Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

INTERNATIONAL JURIES: GRAND JURY

Štěpán Hulík

Czech screenwriter and author. He debuted as a writer of screenplays in 2013 with the three-part HBO miniseries Burning Bush (Hořící keř), directed by Agnieszka Holland, which recounts the events following student Jan Palach’s self-immolation in 1969. His second screenwriting effort came in 2016 with the original, eight-part miniseries Wasteland (Pustina) directed by Ivan Zachariáš and once again produced by HBO. In addition to screenwriting, he pursues film history and has published The Cinema of Forgetting (Kinematografie zapomnění, 2011), a work which charts the period of Normalization in Czechoslovak film from 1969 to 1989.

Annemarie Jacir

Palestinian writer, director, and producer. Her movies have premiered at Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Locarno. All three of her features officially represented Palestine at the Academy Awards. Her latest film, Wajib, screened at last year’s KVIFF. She is a respected curator and mentor who actively promotes independent cinema. Founder of Philistine Films, she collaborates with fellow moviemakers as an editor and screenwriter. She is a cofounder of Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research, an autonomous cultural center that fulfilled a family dream of creating a space for the arts in Bethlehem, Palestine.

Sergei Loznitsa

Ukrainian director, scriptwriter and producer. Born in Belarus (former USSR), he studied mathematics at Kyiv Polytechnic and filmmaking at VGIK in Moscow. He is the creator of twenty award-winning documentaries, but he also makes features, all four of which were presented in the official competition program of the Cannes IFF. Last year from the same festival he took Best Director (Donbass) in the Un Certain Regard section. He continues to work both in documentaries and features.

Angeliki Papoulia

Greek actress. The Athens native is known for Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth (2009, winner of Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Oscar nomination), Alps (2011), and The Lobster (2015). She took the lead in Syllas Tzoumerkas’s A Blast (2014) and The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea (2019), which world premiered at this year’s Berlinale before screening at Karlovy Vary. In 2004 she cofounded the blitz theatre group; to date, she has written, directed, and acted in all the troupe’s performances. www.kviff.com

Charles Tesson

French film writer and festival organizer. He has been the artistic director of Critic’s Week at the Cannes IFF since 2012 and president of Aide aux cinémas du monde (CNC-Institut français) since 2016. He was a film critic for the legendary Cahiers du cinéma (1979-2013) and also edited the magazine (1998-2003). He lectures in film at La Sorbonne Nouvelle (University of Paris III). He has written several books and essays on cinema, including Satyajit Ray (1992), Luis Buñuel (1995), Photogénie de la Série B (1997), and Akira Kurosawa (2008).

EAST OF THE WEST JURY

Denis Ivanov

Ukrainian producer, distributor, and festival organizer. He founded the Odessa IFF, the Children KinoFest, and the Kyiv Critics Week. He heads up the Arthouse Traffic film company. As producer he has made five features and over 40 shorts, including The Tribe by Myroslav Slaboshpitskiy (winner of Cannes’ Critics’ Week 2014) and Donbass by Sergei Loznitsa (Best Director from Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2018).

Juho Kuosmanen

Finnish film, theater, and opera director. His short movies have been shown at many festivals, including Cannes and Locarno. In 2016 his debut feature The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki premiered at Cannes, receiving the main prize in Un Certain Regard (that same year it screened in Czech theaters via KVIFF distribution). He is also a cofounder and artistic director of Kokkolan Kinojuhlat, which, according to his mother Tuula Kuosmanen, is the best film festival in the world.

Tomáš Pavlíček

Czech director and screenwriter. He graduated from Prague’s Film Academy (FAMU), where he currently teaches. He focuses on comedy that is often dialogue based. His debut feature Totally Talking premiered in the Forum of Independents at KVIFF 2014. Four years later Bear with Us also screened at KVIFF, in the East of the West Competition, and then went on to win the best screenplay award by the Czech Film Critics Association.

Ioanna Stais

Greek film sales company representative. After gaining two years’ staff experience at the Cannes IFF, she moved to Wide International Sales to work as coordinator for the Eye on Films label, dedicated to the promotion and distribution of debut features. Then in 2014 she joined forces with the Greek production company Heretic to launch Heretic Outreach, the first international sales agent based in southeastern Europe. As manager of that www.kviff.com already well-established brand, she has internationally represented award-winning films such as Take Me Somewhere Nice, Holiday, and Meteors.

Dagnė Vildžiūnaite

Lithuanian producer working in TV and film for over 15 years. She is a member of the Lithuanian Film Academy and serves as national representative for EAVE and EURODOC. In 2017 she was nominated for Best Professional Work in Cinema at the National Film Awards. In 2007 she established the independent production company Just A Moment, which has produced 20 documentaries and dramas, both shorts and features.

DOCUMENTARY FILM JURY

Gastón Solnicki

Argentinian filmmaker. After directing Süden (2008), Papirosen (2011) premiered at Locarno and then screened across the world. His first feature Kékszakállú (2016) premiered at Venice, where it was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize and the Bisato d’Oro; the film subsequently screened at Toronto, New York, and the Viennale. Kékszakállú was selected by the noted monthly Artforum as one of the ten best films of 2016. His latest work Introduzione all’oscuro (2018), included in the program of this year’s KVIFF, was initially presented at last year’s Biennale di Venezia. He is currently working on his new feature Electrocute.

Aline Schmid

Swiss producer. After graduating from the University of Fribourg, she worked in theatrical distribution and as a producer at Intermezzo Films. In 2016 she founded her own production company Beauvoir Films in Geneva. She has produced several internationally successful pictures, including Sonita (Sundance, IDFA) and Horizons (KVIFF 2015). In 2018 Daniel Zimmermann’s Walden won the Special Jury Award at KVIFF and Closing Time by Nicole Vögele took a Silver Leopard at Locarno. She has participated in the prestigious programs Emerging Producer (Jihlava IDFF) and Producer on the Move (Cannes).

Andreas Horvath

Austrian photographer and filmmaker. His award-winning documentaries have screened at festivals around the world. His first feature Lillian was nominated for the Camera d’Or (Directors’ Fortnight) at this year’s festival in Cannes. Andreas Horvath’s history with Karlovy Vary dates back to 2006 when Views of a Retired Night Porter was awarded Best Documentary Short. A year later he sat on the East of the West jury; since then his films have been invited back to Karlovy Vary several times (Arab Attraction, Earth’s Golden Playground). 

Nonstatutory Juries:

FIPRESCI JURY

José Luis Losa García

Hugo Emmerzael

Ana Sturm

ECUMENICAL JURY

Alyda Faber

Martin Horálek

Peter Sheehan

FEDEORA JURY

Pavlina Jeleva

Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

Maja Bogojević

EUROPA CINEMAS LABEL JURY

Denis Samardžić

Maarten Alexander

Carinzia Camilleri

Éva Demeter