Germany

Alina Gorlova is a director and film editor. Born and raised in Ukraine, she graduated from Karpenko-Kary Kyiv National University of Theatre, Film & Television. In addition to her focus as a documentary director, Alina is experienced in making fictional shorts, and social and commercial ads.

Yana Ugrekhelidze was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1984. After graduating with a degree in translation and linguistics in Georgia, she completed a BA in communication design at the Peter Behrens School of Arts in Düsseldorf, and a diploma in film and animation at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Her first animated film, Summer Story, premiered at the 2017 International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and was a semi-finalist in the Student Academy Awards. Her graduation film Armed Lullaby premiered at the 69th Berlinale in the Generation Section. Instructions for Survival is Yana's debut film.

Suhaib Gasmelbari was born in 1979, in Sudan, where he lived until the age of 16. He attended Cinema Studies in France at the University of Paris VIII. He has written and directed several short films, both fiction and documentary. He is also a researcher and was able to find long-lost Sudanese films, and actively takes part in saving and digitizing the works of Sudanese cinema.

Marc Wiese (born in 1966) has been making documentaries for 25 years and is a member of the Federal Association of Directors. He has worked in many conflict areas around the world and has won numerous international awards for his films.

Ai Weiwei (born in 1957, in Beijing, China) is an internationally renowned artist and political activist. He is appraised for making strong aesthetic statements that resonate with timely phenomena across today’s geopolitical world. From architecture to installations, social media to documentaries, Ai uses a wide range of mediums as expressions of new ways for his audiences to examine society and its values. Ai is the recipient of the 2015 Ambassador of Conscience Award from Amnesty International and the 2012 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent from the Human Rights Foundation. Ai has made numerous documentaries about social and political issues that have won major film festival awards, including Disturbing the Peace (2009), One Recluse (2010), So Sorry (2012), Ordos 100 (2012) and Ai Weiwei’s Appeal ¥15,220.910.50 (2014). In the mid-2010s, Ai turned his attention to the global refugee crisis with several projects, including the 2017 documentary film Human Flow, his first feature-length documentary, which premiered at the 74th Venice Film Festival in competition. He is currently based in Berlin.

Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan was the delegate producer of Adina Pintilie's Golden Bear winner, Touch Me Not. She directed A Mere Breath, which won Best Documentary at LET'S CEE Film Fest and in Sarajevo. With her newly established company, Manifest Film, she produced Acasă - My Home, which won the Best Cinematography Award at Sundance 2020.

Ebba Sinzinger is a producer, scriptwriter and director. She produced and co-produced films like Brothers of the Night, Domaine by Patric Chiha, The Forgotten Space by Noël Burch and Allan Secula, and Pianomania, which won awards in Berlin, Venice and Locarno. She received the Upper Austrian Cultural Award for Film in 1997 for her directorial work.

Karin de Miguel Wessendorf (born in 1974, in Barcelona) is a filmmaker and author of numerous television documentaries and radio features on social and environmental issues. She traveled to Mexico in 2005 on a scholarship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and worked for Promedios, an NGO promoting the indigenous documentary films of Zapatista communities. Her research on media usage within social movements was followed by publications, lectures, and workshops on video activism, community media and politically engaging documentary film.

Suhaib Gasmelbari was born in 1979, in Sudan, where he lived until the age of 16. He attended Cinema Studies in France at the University of Paris VIII. He has written and directed several short films, both fiction and documentary. He is also a researcher and was able to find long-lost Sudanese films, and actively takes part in saving and digitizing the works of Sudanese cinema.

Marc Wiese (born in 1966) has been making documentaries for 25 years and is a member of the Federal Association of Directors. He has worked in many conflict areas around the world and has won numerous international awards for his films.

Benyo has worked as an actor under his real name, Max Hegewald, since 2005, and has acted at the Volksbühne Berlin theatre since 2007. He directs and writes under the pseudonym Benyo. In 2016 he graduated in screenwriting from the Filmuniversity Babelsberg Potsdam with his graduation film, Silvia. He is currently developing his debut film, Blackbird, and is working on an adaptation of Claudia Rinkes' novel, The Bride, as well as a coming-of-age drama, Tinnitus. He will graduate from the Hamburg Mediaschool as a director.