Juries

With her film Salaam Bombay Indian director Mira Nair landed an international success that earned her the Camera d'Or in Cannes and a nomination for an Academy Award in the category Best Foreign Language Film. Apart from her work for the renowned documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker the author director and producer has produced feature films such as Mississippi Masala, Kama Sutra, and Monsoon Wedding which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2001. Her film Hysterical Blindness had it's world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002.

Among the most prominent of actress' Nicoletta Braschi's screen appearances was world success and oscar winning Life is Beautiful (La Vita è bella). Braschi is married to director and actor Roberto Benigni and regularly plays the lead in his films - as well as in real life. In the past, she has collaborated with directors Jim Jarmusch, Bernardo Bertolucci and Blake Edwards.

Throughout the trade Cowie is well known as the former international publishing director of "Variety" magazine for which he still acts as an advisor. He is also the founder of the International Film Guide which he has edited for more than forty years. Among his books are biographies on Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergmann and Francis Ford Coppola.

The multi-talented artist is one of the stars of Russian cinema. While she first became known as an actress and author, she became very much of a talking point as the director of the film Njet smerti dlja menja at the Berlinale's International Forum of New Cinema in 2001.

The director had her breakthrough when she was invited to compete in the 51st Berlin International Film Festival with her debut film La Ciénaga. The film won her the Alfred-Bauer-Prize as well as international acclaim.

At the European Film Awards 2001 the French producer was showered with awards for Amélie of Montmatre (Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain). In 1981 she founded Major, her own production company, that has since then produced an impressive range of cinematic highlights such as Betty Blue, Delicatessen and Arizona Dream, which won the Special Jury Prize in 1993's Berlinale.

In 1993, his feature film The Man by the Shore was the first West Indian movie ever to be in the Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The widely-travelled cosmopolitan, who held the office of Minister for Cultural Affairs in his country, studied film at the DFFB in Berlin. His feature Lumumba was one of the most successful foreign films in the US in 2001/2.

The son of Irish immigrants started out as cameraman on the early videos for the band U2, as director of photography he created the muted, yet penetrating look of Leaving Las Vegas and other major Hollywood productions. After filming Mira Nair's Hysterical Blindness he went on to New York to shoot East of Harlem with Jim Sheridan.

In 2001, his internationally acclaimed cinematic feature No Place to Go (Die Unberührbare) earned the author and director the German Film Award in Gold in the category Outstanding Feature Film, the FIPRESCI prize and numerous invitations to festivals in Germany and abroad. Roehler's film Gierig was part of the Panorama section at the 1999 Berlin International Film Festival.

It's not just the top officials at the Hollywood-studios who avidly follow his movie reviews in the Los Angeles Times. Through his guest appearances on a morning radio show his voice is well known to the American public. Turan is author of 'Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made'.