Juries

Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese is a filmmaker and artist from Lesotho, currently based in Berlin. He works also as an author, director and cinematographer. His award-winning short films and video art works have been presented internationally. Mosese’s long film essay Mother, I am Suffocating. This is My Last Film About You. celebrated its premiere in 2019 at the Berlinale Forum. His feature film This Is Not A Burial, It's A Resurrection was screened at the International Film Festivals in Venice and Rotterdam, the Museum of Modern Art “MOMA”. At the Sundance Film Festival 2020 it won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Visionary Filmmaking.
Mosese is an alumnus of Berlinale Talent Campus (2012) and was a participant of the “Focus Features Africa First”, the “Realness Screenwriter’s Residency”, the “Final Cut Venice” and “Venice Biennale Cinema College” as well as “Cannes L’Atelier”.

The cinematographer and director Marine Atlan studied at La Fémis in Paris and worked as a camera woman for films by Louise Hémon, Benoît Bouthors, Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel. Her debut film Les amours vertes (2016) was awarded the main prize at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival. For the sensitive staging of the film Daniel fait face, she received a Special Mention in the Kplus competition in 2019.

Mexican filmmaker María Novaro premiered with her feature film Tesoros at Generation in 2017. Her films have been shown at all renowned film festivals worldwide, including Danzón in 1991 in Cannes and Sin dejar huella (Leaving No Trace) in 2000 at Sundance. In the 1970s, she was part of the artist collective “Cine-Mujer”. Today, she heads the Mexican film institute IMCINE.

The German director Erik Schmitt has a close connection with Generation. Following his two short films Nashorn im Galopp (2013) and Berlin Metanoia (2016), his feature film debut Cleo opened the Generation Kplus competition in 2019. He received the German Short Film Award for Nun sehen Sie Folgendes (Now Follows, 2011). He is currently working on the science fiction film Rebel Girl with his Berlin production company Seven Elephants.

Abbas Amini has been a filmmaker since he was 13. Living and working in Tehran, he is actively committed to the protection of human rights. In particular, he is a dedicated opponent of child labour, as demonstrated by his artistic work and engagement in the NGO “Association for the Protection of Child Labourers (APCL)”. His two films Valderama (2016) and Hendi va Hormoz (Hendi & Hormoz, 2018), both of which tell about the lives of young Iranians, were shown at Generation 14plus.

Jenna Bass lives in South Africa and works as a writer and filmmaker, and she is also former magician. Her award-winning films include The Tunnel (2010) as well as Love the One You Love (2014) and High Fantasy (2017), both developed in a collective. High Fantasy premiered in 2018 at Generation 14plus. Her third feature film, Flatland, was the opening film of Panorama in 2019. Most recently, she completed the short film Sizohlala, which was produced by Jia Zhang-Ke.

As a self-taught cinematic all-rounder and as an advocate for gender equality, Rima Das was recognised by GQ India as one of the “Most Influential Young Indians 2018”. Her film Village Rockstars premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2017 and subsequently received the Indian Film Award. With Bulbul Can Sing, for which she was responsible for the script, direction, camera, montage, production design and production, she was a guest at Generation 14plus last year and received a Special Mention from the 14plus International Jury.

Born in 1985, the Serbian director and writer Ognjen Glavonić studied Film and TV directing at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. His remarkable filmography includes Živan pravi pank festival (Živan Makes a Punk Festival, 2014), which premiered at the Cinéma du Réel festival in Paris and Dubina dva (Depth Two, 2016), which garnered numerous awards at 70 festivals, after premiering at the Berlinale Forum in 2016. His latest work, Teret (The Load, 2018), is his first feature fiction film. It debuted at Cannes in the Director’s Fortnight section and went on to win 26 awards at more than 90 festivals. Glavonić is also the director and co-founder of the Pančevo Film Festival in Serbia.

Hala Lotfy is an Egyptian director, producer and the founder of Hassala Films collective. Ann Al Sho'our Bel Berouda (Feeling Cold, 2005) is one of her notable documentary works, which received numerous awards including the Special Jury Prize at the National Film Festival in Egypt. Lotfy also created seven documentaries for the TV series Arabs of Latin America for Al Jazeera. In 2011, she was chosen by Charlotte Rampling to receive the Katrin Cartlidge Foundation Award. Lotfy’s feature fiction debut Al-khoroug lel-nahar (Coming Forth by Day, 2012) had its European premiere at the Berlinale Forum in 2013 and won many awards including the Prize of the FIPRESCI jury and Best Director from the Arab World at Abu Dhabi Film Festival. EXT./Night (2018) is the latest feature fiction she produced, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018.

