Juries

Chinese director Wong Kar Wai has won many international awards and is one of the most important representatives of world cinema. His unique and extraordinary style has inspired countless filmmakers and made him a cult figure of contemporary auteur cinema. He made his directorial debut in 1988 with As Tears Go By. In 1994, he achieved his international breakthrough with Chungking Express, followed by Fallen Angels (1996, Berlinale Forum) and Happy Together (1997), for which he won the Award for Best Director in Cannes. He captivated still another generation of European moviegoers with the nostalgic love story In the Mood for Love (2000, César 2001), as well as with his next film, 2046 (European Film Award 2004). My Blueberry Nights (2007) was the first film that Wong Kar Wai shot in the USA and cast with Hollywood stars. His latest film, the epic martial arts drama The Grandmaster, will be the opening film of the 63rd Berlinale.

Danish director Susanne Bier studied art and architecture before surrendering completely to her love of film and attending the National Film School of Denmark. Her directorial debut De saliges ø (1987) won first prize of the Munich International Festival of Film Schools. In 1999 she celebrated her international breakthrough with The One and Only. She then ventured a radical change and turned to the Dogme 95 film movement, applying its principles for Open Hearts (2002) and the Sundance Film Festival award-winning Brothers (2004). Following a stint in Hollywood cinema with Things We Lost in the Fire (2007), she returned to her roots in 2010 with great success: In a Better World won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Love Is All You Need (2012), a romance starring Pierce Brosnan, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Susanne Bier is currently finishing the drama Serena featuring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper.

Andreas Dresen is one of Germany's most outstanding directors. His films frequently move between improvisation and semi-documentary, but always get up close and personal with the landscape of the German soul. With equal parts comedy and tragedy, Andreas Dresen often stages mundane reality in its vulgar beauty and bitter truth. His international breakthrough came in 2002 with Grill Point, which won the Berlinale Silver Bear. In his career spanning over 20 years, he has won numerous awards, many of them for his most successful film to date, Stopped on Track (2011), including the Prize Un Certain Regard at the Cannes International Film Festival. Andreas Dresen has been a regular guest of the Berlinale since 1999. Following Night Shape, his films Grill Point, Herr Wichmann von der CDU, Willenbrock and Herr Wichmann aus der dritten Reihe were programme features.

With her remarkable style and daring choices in image format and composition, U.S. director and cinematographer Ellen Kuras has influenced contemporary cinema aesthetics like no other woman in her field. She is one of the few female cinematographers to regularly film large-scale Hollywood productions, having collaborated with Martin Scorsese, Michel Gondry, Spike Lee and Jonathan Demme. In addition to feature films, her work includes documentary and advertising work as well as music films. Ellen Kuras gained early recognition for Swoon (1992), for which she received the first of three best dramatic cinematography awards at the Sundance Film Festival. Her visual style has defined Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Blow (2001) and Summer of Sam (1999), and her directorial debut The Betrayal (2008) was nominated for an Oscar and won a primetime Emmy. Ellen Kuras is currently in development on a script to direct about the silent film star Wally Reid.

The works of artist and director Shirin Neshat swing back and forth between tradition and modernity. A theme central to her work is the complexity of the female experience within Islamic society. Shirin Neshat was born in Iran. She left the country at the start of the 1979 Revolution and studied in the US, where she began her artistic output in photography and later moved on to film and video art. Her short film installation Turbulent won the International Award of the Venice Biennale in 1999. Ten years later, her first dramatic feature film Women without Men was awarded the Silver Lion for best director at the Venice Film Festival. Shirin Neshat is currently working on her second feature-length film, a portrait of the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum.

