Guests

In 2001, after working as a lawyer-in-firm and a film finance banker, Christine Camdessus launched her production company, ALEGRIA PRODUCTIONS. They have produced more than 60 creative documentaries, distributed throughout most of the world, including: Pakistan Zindabad, The Vatican's Lost War?, Five Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi (Sundance Director’s Prize 2012, Oscar Nomination 2013, International Emmy Award 2013), Divided Korea, The Wonderful Kingdom of Papa Alaev, Erdogan, the Making of a Sultan, One Day in Tehran, and Forman versus Forman (selected in Cannes Classics in May 2019). Christine is chairwoman of NIPKOW’s jury (Berlin). She was vice-president of USPA (the leading TV producers union in France) from 2014 to 2018. In June 2018, Christine was appointed Managing & Artistic director of FIPADOC.

Flóra Chilton finished her studies as a cinematographer at the Budapest Metropolitan University. She was one of the cinematographers of the film, It's Not the Time of My Life (Ernelláék Farkaséknál), which won the Crystal Globe in Karlovy Vary. Chilton is currently working as an independent director.

György Dobray (born 1942, in Budapest, Hungary) graduated from the Department of Cinematography of the Film Academy in 1965. He has produced documentary, educational and literary films for Hungarian Television, and fiction films for the Hungarian Film Production Company. He is currently working on documentary and TV films, as well as a fiction film. He received the Hungarian Balázs Béla Award in 2010.

Rami Farah is a Syrian performer and filmmaker born in Damascus in 1980. He first studied dance in Damascus at the High Institute for Dramatic Arts and attended many training courses and workshops in contemporary film and dance in France and Denmark. After graduating from the Arab Institute in 2007, Rami made a 35-minute documentary about the Golan Heights entitled Silence. Rami's first feature-length film, A Comedian in a Syrian Tragedy premiered at IDFA in 2019.

Since 2013, Ivana Formanová is involved in the production and programming of several film festivals, exhibitions and cultural events in the Czech Republic and abroad. Since 2015, she is the head of the Industry 4Science section at the international science film festival Academia Film Olomouc (AFO). Currently, she works as the manager of the alternative documentary distribution project KineDok which is one of the activities of the Institute of Documentary Film and is based in Prague.

Born in 1966, Marek Gajczak is a cinematographer and film director. He is a graduate of the Cinematography Department at the Film School in Łódź. He also completed a Masterclass for DOP, a cinematographic workshop in Budapest. In 2006 he debuted as a director and screenwriter with the feature film Under the Surface. He has since collaborated with TVN and the Polish Television. Having completed several dozen documentaries, he currently works as a photographer and a documentary film director.

Tone Grøttjord-Glenne has worked on more than 20 documentary films as a director and a producer. She established Sant & Usant Documentary Film in 2005, and led it to become one of the strongest production houses in Norway, one with a clear international vision for its films.

Anna Gyimesi was born in 1985, in Budapest. After receiving her degree in medicine in 2011, she turned to filmmaking. She graduated from the film directing program of the University of Theatre and Film Arts in 2019 and from documentary film directing in the Docnomads Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Course in 2021. Heritage is her student film which she made at Luca School of Arts, Brussels.

László Halász is a photographer and documentary filmmaker based in Hungary. Since 2012, as a member of the Zöld Pók Foundation, he has been involved in several video projects for NGOs. His focus is on groups and individuals on the margins of society. He worked as a cinematographer in László Bihari's film No Country For Poor Men (Nem szegényeknek való vidék), and Sári Haragonics's film, Szia Sári!. He has also made music videos for the music group Várkonyi Csibészek. This Cannot Be Atoned For is his first directorial work.

Tuija Halttunen is a Finnish documentary filmmaker who has worked in the film industry for over 20 years. Her documentary Neighbours was nominated for Prix Europa in 2013 and State of Mind got a state quality award in 2007. Halttunen’s short documentary Heaven and Earth won the main prize in Tampere Film Festival in 1995. From 2010 to 2015, Halttunen worked as a regional artist in the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Christine Hanberg, born in Sorgenfri in1993, is a young documentary film director. She started her production company CH FILM OG FOTO in 2016. She studied at the European Film College in 2019, and will finish her Bachelor’s Degree in TV and Media Production in 2025 from the Danish journalism and media school DMJX. Christine also studied at the New York Film Academy and the Danish youth college StationNext. He’s My Brother is Christine’s debut film as a co-director. The film was made in collaboration with director Cille Hannibal. Christine is currently directing the documentary film TRINE (which will be released in 2022).