Gonzalo de Pedro Amatria is a film programmer and scholar from Pamplona, Spain. Working as a university professor for Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, he also published essays on filmmakers, such as Hong Sangsoo, Ross McElwee, Jem Cohen or Werner Herzog. His programming experience involves the work as a programme coordinator at the Punto de Vista Festival in Pamplona until 2014 and curating film series for the likes of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, FIDMarseille and Museo Reina Sofía. He worked at Locarno Festival from 2014 to 2018 in the selection committee of the Pardi di domani section, as associate programmer for Filmoteca Española and the International Film Festival de Valdivia. Currently he is the artistic director of Cineteca Madrid.

Gerd Kroske completed an apprenticeship as a concrete craftsman before he started his cultural sciences studies in Berlin. During his studies, he also pursued a degree in direction at the Film University in Potsdam-Babelsberg in 1982 and already worked from 1987 to 1991 as a writer and dramaturg at DEFA-Dokumentarfilmstudio. Kroske founded the production company realistfilm in 1996. His most noted documentary films include VOKZAL–Bahnhof Brest (Berlinale Panorama 1994), which won the Grand Prize of the Cinéma du Reél in 1995 in Paris, Der Boxprinz (2000) and the KEHRAUS trilogy (1990-2006). His most recent film SPK Komplex premiered at the Berlinale Forum in 2018.

Marie Losier is a French and American filmmaker and curator. She has made a number of film portraits of avant-garde directors and musicians such as The Kuchar Brothers, Guy Maddin, Richard Foreman and Tony Conrad. Her films won numerous awards and have been shown at prestigious museums, biennials and festivals. She presented several of her films at the Berlinale, including The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye in 2011 for which she won the TEDDY AWARD and three awards of the Independent Juries at Forum. Her new film Felix in Wonderland on the German composer Felix Kubin, premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in 2019. Losier recently showed a retrospective at MoMA in New York City and at Jeu de Paume in Paris and will present a solo exhibition at the Gallery Barrault in Paris in 2020.

Alanis Obomsawin, a member of the Abenaki Nation, is a distinguished Canadian filmmaker, singer, artist and activist. She wrote and directed more than 50 documentaries on First Nation issues for the National Film Board of Canada, including Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993) and Incident at Restigouche (1984). Her latest film, Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger, celebrated its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019. It completes a seven-film cycle devoted to the rights of Indigenous children and peoples, which began in 2011 with her first interviews for The People of the Kattawapiskak River (2012). Obomsawin was named a “Companion of the Order of Canada” and received numerous honours and awards.

Juliette Binoche has captivated audiences and critics alike in over 70 films, and has garnered numerous awards and nominations, including honours at the festivals in Berlin, Venice and Cannes. She was discovered as an upcoming talent in Jean-Luc Godard’s Je vous salue, Marie (Hail Mary, 1984) before playing her first leading role in André Téchiné’s Rendez-vous (1985). Her international breakthrough was in Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), the film adaptation of the eponymous novel. Since then she has worked internationally, both in the USA and in European productions. Her collaboration with Leos Carax, Les amants du Pont-Neuf (The Lovers on the Bridge, 1991), screened in Forum at the 1992 Berlinale. Juliette Binoche received the Coppa Volpi in Venice in 1993 for her role in Trois Couleurs: Bleu (Three Colors: Blue) by Krzysztof Kieślowski, as well as a César Award in 1994. That same year, she was awarded the Berlinale Camera. In 1997, she won a Berlinale Silver Bear, a BAFTA and an Academy Award for her role in The English Patient (1996, dir: Anthony Minghella). In Lasse Hallström’s romantic melodrama Chocolat (2000) she played the lead alongside Johnny Depp. In 2010, she was awarded the prize for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her leading role in Abbas Kiarostamis’ Copie conforme (Certified Copy, 2010). Juliette Binoche appeared in the Berlinale opening film of 2015, Nadie quiere la noche (Endless Night) by Isabel Coixet. Her latest films are High Life (2018) by Claire Denis and Doubles vies (Non-Fiction, 2018) by Olivier Assayas.