Tim Robbins (USA) has acted in films including The Shawshank Redemption, Mystic River, The Player, Short Cuts, Bull Durham, Jacob’s Ladder, The Hudsucker Proxy and The Secret Life of Words. He has received the Academy Award, the Prix D'Interpretation Masculine at the Cannes Film Festival, the Humanitas Prize, the Bronze Prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival for his debut film Bob Roberts, Best Director and Best Film at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain for Cradle Will Rock, and four awards at the Berlinale for Dead Man Walking. Most recently Mr. Robbins was honored to be named Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Republic of France. For the past 32 years, Mr. Robbins has been the Artistic Director of the Actors' Gang, which has traveled the world to five continents with its productions, and whose arts programs serve at-risk children and the incarcerated.

New Greek cinema would not exist without Greek director and producer Athina Rachel Tsangari. She migrated to the US to study performance studies at NYU, and film direction at the University of Texas, in Austin. Her directorial debut Fit (1994) was nominated for a Student Academy Award. Following her critically successful first feature The Slow Business of Going (2000) she returned to Greece, founded Haos Film with fellow filmmakers Matt Johnson and Maria Hatzakou, and began collaborating with director Yorgos Lanthimos. She produced Lanthimos's Kinetta (2005), Academy Award nominated Dogtooth (as an associate producer, 2009) and Alps (2011). Her own second feature Attenberg (2010) received two awards at the Venice International Film Festival, and her art film The Capsule (2012) premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival. Athina Rachel Tsangari is currently working on the sci-fi comedy Duncharon.

Spanish director Javier Fesser's film career began with a bang: Both of his first works, Aquel Ritmillo (1995) and El Secdleto de la Tlompeta (1996) are still the two most often awarded Spanish short films of all time. His comedies P. Tinto's Miracle (1998) and Clever & Smart (2003) were box office hits in Spain. His short film Binta y la gran idea was nominated for an Oscar in 2007. With Camino (2008), a film about Opus Dei, Javier Fesser switched to drama, creating a film that sparked international controversy and won six Goya Awards, among other distinctions. Javier Fesser is currently working on a 3D sequel to Clever & Smart.

Hong Hyosook was one of the founders of the Women Film Group and represents the Seoul Visual Collective. As a documentary cinematographer, her works include Doomealee, A New School is Opening (1995), On-Line: An Inside View of Korean Independent Film (1997, Berlinale Forum 1998), and Reclaiming Our Names (1998) which were presented at numerous international film festivals. In 1997 she started to work at the Busan International Film Festival, where she currently is curator of the “Wide Angle” section, Documentary and Short Films, and Director of the Asian Cinema Fund (ACF).

Art historian Susanne Pfeffer works internationally as a freelance curator. From 2007 to 2012 she was chief curator at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, as well as a curator and advisor for MOMA PS1 in New York. From 2004 to 2006 she was artistic director at Künstlerhaus Bremen. She has also been a guest curator for the São Paulo Art Biennial, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Museion Bozen, among others. Susanne Pfeffer has been the editor of numerous artist monographs and exhibition catalogues. In 2009 she was honoured by the AICA USA with an award for her exhibition “Kenneth Anger”.

Complex, human characters are Israeli/American screenwriter and director Oren Moverman's favourite subject. He gained recognition for his script work on Ira Sachs's Married Life and the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There. His directorial debut The Messenger was awarded the Silver Bear at the 2009 Berlinale, and his drama Rampart was released in 2012. Oren Moverman is currently working on Love & Mercy, a film about Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.

New Zealander Taika Waititi celebrated numerous successes as an entertainer and comedian before moving into directing in 2005. His first short film Two Cars, One Night was nominated for an Academy Award that year. Two feature films followed, Eagle vs. Shark (2007), which became an export hit, and Boy, which received the Grand Prix of the Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk at the Berlinale 2010.

British documentary filmmaker Lucy Walker looks for little stories holding big questions; she combines the biographical with the global and the ordinary with grand ideas. She has won over 50 awards with just five documentaries, has been nominated twice for an Academy Award (Waste Land, The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom), and her films Blindsight (2007) and Waste Land (2010) each won the Berlinale PanoramaPublikumsPreis.