Feb 01, 2023
Berlinale 2023: Encounters Jury

Since 2020 the competitive section Encounters has been a part of the Berlinale. A three-member jury chooses the winners for Best Film, Best Director and the Special Jury Award. This year’s Encounters programme features 16 films.

The following were appointed as members of the jury:

Angeliki Papoulia (Greece)

After graduating from the Empros Theatre Drama School in her hometown of Athens, Angeliki Papoulia founded the blitz theatre group in 2004, where she was active as a writer, director and actor in Europe for 13 years. In front of the camera, she caused a sensation in Dogtooth (2009) by Yorgos Lanthimos, which won an award in Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar. She then starred in Lanthimos' Alps (2011) and The Lobster (2015), as well as Syllas Tzoumerkas' A Blast (2014) and The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea (2019). In 2022 she was a guest at Berlinale Encounters with I Poli ke i Poli by Christos Passalis and Syllas Tzoumerkas and A Little Love Package by Gastón Solnicki. She also played in Human Flowers of Flesh (2022) by Helena Wittmann.

Dea Kulumbegashvili (Georgia)

Born in 1986, filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili garnered international attention with her first full-length fiction film Beginning in 2020. After screening in the official programme at Cannes, the film went on to win not only the FIPRESCI prize in Toronto, but also Best Film in San Sebastián, along with awards for its direction, screenplay and female lead. In 2014, her first short film Invisible Spaces competed for the Short Film Palme d’Or in Cannes, and in 2016, her film Léthé celebrated its world premiere at Quinzaine des Réalisateurs. Her audio-visual installation Captives was part of the exhibition “Vive Le Cinema” at the Tabakalera Art Centre in San Sebastián in 2022 and is currently exhibited in the section Art Directions: Installations at the 2023 Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Paolo Moretti (Italy)

Paolo Moretti worked for several film festivals and institutions including the Pompidou Center, Filmoteca Española, Cinemateca Portuguesa, Leeds Film Festival and Cinéma du Réel. From 2008 to 2011 he was assistant director and programme advisor at the Venice Film Festival. He later worked as a programmer for FIDMarseille, Visions du Réel, the Rome Film Festival, and directed La Roche-sur-Yon IFF for six years. Between 2018 and 2022 he was general delegate and artistic director of Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. He is currently the head of the film department at ECAL, Lausanne’s university of art and design, curator of Fondazione Prada’s film programme in Milan and directs the Grütli arthouse film theatre in Geneva.

Press Office
February 1, 2023