Justin Chang has been a film critic for the Los Angeles Times since 2016 and also reviews movies for the U.S. public radio programmes “Fresh Air” and “FilmWeek.” He was previously chief film critic at the international trade magazine Variety. Chang is the author of “FilmCraft: Editing”, a 2011 book of interviews with 17 of the world’s top film editors. He was recently named film critic of the year at the Los Angeles Press Club’s National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards, and in 2014 he received the inaugural Roger Ebert Award from the African-American Film Critics Association. Chang, who holds a degree in journalism from the University of Southern California, is chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. He has served on numerous juries at film festivals including Busan, SXSW, San Francisco and Jerusalem.

After studying acting at Berlin’s Ernst Busch University of Performing Arts, Sandra Hüller first took to the stage in Jena, Leipzig, and Basel. Her breakthrough on the big screen came with Hans-Christian Schmid’s film Requiem in 2006. For this performance she not only won the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for Best Actress, but also German and Bavarian Film Awards. Alongside her often-prizewinning theatre work, she has starred in many films, including Maria Speth’s Madonnen (2007), Nanouk Leopold's Brownian Movement (Berlinale Forum 2011), the internationally acclaimed Über uns das All (Berlinale Panorama 2011), Finsterworld (2013, dir: Frauke Finsterwalder), and Jessica Hausner’s Amour Fou (2014). For Maren Ade’s film Toni Erdmann — thunderously received in 2016 at its world premiere in the competition at Cannes — Sandra Hüller won European, German, and Bavarian Film Awards. In 2018, with Thomas Stuber’s In den Gängen (In the Aisles), she again participated in the Berlinale Competition and garnered another nomination for a German Film Award.

Chilean director Sebastián Lelio first attracted critical acclaim with his feature film debut, La Sagrada Familia (The Sacred Family), at the San Sebastián Film Festival in 2005. His two subsequent films Navidad (Christmas, 2009) and El Año del Tigre (The Year of the Tiger, 2011) confirmed his talent. He celebrated his international breakthrough with Gloria, which ran in the Berlinale Competition in 2013 and, among other awards, won a Silver Bear for lead actress Paulina García. In 2017 Sebastián Lelio presented Una mujer fantástica (A Fantastic Woman) in the Berlinale Competition and took home the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay as well as the TEDDY AWARD. The film went on to win a Goya, an Independent Spirit Award, and — as the first Chilean film ever — the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2017, with Disobedience, starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams, Lelio also made his English-language debut; it earned him five nominations at the British Independent Film Awards. In 2018, he recreated his hit film Gloria in the USA. Titled Gloria Bell, it stars Julianne Moore and John Turturro.

Rajendra Roy has been the Chief Curator of Film at the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 2007. In this capacity he manages a collection of over 30,000 works and has helped create exhibitions on Pedro Almodóvar, Wim Wenders, Tim Burton and Mike Nichols, among others. He co-authored the book “The Berlin School: Films from the Berliner Schule” (2013). He is co-chair of the selection committee for New Directors/New Films, presented with the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Previously, he was director of programming and artistic director for the Hamptons International Film Festival, as well as the only American member of the selection committee for the Berlinale Competition section from 2004 - 2008. Rajendra Roy studied political science and French literature at the University of California in San Diego and has been a member of numerous juries, including at Sundance, SXSW, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Independent Spirit Awards.

After training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Styler became a leading actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as her many television and film roles. In 1990 she became a producer, and her documentary Moving the Mountain won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 1995 Berlinale. Styler has produced many award-winning films, among them Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Dito Montiel's Sundance hit, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006); Duncan Jones' Moon (2009); and Richard Glatzer’s and Wash Westmoreland's Oscar-winning Still Alice (2014). In 2017 Freak Show, her directorial feature debut, celebrated its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Generation 14plus section. This year, two of her production company Maven Pictures’ films will screen in Berlin: Guy Nattiv’s Skin in the Panorama section; and Andrew Ahn’s Driveways in Generation Kplus. Styler - a UNICEF UK ambassador and Co-Founder of the Rainforest Fund - also continues her acting career both on stage and on screen, most recently co-starring in Cary Fukunaga’s 2018 Netflix series Maniac.

Jeffrey Bowers is a Senior Curator at Vimeo, where his responsibilities include selecting Staff Picks, managing Staff Pick Premieres, Staff Pick Awards and Vimeo's Best of the Year awards. His background includes programming features and shorts for the Tribeca Film Festival, Hamptons International Film Festival, and Rooftop Films. He also co-curated VICE media’s VICE Shorts, where he wrote the short film column, “I'm Short, Not Stupid”. Bowers has served on juries and participated in speaking engagements at places like the Toronto International Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, Palm Springs International ShortFest, Guanajuato Film Festival, and IFP (Independent Feature Project) in New York.

