Juries

Since the 1970s, French photographer Brigitte Lacombe, who lives in New York, has ranked among the world’s best-known and most successful artists in her field. Her photographs frequently appear in publications such as “Vanity Fair”, “Vogue”, “The New Yorker”, “Zeit Magazin”, “The Financial Times”, and “The New York Times Magazine”. In 1975, one of her first big assignments took her to the Cannes Film Festival and ever since she has had very close links to the world of cinema. She works regularly as a special photographer visiting the film sets of directors such as Martin Scorsese, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Spike Jonze, Sam Mendes, David Mamet and Michael Haneke. From 2009 to 2013, she was commissioned by the Doha Film Institute (DFI) to take portraits of over 350 international filmmakers and actors, mostly from the Middle East region. Lacombe, who has received many prizes, including the Art Directors Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Photography, has published two books to date: “Lacombe anima / persona” (Steidl-Dangin, 2008) and “Lacombe cinema / theatre” (Schirmer/Mosel, 2001).

In 1991, right at the start of his career, Berlinale audiences got to see Clive Owen in Stephen Poliakoff’s Close My Eyes, which screened in the Panorama section. With it the English actor began a long list of impressive performances in which he has succeeded in balancing small arthouse productions such as Croupier (D: Mike Hodges, 1998) or Shadow Dancer (D: James Marsh, Competition - out of competition 2012) with big mainstream hits such as Sin City (2005). He received the Golden Globe and a nomination for an Oscar for Mike Nichols’s Closer (2005), and worked with directors such as Robert Altman (Gosford Park, 2001), Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, 2006) and Spike Lee (Inside Man, 2006). Owen, who is currently playing the lead in Soderbergh’s TV series The Knick (since 2014), for which he has been Golden Globe nominated, starred in Tom Tykwer’s political thriller The International (2008), which opened the Berlinale in 2009. This spring he will begin production on Luc Besson’s Valérian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

Alba Rohrwacher numbers amongst the most important actress of her generation. The daughter of a German father and Italian mother, she made her feature film debut with An Italian Romance (D: Carlo Mazzacurati) in 2004. Since then she has worked with numerous renowned Italian and international directors. She has already won the Italian David di Donatello film award twice (2007 and 2008). In 2009 she was celebrated as a European Shooting Star at the Berlinale and in Venice in 2014 she won the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress for her performance in Hungry Hearts (D: Saverio Costanzo). She had already made two Berlinale Special guest appearances, with What More Do I Want (D: Silvio Soldini, 2010) and Doris Dörrie's Bliss (2012), before she shone in the lead role in Laura Bispuri's 2015 Competition entry Sworn Virgin. Amongst her other successes are I Am Love (2009) by Luca Guadagnino, Dormant Beauty by Marco Bellocchio (2012) and Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders (2014).

Małgorzata Szumowska is among Poland’s most prominent filmmakers. She graduated in film directing from the Polish National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź. She has won several international awards and her films have been presented at the most important film festivals worldwide. Her first two feature films, Happy Man (2000) and Stranger (2004) were both nominated by the European Film Academy for European Discovery of the Year. The next movie 33 Scenes from Life was awarded at the film festival in Locarno. Szumowska’s films have been seen frequently in Berlin. Stranger was shown in the Panorama section in 2005. In 2012, Elles starring Juliette Binoche opened the Panorama and went on to theatrical distribution in more than 40 countries. Her first film in Competition at the Berlin International Film Festival was In the Name of, which won the Teddy Award at the 63rd Berlinale. Małgorzata Szumowska was seen in Competition here most recently in 2015, with Body, for which she won the Silver Bear for Best Director. The film went on to garner the most awards of any Polish film in 2015.

Sheikha Hoor Al-Qasimi is president and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, director of the Sharjah Biennial and is on the Board of Directors of MoMA PS1 in New York, and of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. In 2012 she was on the selection committee of the 7th Berlin Biennale. Al-Qasimi curated the United Arab Emirates Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. Furthermore, she works as an artist and lecturer and is currently Scholar in Residence at The Institute for Comparative Modernities (ICM) at Cornell University.

Katerina Gregos is a curator, writer and lecturer. She has curated, for instance, the Belgian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, and the 5th Thessaloniki Biennial: “Between the Pessimism of the Spirit and the Optimism of the Will” (both 2015); “The Politics of Play” for the 7th Göteborg Biennial (2013); “Newtopia: The State of Human Rights” in Mechelen and Brussels, as well as the Manifesta 9 (all 2012); “Speech Matters” for the Danish Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale, and the 4th Fotofestival Mannheim-Ludwigshafen-Heidelberg (both 2011); Contour: the 4th Biennial of Moving Image, Belgium (2009). Prior to that Gregos was artistic director of Argos Centre for Art and Media in Brussels.