Salomé Jashi was born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1981. She first studied journalism and worked as a reporter for several years. In 2005 she was awarded a British Council scholarship to study documentary filmmaking at Royal Holloway, University of London. Salomé’s The Dazzling Light of Sunset (2016) was awarded the Main Prize at Visions du Réel’s Regard Neuf Competition as well as at ZagrebDox, Jihlava IDFF, Valdivia IDFF, and several other festivals. Her earlier work, Bakhmaro (2011) received an Honorary Mention for a Young Documentary Talent at DOK Leipzig, and was awarded as the Best Central and Eastern European Documentary at Jihlava IDFF. Salomé is the founder of two production companies: Sakdoc Film and Microcosmos, both producing documentaries and fiction of high artistic quality. She was a fellow of Nipkow Scholarship in 2017 and of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2020. The Dazzling Light of Sunset screened at Verzió in 2019.

Hanna Sára Kádár, now 26, enrolled to the DOKMA documentary filmmaking Masters in 2020. As of this year, she is studying documentary filmmaking at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (VSMU). She met the protagonists of Separated while she was volunteering for an organization, and likes to spend her afternoons with them since then. 

William Johansson Kalén has worked as a Director, Editor in chief, DoP and Film editor on a number of documentaries, documentary series and TV-programs since 2006. He co-directed the award-winning documentary Toxic Playground in 2009 and started as a film producer in 2015 when he became a shareholder of Laika Film & Television. He is currently producing an artistic documentary about architecture that will premiere in early 2021 and producing a couple of Laika’s projects in development. He has worked as assistant producer on the documentary Cold Case Hammarskjöld and the fiction Beauty And The Dogs and The Man Who Sold His Skin. He is also the Swedish producer in the Jordanian fiction film Farha that premiered in spring 2021.

Born in Tehran, Firouzeh Khosrovani settled in Italy to pursue her artistic studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. After graduating in 2002 she returned to Iran and acquired her Master’s degree in Journalism. She now lives between Tehran and Rome. Her debut film, Life Train (2004), is a documentary on the ‘play’ therapy provided for the traumatized children of the earthquake in Bam. In 2007, she directed Rough Cut, a film about mutilated plastic mannequins in the shop windows of Tehran, which won thirteen international film festival awards. Her last work, Fest of Duty, follows two adolescent girls as they transition into adulthood, eight years after their official Fest of Duty. The film won the OXFAM award at IDFA in 2014.

Shoshi Korman is Head of Festivals and Marketing at Cinephil, an international sales and advisory firm with a strong reputation for securing international distribution, broadcasting and financing deals for documentaries from around the world on behalf of producers and directors. Shoshi focuses on festival, release and awards campaigns. Recent titles she has worked on include Sundance winners FLEE, by Jonas Poher Rasmussen; President, by Camilla Nielsson; Collective, by Alexander Nanau – screened at Verzió in 2019; Gunda, by Victor Kossakovsky; and the Ross Brother’s Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets.

Máté Kőrösi was born in 1992, in Budapest. After graduating from the Film Studies department at Eötvös Loránd University, he studied documentary film directing at the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts, Budapest. He shot several short fiction films during his studies at ELTE, among them Szuper (2015), which was screened at various short film festivals in Hungary. He spent the last years finishing his first feature-length documentary film Divas, co-produced by HBO Europe and Makabor Studio.

Sára László graduated from the film director’s faculty of the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, Hungary, and completed a one-year production training couse in the Parisian film school, ESRA. She co-founded Campfilm in 2007, and has worked as a producer, and occasionally, a co-author since. Campfilm productions address social issues and have a strong cinematic quality. They have participated and gained recognition at both national and international festivals. Sara is an alum of Eurodoc, the Nipkow Programme, EAVE and DokIncubator, and a 2019 Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program Grantee. In 2018, she defended her DLA dissertation at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest.

Ruud Lenssen is an independent documentary filmmaker. He studied at the Film Academy of Rotterdam (2007-2010) and at the LUCA School of Arts in Belgium (2013-2016). He merges socially relevant topics with a subjective style in his documentaries.