Vanja Kaludjercic works for the curated streaming platform MUBI as Director of Acquisitions. Previously, she was part of the International Film Festival Rotterdam where she headed the Masterclasses & Talks section. She has also worked as director of the Holland Film Meeting of the Netherlands Film Festival, as head of industry at Les Arcs European Film Festival, and established the Paris Co-Production Village in 2014. As a programmer, she has worked for the Sarajevo Film Festival, Paris-based Cinéma du Réel and CPH:DOX. Outside of festivals, Kaludjercic has also teamed up with Slovenia-based distribution outfit Demiurg and Paris-based sales and production company Coproduction Office.

In addition to her work as founder and artistic director of RAW Material Company in Senegal, Koyo Kouoh has been responsible for a huge variety of international exhibitions, including “Saving Bruce Lee: African and Arab Cinema in the Era of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy” at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, co-curated with Rasha Salti. She was a curator of the 1:54 FORUM Contemporary African Art Fair in London and New York, as well as a member of several curatorial teams for documenta 12 (2007) and documenta 13 (2012). Kouoh was the curator of the 37th EVA International, Ireland’s Biennial (2016). In 2018 she participated in the 57th edition of Carnegie International with the exhibition “Dig Where You Stand”. Her published works include “Word!Word?Word! Issa Samb and the Undecipherable Form” (2013), “Condition Report on Building Art Institutions in Africa” (2012) and “Chronicle of a Revolt: Photographs of a Season of Protest” (2012).

After graduating from the British Film Institute, author and journalist Katja Eichinger worked for a number of papers and magazines, including Variety, Financial Times, Esquire, Dazed & Confused, The Independent on Sunday, and VOGUE Germany. After the death of her husband Bernd Eichinger, she wrote his biography, titled “BE” (2012). Her debut novel, “Amerikanisches Solo”, was published in 2014. Alongside being the initiator of the Giorgio Moroder retrospective "The Sound of Munich" and "Warholmania”— an homage to Andy Warhol — she supports young filmmakers through the "NO FEAR Award”, a scholarship for promising producers at the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF), as well as through her work at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb). In 2014 she was on the jury of the "Made in Germany – Perspektive Fellowship" at the Berlinale. In 2018 she produced the concept album “Junkspace” with Rem Koohlhaas and the New York band Tempers.

Born in France in 1972, the French-Senegalese director studied art history and film at the Sorbonne University in Paris. After beginning with videos and short films, he made his feature film debut in 2002 with L’afrance which focused on the spiritual hardships of migrants in France and was awarded a Silver Leopard in Locarno. His feature film Andalucia was shown at the Venice Days, Aujourd’hui (Tey) screened in Competition at the 2012 Berlinale and was chosen as Senegal’s entry for an Oscar® nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2017, Alain Gomis presented his film Félicité in the Berlinale Competition and won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize.

Director, screenwriter, and producer Vivian Qu is one of Chinese independent cinema’s most important representatives. Her directorial debut Shuiyin jie (Trap Street, 2013) premiered to critical acclaim in Venice, and was shown at over 50 film festivals worldwide. In 2017 she presented her film Jia nian hua (Angels Wear White) in Venice Competition, and it garnered her numerous awards worldwide, including Best Director at the 54th Golden Horse Awards and the Chinese Director’s Guild Award in her home country. Prior to this, she has produced several award-winning independent films including Diao Yinan’s Bai Ri Yan Huo (Black Coal, Thin Ice), which received the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 2014 Berlinale. Vivian Qu was president of the jury at the 2018 International Antalya Film Festival.

Maria Bonsanti has established herself in the world of documentary film since 2000. For twelve years she worked for the Festival dei Popoli in Florence, where she was appointed co-director in 2011. She also frequently worked for the Locarno Festival, where she coordinated, for instance, the Play Forward section in 2006 and 2007. From 2012 to 2017, Bonsanti was artistic director of the documentary film festival Cinéma du réel at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Since 2017, she has been the programme director of Eurodoc, a leading training programme and network for over 1,000 documentary producers from more than 60 countries worldwide. Maria Bonsanti has already served on a number of festival juries around the globe.

Gregory Nava is a film director and writer noted for his string of ground-breaking Latino films. His films have played at Cannes, Sundance and San Sebastián. His 1984 film El Norte about undocumented workers from Guatemala in the United States was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Original Screenplay and has been named an “American Classic” by the Library of Congress. He has also written and directed the Oscar nominated My Family (1995), the Golden Globe nominated Selena (1997), and Bordertown, which was screened in Competition at the 2007 Berlinale. He co-wrote the Oscar winning Frida (2002) and executive produced American Family (2002 – 2004), the Emmy and Golden Globe nominated TV series about a Latino family in Los Angeles.