Avi Mograbi works as a filmmaker, video artist and lecturer. His films have been presented at numerous festivals. Mograbi’s previous Berlinale films comprise At the Back/The Details (Forum Expanded 2012), Detail (Forum 2004) and August (Forum 2002); he presented Avenge But One of My Two Eyes at Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition, 2005). The Berlin Akademie der Künste conferred him with the Konrad Wolf Prize for Outstanding Artistic Achievement in 2009. In 2011 he was invited to participate in the DAAD Berlin Artists-in-Residence programme. Mograbi studied Art and Philosophy in Tel Aviv and at the Hamidrasha School of Art.

Director and producer Michel Franco was born in Mexico City and started making films whilst he was still a student. After various short films and commercials, he celebrated his feature debut in 2009 with Daniel & Ana, which was invited to the Directors' Fortnight sidebar in Cannes. Three years later he received the Un Certain Regard Award for After Lucia, also in Cannes. In 2015 he returned to the Croisette, where his Chronic, with Tim Roth in the lead role, won the Best Screenplay Award in the Competition. That same year 600 Miles, which Franco produced and was directed by Gabriel Ripstein, screened in the Panorama section of the Berlinale, winning the award for Best First Feature. Franco was also involved as a producer in the Venezuelan-Mexican coproduction Desde allá (D: Lorenzo Vigas), which won the Golden Lion at the 2015 Venice Film Festival.

Enrico Lo Verso was born in Palermo in 1964 and grew up in Syracuse. His first leading role, in The Stolen Children (1992) by Gianni Amelio, brought the Sicilian actor to international attention as well as gaining him nominations for the European Film Award and the Golden Globes in the Best Actor category. Following this he appeared before the camera for Gérard Corbiau in Farinelli (1994), Gianni Amelio in Lamerica (1994, European Film Award) and Ridley Scott in Hannibal (2001). He went on to later film with Giuseppe Tornatore Baarìa (2009). In addition, he has worked with such greats as Ettore Scola and Ricky Tognazzi. In 2012 audiences saw him in Edoardo Ponti's The Nightshift Belongs to the Stars, which won the Best Narrative Short award at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Part Swiss part French director Ursula Meier studied film at the Institut des Arts de Diffusion (IAD) in Belgium. She was second assistant director on two films by Alain Tanner while also making her own short films. After two documentaries, she directed the TV film Strong Shoulders for Arte. Her first feature for the big screen, Home, premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival Semaine de la Critique. Her next film, Sister, was shown in Competition at the 2012 Berlinale and won a Silver Bear Special Award. Both films were the Swiss submissions for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Home in 2009 and Sister in 2013. Ursula Meier directed the Quiet Mujo segment of the omnibus film Bridges of Sarajevo presented in official selection at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Ursula Meier was at the 2015 Berlinale with her documentary short Kacey Mottet Klein, Birth of an Actor (Generation).

Following his studies at Harvard University, Darren Aronofsky celebrated his feature film debut in 1998 with Pi, which won the award for Best Director at the Sundance Film Festival and Best Script at the Independent Spirit Awards. He presented his highly acclaimed cinematic adaptation Requiem for a Dream at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000, and the cult film The Fountain at the Venice Film Festival in 2006. Again in Venice, his film The Wrestler won the Golden Lion in 2008, and was hailed as the film of the year at the AFI Awards in Los Angeles. The film’s success also represented a sensational comeback of actor Mickey Rourke.
In 2011, Darren Aronofsky presented Black Swan, a psychological thriller taking place in the world of professional ballet. It was nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, the Director’s Guild of America Awards and the BAFTAs. His visually sweeping film Noah was released in 2014.

Daniel Brühl is one of a handful of German movie stars who have also established a successful international career. Following his distinction with the German Film Award for Das weiße Rauschen, Vaya con Dios and Nichts bereuen in 2002, he celebrated his breakthrough in 2003 with Good Bye, Lenin!, which screened in Competition at the Berlinale. For that role, Daniel Brühl received the European Film Award as well as another German Film Award. His international work has included roles in Anton Corbijn's A Most Wanted Man, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate and Michael Winterbottom's The Face of an Angel. Following various productions in Germany, Spain, France and the US, he was recently nominated for numerous awards, including a Golden Globe Award, for his work in Ron Howard's Rush. His most recent role was alongside Helen Mirren in Simon Curtis's Woman in Gold.