Juliette Menthonnex was born in 1994. In 2018, following the completion of her short film Anywhere, she graduated from ECAL (L'école d'Art de Lausanne) with a BA in film. She is currently studying at the Docnomads documentary directing program.

As part of Lightdox team, Nevena oversees distribution and sales in Central & Eastern Europe, Asia, LATAM and Africa. She embraces the challenge of mastering the most promising and excitingly evolving markets with worlds of creativity and innovativeness. She graduated in Painting at the Academy of Arts Banjaluka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and holds a Master’s degree in Stage Design from Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno. Nevena has been working in sales and distribution of documentary films since 2015, with a deep focus on VOD and festival distribution.

Hajnal Molnár-Szakács is the Director of Institute Granting at the Sundance Institute, where she heads up development of a comprehensive funding strategy across the Institute’s Artist Programs and oversees nearly $4M in yearly grants. Hajnal serves as industry advisor for international film festivals, pitch forums and funds, and is an active industry panelist, lecturer and juror. Hajnal holds a MSc in Public Management from SDA Bocconi School of Management in Italy, and a Bachelor of International Business and German from Carleton University in Canada. Prior to this role, as the Film Fund Director at the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program she supported over 200 films, including Minding the Gap (Dir: Bing Liu), The Mole Agent (Maite Alberdi), Crip Camp (Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham) and Writing With Fire ( Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh). Prior to joining the Sundance Institute, Hajnal worked for the European Union and the Government of Canada. Hajnal also works with community and arts-based non-profits in LA, and is conversational in Hungarian.

In 1997, Uwe-Lothar Müller began his career at ARTE television as a reporter. He was the editorial head of ARTE Info and the deputy editor-in-chief of information programs for four years. Since 2009, he has been the Deputy Chief of Staff of ARTE Reportage.

Julie Nederkoorn started working for the Movies that Matter (MtM) Foundation in 2015. She currently coordinates the International Support program. Based on the belief that the film camera is a powerful weapon against social indifference, MtM organizes film screenings in the Netherlands and promotes film screenings worldwide. As program coordinator, Julie manages the grant program and gives training and advice on setting up human rights film festivals or related events in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. For five years she coordinated Activist (one of the main competition programs about human rights defenders) at the annual MtM Festival in the Hague. She obtained a BSc in Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, and a MA degree in Conflict Studies & Human Rights at Utrecht University.

Camilla Nielsson was a Fulbright Scholar at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University (NYU), and in the Dept. of Anthropology (NYU), where she studied documentary filmmaking and visual anthropology from 1997–2000. She directed the documentary short trilogy Good Morning Afghanistan (2003), Durga (2004), and The Children of Darfur (2005), about children’s rights, and Mumbai Disconnected (2009), in the Cities on Speed series. She collaborated with Israeli video artist Yael Bartana on the trilogy We Will Be Strong in Our Weakness (Berlinale 2011, Venice Biennale 2011), and Demonstrators (2011), for the exhibition Re:Constructed Landscapes. Nielsson’s first feature documentary Democrats (2014), screened at more than 80 film festivals, and won 20 awards and nominations, including Best Documentary at Tribeca Film Festival 2015, and Best Documentary at Nordic Panorama 2015.

Kata Oláh is a producer and director. Since shifting her focus to directing a few years earlier, her films have received several national and international awards. Her first feature-length documentary film, The Bar Mitzvah Boys, was nominated to compete in the PRIX EUROPA 2018. In 2019, the Hungarian Film Academy awarded her the Best Editor prize for her TV documentary, Couture Behind the Iron Curtain. Her short documentary, Mignon, received the Best Short Documentary award at the Budapest International Documentary Festival. Her independent production Zuniverzum, a short fiction shot during the pandemic, has been purchased for HBO Go. My Digital Nomad is her latest documentary.

Aliaksei Paluyan was born 1989 in Belarus. In 2012 he moved to Germany and studied film and television directing at the Kunsthochschule Kassel (Academy for the Arts). In 2019, his short fiction drama Lake of Happiness, a German-Belarusian-Spainish co-production, premiered in Clermont-Ferrand, won numerous awards at international festivals, was a candidate for European Short Film Award at the 33rd European Film Awards in 2020 and also longlisted for the Oscars 2021. Courage is his documentary film debut.

