in Torino, since its formation in 2002. She has been responsible for cultural, publishing and training activities of the Italian section of ASIFA Italy where she also served as Secretary General from 1997 to 2002. She has curated programs, exhibitions and the international annual event “Animation Art Encounters” at the Gallery of Modern Arts of Turin. She has taught classes and seminars in history and aesthetics of animation, and co-directed a survey on the animation industry for the National TV broadcaster RAI. She has written for specialized publications, including the chapter on animation from 1975–2002 of Storia del cinema d’animazione by Gianni Rondolino (Utet, Torino 2004). She has served on juries and selection committees for many festivals. 

Lucie Sunková

Director, animator, graphic artist and writer Lucie Sunková graduated from the Václav Hollar College of Fine Arts and the Department of Animated Film of the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Since her studies, she has been focusing predominantly on the demanding paint-on-glass animation technique, which she used in five of her short films. Her films The Portrait, Geranium and The Tree were screened at many international festivals and won many awards, e.g. at the Fantoche Festival in Switzerland and the Grand OFF in Poland. The Tree (a Czech-French co-production) has also inspired a book and a travelling exhibition introducing the film’s unusual animation technique. Lucie Sunková also writes and illustrates books for children. 

Juan Pablo Zaramella

Born in Buenos Aires, Juan Pablo Zaramella studied animated film direction at the IDAC (Instituto de Arte Cinematografico de Avellaneda). Throughout his career, he created a number of illustrations, animated commercials, spots and sketches. In 2010, the Annecy International Animated Film Festival screened a selection of Zaramella’s work as a stand-alone showcase. His probably most acclaimed animated short is Luminaris (2011) with 326 international awards to its credit including the Audience Award and the FIPRESCI Prize in Annecy 2011, which also competed for the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. In his latest film Onión, Zaramella used a combination of live action and other experimental hybrid animation techniques. He recently finished his 52-episode TV series The Tiniest Man in the World as a French-Argentinean coproduction. 

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION OF ABSTRACT AND NON-NARRATIVE ANIMATION

Magda Guidi

Illustrator and animator Magda Guidi is considered one of the leading representatives of contemporary Italian animation. She studied animated film at the art school Scuola de libro in Urbino, Italy. Her films such as Yes, but (Sì, però…, 2000) and That’s the Time (Ecco, è ora, 2004 – winner of the Castelli Animati Festival in Rome) were successful at many prestigious international festivals. For her music video New Identity (Nuova identità, 2003), she won the Jury Award at the Videozoom Festival. In 2009, together with Andrea Petrucci and Sergio Gutierrez, she worked on the medium-length film The Last Time I Saw my Father (L’ultima volta che vidi mio padre) directed by Chiara Guidi. Her latest project, Via Curiel 8 (2011), which she created together with Mara Cerri, won the Grand Prize of the Torino Film Festival and the Special Mention of the National Festival du film d’animation in Bruz, France. 

Sylva Poláková

Film historian and theorist Sylva Poláková graduated in film studies at the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University in Prague. In her publications and lectures, she focuses on the relations between film, fine arts and architecture in particular in the Czech Republic during the last two decades, and she’s also interested in the influence of digital technologies in the context of analogue media. She regularly contributes to the magazines Cinepur, A2 and Flash Art. As a dramaturge, she collaborated with various film festivals (e.g. Festival of Film and Contemporary Art Olomouc and International Documentary Film Festival Jihlava) and she also worked in the distribution company Artcam and is currently a member of the research platform mediabaze.cz, which focuses on research, propagation and distribution of Czech audio-visual art. 

Miloš Tomić

Independent multimedia artist Milos Tomić was born in Belgrade where he graduated in direction at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade in the studio of Miša Radivojević. In 2007, he completed his postgraduate studies of multimedia animation at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague under the tutelage of Petr Skala. He has made a number of short films, music videos, animation, collages and artworks for which he uses primarily forgotten and abandoned objects – he explores their meaning, gives them a new one and forges new relationships, he is interested in the phenomena of everyday routine and unrepeatability. He also made phonetic collages for Radio92 which he composed from his own improvisations and various sounds of ordinary objects. He teaches at the Singidunum University in Serbia and organizes classes about inspiration, short film direction, animation and object art all around the world. 

International Competition of Independent Computer Games

Michael Frei

Michael Frei is co-founder of Playables, a production company for peculiar projects based in Zürich. Frei’s films received numerous awards all over the world. He was invited to Animation Artist in Residence Tokyo in 2014. His interactive project Plug & Play was nominated for the Nuovo Award at the Independent Games Festival and won the Best Arts Award along with the Audience Award at the Tokyo Game Show 2015. He is now working on Kids, a multimedia-project about the psychology of the group. 

Jakub Dvorský

Jakub is the founder, lead game designer and creative director in Amanita Design, Czech based award-winning independent studio best known for multi-platform adventure games Machinarium, Botanicula and the Samorost series. The studio consists of several separate teams which are currently working on four upcoming games.

Pavel Barák

Pavel Barák has been involved in the gaming industry for more than fifteen years. He is the co-founder and the chairman of the České hry (Czech Games) Organisation which supports game development in the Czech Republic. For the last six years, he has worked as the director of the biggest Czech game development conference Game Developers Session which is also the oldest independent conference in this field in Europe. In 2005, Pavel Barák founded the Handjoy studios which specializes in mobile and advertising games and has published over ten commercial titles.