Director Maria Ramos studied documentary film in Amsterdam and has been a guest at festivals worldwide since the start of her career. Her films have received multiple awards. Justiça (Justice, 2004) won the Grand Prix at Visions du Réel and the Amnesty Award at CPH:DOX, among other prizes. In 2007, Juízo (Behave) premiered at the Locarno Festival and was honoured with the FIPRESCI Award at DOK Leipzig. Her most recent film O processo (The Trial) celebrated its world premiere in Panorama at the 2018 Berlinale, and received the Grand Prix at Visions du Réel, Best Film at DocumentaMadrid and the Audience Award at IndieLisboa. In 2013, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights honoured Maria Ramos with the Marek Nowicki Prize for her examination of the subject human rights.

Director, screenwriter, film composer, and producer Tom Tykwer made his first feature, Deadly Maria, in 1993, and achieved his international breakthrough with Run Lola Run in 1998. After The Princess and the Warrior (2000), Tykwer made his first film in English: Heaven, based on Krzysztof Kieślowski’s last screenplay, opened the Berlinale in 2002. Further international productions followed with his adaptation for the screen of Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) and The International (Berlinale opening film in 2009). After Three (2010), for which Tykwer won the German Film Award for Best Director, came Cloud Atlas (2012), on which he collaborated as a director for the first time with the Wachowskis (the Matrix trilogy). Tykwer went on to compose music for and direct several episodes of the siblings’ Netflix series Sense8 (2015-2017). Tykwer’s feature A Hologram for the King with Tom Hanks in the lead was released in 2016. The filmmaker, who has won countless prizes, has presented six of his films at the Berlinale, most recently the projects Germany 09, 13 Short Films About the State of the Nation (2009), and Rosakinder (2013), both anthology films made with other German directors. In 2017, with Achim von Borries and Henk Handloegten, Tykwer developed and co-directed the highly-acclaimed German series Babylon Berlin.

Born in Belgium, Cécile de France studied acting in Paris and Lyon. Since 2000, she has appeared regularly in French and international productions. Her big breakthrough was under the direction of Cédric Klapisch in L’auberge espagnole (2002). Later she starred alongside Jackie Chan in Around the World in 80 Days (2004), and filmed with directors such as Xavier Giannoli (Chanson d’amour, 2006 and Superstar, 2012), Claude Miller (Un secret, 2007), Clint Eastwood (Hereafter, 2010), and the Dardenne brothers (Le gamin au vélo, 2010). Most recently she played alongside Jude Law in Paolo Sorrentino’s series, The Young Pope (2016); as well as in Etienne Comar’s Django (2017), the opening film of last year’s Berlinale. Cécile de France has already won two French César Awards. She was nominated for a European Film Award in 2011 and received a Shooting Star Award at the Berlinale in 2003.

After studying architecture and interior design, Chema Prado began working for various film magazines. Then in 1976 he took a position as head of programming at the Filmoteca Española (Spanish National Cinemateque). In 1987 he was appointed the institution’s deputy director; and two years later, its director, a post he held until 2016. For several years he was a member of the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). He was also a consultant for the San Sebastian International Film Festival, as well as a jury member at many festivals, including Cannes, Sundance, Locarno, Rotterdam, and Venice. In addition, he is a dedicated photographer and has shown his works in numerous Spanish galleries and museums, as well as in Portugal, France, and Mexico. He was named a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French government, and has been honoured with several Spanish orders of merit, including the Encomienda de Número al Mérito Civil.

Adele Romanski recently won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe for producing Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight (2017). Together, she and Jenkins founded the production company PASTEL along with partners Sara Murphy and Mark Ceryak. Prior to this Romanski produced David Robert Mitchell’s The Myth of the American Sleepover (2010), which premiered in Cannes and won her an Independent Spirit Award nomination; and Chad Hartigan’s Sundance competition entry, Morris from America (2016). In addition she also produced the second season of the Golden Globe-nominated series The Girlfriend Experience alongside executive producer Steven Soderbergh, Amy Seimetz and Lodge Kerrigan. Romanski is currently producing two new films, If Beale Street Could Talk directed by Jenkins and Under The Silver Lake by Mitchell. Both are now in post-production and will be premiered later this year.