Leena Pasanen started her career as a journalist in print media. In 1993, she joined the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE, where she worked as a reporter, political commentator, TV presenter and the head of documentaries for YLE TV1. In 2000 she was appointed the Head of Programs responsible for cultural, factual and fiction programs in YLE Teema. She stayed with the channel until November 2005, when she started working as the Director of the European Documentary Network (EDN) in Copenhagen, Denmark. From 2011 to 2014, she led the Finnish Institute in Budapest, Hungary and served as cultural attaché at the Finnish Embassy in Budapest. From 2015 to 2019, she was based in Leipzig, Germany, working as Managing and Festival Director of DOK Leipzig. In January 2020, she took over the direction of Biografilm Festival in Bologna, Italy. She has been a regular expert, tutor and lecturer at several training programs, for example: EDN, Discovery Campus, EURODOC and Television Business School. She has been a board member of IDFA Forum and served as a jury member at several international festivals, such as Sundance and IDFA.

Anita Rehoff Larsen is a Norwegian producer and has worked with Norwegian and international directors since 2010. She is co-owner of the production company Sant & Usant together with Tone Grøttjord-Glenne. Anita has produced many of the company’s award winning films and been shortlisted for an Academy award. Anita is educated in film studies from the UK and has developed as an international producer from EURODOC. Her latest films as producer is Sisters on Track by Corinne van der Borch and Tone Grøttjord-Glenne premiered at CPH:DOX and Tribeca 2021 and released worldwide on Netflix. Gunda by Victor Kossakovsky, premiered in competition at Berlinale 2020, shortlisted for Oscar and sold to 40 countries for theatrical distribution. This year the company is presenting the film All That I Am by Tone Grøttjord-Glenne in the international competition at Verzió Film Festival.

Andreas Rocksén is a producer, director and investigative journalist. He has been involved in the Arica vs. Boliden project since 2008. Andreas is the founder of Laika Film & Television, and in recent years, his films have premiered at Cannes, Venice, IDFA, Sundance and Toronto. Two films he produced/co-produced have been nominated for Oscars.

Anna Shevchenko is Project Manager at Film New Europe. Film New Europe is one of the top informational sources for film producers, festival programmers and buyers of films in Europe. It is supported by the Creative Europe - MEDIA program, as well as the main film institutions of 18 countries in the region. Its 18,000 subscribers consist of film professionals worldwide. The FNE newswire is published daily and distributed globally.

Zsuzsa Shiri studied sociology and history in ELTE in Budapest and received MFA in TAU. She is living in Israel since 1992, and works as journalist from 2003. From 2006 she was the Israeli correspondent of the Hungarian radio channel Kossuth Radio, and since 2011 she is the Israeli correspondent at the  Media Services and Support Trust Fund, MTVA, the Hungarian public-service broadcasting company.

Ibolya Simó

Nebojša Slijepčević has directed numerous creative documentaries (Srbenka, Gangster of Love, Something about Life, Real Man’s Film, In 4 Years, Of Cows and People). His films have been awarded at many international festivals, including four awards from the Sarajevo Film Festival. His latest documentary feature, Srbenka, was shortlisted for the European Film Awards. In 2019, Nebojsa won the Vladimir Nazor Award, an annual award given by the Croatian Ministry of Culture for the highest achievements in film. Nebojsa is a lecturer at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, in Zagreb.

With three decades of experience in the film and media business, Marc Smolowitz is a director, producer, and executive producer who has been involved in 50+ successful independent films wearing many hats across the entertainment industry. His long list of credits includes films that have screened at top-tier festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Venice, Tribeca, Chicago, Palm Springs, SF FILM, AFI Docs, IDFA, DOC NYC, CPH: DOX, Tokyo, Melbourne, Viennale, Krakow, Jerusalem, and others. His film company, 13th Gen, works with a dynamic range of independent film partners globally to oversee the financing, production, post-production, marketing, sales, and distribution efforts of a vibrant portfolio of films and filmmakers. In 2016, he received one of the prestigious Gotham Fellowships to attend the Cannes Film Festival’s Producers Network and Marche du Film.

