Bucharest International Film Festival - BIFF - B-EST

KARIN HOFFINGER

Head of the International Relations Department of the Berlin International Film Festival

After studies of English and Roman Languages at the Berlin Free University, Karin Hoffinger spent some years living in Italy and Greece and joined the Berlin Film Festival at the end of 1989. In 1992 she moved over to the production side and worked as Production Assistant for the Berlin based Road Movies Filmproduktion, where she coordinated European productions such as The Absence by Peter Handke or Madre Gilda by Francisco Regueiro. In 1995 she came back to the Berlin Film Festival and today is heading the International Relations Department. She is working closely with the director’s office in the programme coordination and organisation.

FERNANDA SILVA

Director of the FESTROIA Film Festival

Fernanda Silva was born in the 15th of July of 1957, in Portugal. She made her graduation in Public Relations and has the First Certificate in English (Cambridge). In 1988, she started working for FESTROIA-International Film Festival as General Secretary. Since then she was Programming Director, Artistic Director and she is now President of the FESTROIA Association. From 2001 to 2003 she was a member of the  Board of the Administration of the European Coordination of Film Festivals. She is currently Member of the Board of the Administration of CICAE. She acted as member of the jury for various prestigious international film festivals. She is a member of the EFA – European Film Academy. She is in charge of programming for the two Municipal Theatres in Setúbal. Fernanda Silva also writes articles about cinema for the Cultural Magazine of the Municipality.

FERENC MOLDOVÁNYI

Director and producer

Having completed his film studies at the University of Theatre and Film of Budapest and the Louis Lumiere Film School in Paris he started working in the film business at the beginning of the nineties. In 1995 he received the European Council Human Rights Award for his film titled If We Eat a Beaver. The same year founded his own production company Engram Film and has been working as an independent director-producer since then. His first feature, the multi-award winning film the The Way, premiered in Locarno. His film Children, Kosovo 2000 was launched at the Berlinale and was highly acclaimed both by critics and audience. Another Planet (2008), an important international success, presented in 46 countries, won 20 awards. In 2009 he received UNICEF’s Highest Appreciation Award in acknowledgement of his work featuring children issues. He was invited to several prestigious festivals as a jury member, gave lectures, held workshops and master-classes in a number of countries. He is a member of the European Film Academy, the European Producers Club and the Federation of International Journalists.

BOYD VAN HOEIJ

Film Critic

Boyd van Hoeij is a freelance film writer. He is a contributing critic for U.S. trade paper Variety, the film editor of Winq (Netherlands) and Mate (UK/US) and a correspondent for European cinema portal cineuropa.org. He also regularly contributes to International Film Guide (UK), Filmkrant (Netherlands) and indieWIRE (US). His work has been published in ten languages including Romanian. His book 10/10, about ten contemporary Francophone Belgian directors, came out in September 2010.

CRITICS' JURY

IULIA BLAGA

Born in Sibiu. She graduated the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Bucharest. Film critic at the România liberă daily for almost 13 years. Freelancer since 2008. She is now a permanent contributor to www.filmneweurope.com, HotNews.ro, Suplimentul de Cultura and Radio Romania Cultural. Author of the book Fantasme si adevaruri. O carte cu Mircea Saucan (2003).

MAGDA MIHĂILESCU

Critic and film historian , member of Romanian Filmakers Union (UCIN) and FIPRESCI (International Critics Federation). Graduated from the University of Bucarest (Philosophy and Cultural Journalism). She writes for many cultural magazines (Cultura, Dilema Veche, Observator Cultural) and is a regular contributor for Radio and TV. Since 1990 she has been working for Adevarul, the most important Romanian newspaper, as a chief of Cinema Dept. She wrote books about Sophia Loren, Lucian Pintilie, Malvina Ursianu, François Truffaut. Member of the FIPRESCI Jury at the Festivals of Cannes, Venice, Montreal, Valladolid, Thessaloniki, Turin, Cairo, Krakow, Dubai, member of the main jury in Clermont-Ferrand, Bordeaux, Trieste. Five times winner of Romanian Filmakers Union’s Prize for film criticism and books about cinema.

MIHAI CHIRILOV 

Film critic, FIPRESCI member and the artistic director of the Transylvania International Film Festival (TIFF), which he cofounded in 2002. In addition, Chirilov works as a curator for the Romanian Film Festival in New York, organized since 2006 by The Romanian Cultural Institute in New York. He has served as jury member at film festivals such as Hong Kong, Berlin, Gothenburg, Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, Palm Springs, Karlovy Vary, Munich and Moscow. He writes for several publications and is the editor-in-chief of AperiTIFF magazine, a special yearly edition of the official publication of TIFF, dedicated to the New Romanian Cinema. He is coauthor of a book about Lars von Trier and he translated into Romanian two novels by Chuck Palahniuk.