Born in 1969 in Seoul, South Korea, Bong Joon-ho studied sociology before graduating from the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA). He initially worked as a screenwriter and director’s assistant while also making many short films of his own. His feature film debut Barking Dogs Never Bite was released in cinemas in 2000. His film Memories of Murder was screened at the San Sebastián film festival, among others, and won numerous awards. In 2006, following its world premiere in the Quinzane des Réalisateurs in Cannes, The Host would go on to become the biggest box office hit ever in South Korea. Bong Joon-ho was invited to Cannes once again in 2009 for Mother, this time in the section Un Certain Regard. His English language film debut Snowpiercer, featuring Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton and John Hurt, was a selection in the 2014 Berlinale Forum programme.

Martha De Laurentiis and her husband Dino founded their production firm - today known as the De Laurentiis Company - in 1980. Since then it has been responsible for over 40 feature films and television series, including Stephen King’s directorial debut Maximum Overdrive, The Bedroom Window by Curtis Hanson, Michael Cimino’s Desperate Hours, Breakdown and U-571 by Jonathan Mostow and Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon. It produced Ridley Scott’s film adaptation of Hannibal, which screened out of competition at the Berlinale in 2001. De Laurentiis Company is also an executive producer of the Hannibal television series, which stars Mads Mikkelsen and has entered its third season in the US. At the 2014 festival, Martha De Laurentiis talked about the Hannibal series at Berlinale Talents.

Peruvian native Claudia Llosa studied Communication Studies in Lima and later scriptwriting at the Escuela TAI in Madrid. She began her career in advertising before starting her own film production company. Her first feature film Madeinusa was released in 2006. Three years later, the WCF-funded film The Milk of Sorrow was a selection in the Berlinale Competition programme and went on to win the Golden Bear and the FIPRESCI Award. The film was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2012, her short film Loxoro was a selection in the Berlinale Shorts programme and won the Teddy Award. Her English-language film debut Aloft, starring Jennifer Connelly, Mélanie Laurent and Cillian Murphy, screened in Competition in 2014 and Sundance Spotlight 2015.

Audrey Tautou's feature film debut - in the comedy Venus Beauty Institute - garnered her a César Award. Her international breakthrough came in 2001, when she starred in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie and was nominated for the European Film Award, as well as for another César and a BAFTA in 2002. Other films in her repertoire include Cédric Klapisch's acclaimed L'Auberge Espagnole trilogy, Not on the Lips by Alain Resnais, Salvadori's Priceless, Coco Before Chanel, and international productions such as The Da Vinci Code and Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things. Most recently, the French actress worked with Claude Miller (Thérèse Desqueyroux) and Michel Gondry (Mood Indigo).

Since 2007, Matthew Weiner has been the creator, executive producer and writer of the successful and critically acclaimed television series Mad Men, whose seventh and last season is currently running in the US. To date, he has received nine Emmys, two BAFTAS, three Golden Globes, numerous WGA awards and many other distinctions recognising his work on the series. As a director, he has been nominated twice by the DGA for his work behind the camera. Are You Here, starring Owen Wilson and Amy Poehler, marks his feature film debut as a writer, director and producer. Weiner's other credits as a writer include the television series Becker, The Naked Truth, and The Sopranos - for which he was also an executive producer.

The Istanbul-based artist Halil Altındere explores political, social and cultural codes, and focuses largely on depicting marginalisation and resistance to oppressive systems. Altındere has been a central figure in the Turkish contemporary art world since the mid-1990s, not only as an artist but also as the publisher of art-ist Magazine and as a prominent curator. His works have been included in exhibitions at the Documenta, the Manifesta, and the biennials in Istanbul, Gwangju, Sharjah and São Paulo, as well as at MoMA/PS1, New York. In 2015, the Kunstpalais Erlangen will present a large solo exhibition of his work.

Since the 1990s, filmmaker, curator and pedagogue Madhusree Dutta’s inter-disciplinary engagement revolves around urbanology, migration, gender and identity. Madhusree’s films have been screened at film festivals and art events all around the world. Her latest multi-disciplinary, multi-scalar curatorial project Cinema City (2009 - 2014) was shown at Berlinale Forum Expanded in 2010. She is the executive director of Majlis, a centre for rights discourse and multi-cultural art initiatives in Mumbai.

Curator and author Wahyuni A. Hadi is the executive director of the Singapore International Film Festival. In 2013 she co-produced Ilo Ilo, which won many awards, including the Caméra d’Or at the Festival de Cannes. She is a partner in Objectifs – Centre for Photography and Film, and founding member of the independent short film distributor Objectifs Films. As leading expert and advocate of Singaporean cinema, she initiated in 2009 the Singapore Short Film Awards with filmmaker Chai Yeewei and The Substation, Singapore’s contemporary art centre.