Elena Subirà i Roca has been part of the Parallel 40 team for 18 years, where she is responsible for the Institutional Relations and Fundraising. She leads the DocsBarcelona project in its global dimension which includes an international documentary film festival and market in 3 cities (Barcelona, Medellín and Valparaíso); the DocsBarcelona distribution brand which operates with a catalogue of more than 100 films in a network of over 70 screens and online platforms across Spain; the DocsBarcelona School with the Campus DocsBarcelona as its main training program; and DocsBarcelona Education, focusing on young audiences. She is member of the European Film Academy (EFA); member of the Board of the Catalunya Film Festivals Association and president of the Spanish Federation of Film Festivals “Pantalla”. She lectures at the PROA-Blanquerna Audiovisual Executive Production Masters Degree of the Ramon Llull University.

László Szabó, now 23, has wanted to become a filmmaker ever since he was six. He obtained a BA degree at Cinematography and Media Studies in Eger. After having graduated, his dream came true and was admitted as a documentary director student to the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. His other aspiration is to make films of underprivileged groups of people who cannot make their voices heard (e.g. a mother of three striving to make a living of a 100-euro monthly income). He wishes to portray frugal everyday heroes in his films, through which he hopes to reach out to them.

Stefano Tealdi established Stefilm in Torino, Italy, in 1985. He develops, produces and/or directs drama and documentary film features and series. Stefilm’s recent productions include: Exemplary Behaviour (winner of Dok Leipzig Golden Dove, Fipresci and Interreligious Award, 2019), My Home, in Libya (Locarno FF 2018); The Strange Sound of Happiness (Special Mention Next Masters DOKLeipzig 2017); Char, No Man’s Island (Berlinale Forum 2013). He tutors for Biennale Cinema & VR College Venice, Cannes Film Market, Documentary Campus, La Fabrique - Les Cinemas du Monde, Films de 3 Continents – Produire au Sud, New Chinese Film Talents, Ouaga Film Lab, Scuola Holden, TFL-Torino Film Lab, ZagrebDox Pro, and ZELIG Film School/ESoDoc.

Julianna Ugrin graduated from university in 2005, after which she began working in film at Flora Film International. In 2009 she was selected to the EURODOC producer’s workshop. Since March 2009 she has worked at Havas Films as a producer and production manager. She established Éclipse Film, an independent film production company in 2011, and has developed projects at various international workshops and pitching forums. Films she produced were screened, nominated and awarded at festivals like Sundance, IDFA, DOK Leipzig, or Sarajevo IFF. Since 2013 she has taught at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in documentary MA studies, where she is also a DLA student. Ugrin is part of Emerging Producers 2014, and is an EAVE graduate. She is organizer of DunaDOCK Master Class & Pitching series, and a member of the Hungarian Film Academy and of EDN.

Since the 1970s Israeli filmmaker and journalist Ada Ushpiz has been writing, directing, and producing documentaries on the ambiguities of contemporary Israel and its social and historical surroundings. In 1970, she received her BA in philosophy and literature from the University of Tel Aviv, graduated with a diploma in Film Direction from the London Film School in 1974, and also holds a doctorate in history. From 1969 to 1999 she worked as a reporter and editor for Israel’s daily newspaper Ha’aretz.

Annabel Verbeke, born in Ypres, Belgium, in 1987, graduated at RITCS Film School in Brussels. Her graduation film, Children of the Sea, won 8 international awards and was selected by more than 20 international film festivals. As a filmmaker, Annabel is looking for beauty in the modest, everyday objects surrounding us. She likes to reveal and unravel fascinating stories which are not always very visible, and find poetry and absurdity in seemingly banal things.

Yulia Vishnevets is a Moscow based filmmaker and journalist, with a passion for exploring society through documentary storytelling. She is a staff film director of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty in Moscow. Her interests ranges from social exclusion to identities, conflicts and how people are affected by their surrounding environment. Her first full-length documentary film, A House on the Edge (2016), depicting both sides of the conflict in Ukraine, had a number of screenings in Russia, Germany and USA, including prominent Artdocfest festival in Moscow and was recently purchased for Currenttime.tv channel.

Ábel Visky was born in 1987, in Bákó, Romania. After graduating in photography, film and media studies at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania in Cluj-Napoca, he studied film directing with Ildikó Egyedi at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. Both his feature film (Romanian Sunrise) and documentary (Zsolt and Kriszta) have brought him success.

Balázs Wizner (1972) is a sociologist and documentary film director. He worked for the Institute of Sociology in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He made documentary films and public service commercials as the head of Metaforum Film Studio. He currently works as a video journalist for AFP, as director of photography in documentary films and in oral history research projects.