Fernando Eimbcke studied at the UNAM Film Institute in Mexico. He was invited to the Berlinale Talent Campus in 2003 and celebrated his feature film debut with Temporada de Patos in 2004. Following its world premiere at the festival in Guadalajara, he was invited to "Semaine de la critique" in Cannes as well as numerous other international festivals. He took part in Competition of the Berlinale in 2008 with Lake Tahoe, winning the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize and the FIPRESCI Award. He contributed to the episode film Revolucion, which screened in Berlinale Special in 2010. In 2013, he received awards in San Sebastián and Turin for Club Sandwich.

International actress Olga Kurylenko had her breakthrough alongside Daniel Craig's James Bond in A Quantum of Solace. Appearances in films by directors such as multi award-winning Terrence Malick (To the Wonder), Martin McDonagh (Seven Psychopaths) and the hit American series Magic City followed, as well as a lead role alongside Tom Cruise in Oblivion. Most recently she worked with Academy Award winner Russell Crowe in his directorial debut The Water Diviner, and completed filming for the drama A Perfect Day with Benicio Del Toro and Tim Robbins.

American documentary director Joshua Oppenheimer has been making militias, death squads and their victims the focus of his work. His harrowing debut feature-length film The Act of Killing won several international awards all over the world including the Panorama Audience Award, the BAFTA award and a European Film Award. It was also nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary and has been released in more than 31 countries. The Look of Silence celebrated its premiere at the 2014 Venice Film Festival, receiving the Grand Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Award, followed by the prestigious Danish Arts Council Award.

In his capacity as a producer, James Schamus has been responsible not only for the Academy Award-winning film Brokeback Mountain, but also for numerous other Ang Lee films, including The Wedding Banquet, which won the Berlinale Golden Bear in 1993. James Schamus also wrote the script for the Ang Lee film The Ice Storm and was co-writer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Lust, Caution by Ang Lee. He is also Professor of Professional Practice in Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he teaches film history and theory. As one of independent cinema’s most important champions, James Schamus knows the balancing act between Hollywood's studio system and art-house cinema better than anyone. In 1991, he founded the production company Good Machine in New York, which merged with USA Films in 2002 to become the new company Focus Features. For over a decade, James Schamus led Focus Features, and during that era, was involved in the production and distribution of award-winning and celebrated films such as Far from Heaven, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Lost in Translation, Milk, Dallas Buyers Club and Teddy Award winner The Kids Are All Right. Thanks to Focus Features, international successes such as 8 Women, The Pianist and The Motorcycle Diaries were presented in American cinemas.

As the daughter of producer Albert R. Broccoli, Barbara Broccoli grew up on film sets and had her first experiences as an assistant director and assistant producer on the films A View to a Kill and Licence to Kill. Following the death of her father, she took over the production of the James Bond films with her brother Michael G. Wilson, starting with GoldenEye through to the most recent instalments Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Sam Mendes’s Academy Award-winning Skyfall. Ms Broccoli also puts her extensive industry knowledge to use beyond the James Bond franchise: she has produced the documentary Stolen Childhoods, the TV drama Crime of the Century and most recently executive produced The Silent Storm with Andrea Riseborough and Damian Lewis. Her theatre credits include “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (2002 London, 2005 Broadway), “A Steady Rain” (2009 Broadway), “Chariots of Fire” (2012 West End), “Once” (2012 Broadway, 2013 West End) and most recently “Strangers on a Train”, which opened in London’s West End in November 2013. In addition, Ms Broccoli was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2008.

Far beyond the borders of her native country, Trine Dyrholm has become one of the most successful Danish actors. She’s a regular at the Berlinale: she had roles in the Competition films In Your Hands by Annette K. Olesen, A Soap by Pernille Fischer Christensen, Olesen’s Little Soldier, and most recently in A Royal Affair by Nikolaj Arcel. She can also be seen regularly in German productions, such as in Ulrich Köhler’s Bungalow, which celebrated its premiere in the 2002 Berlinale Panorama, or recently in 3096 Days by Sherry Hormann. Her performance in “4:48 Psychosis”, for which she received the Danish theatrical award Reumert in 2002, led her to the legendary Volksbühne in Berlin. She has won numerous prestigious awards; she is even the only actor ever to have won five Bodil Awards. Trine most recently starred in the films In a Better World and Love Is All You Need by Susanne Bier.

Iranian filmmaker and painter Mitra Farahani was born in Teheran and now lives in Paris. She studied graphic art and painting in Iran before taking courses in video studies in France. Her first documentary short film Just a Woman won the Teddy Award at the 2002 Berlinale. Tabous – Zohre & Manouchehr (2004) and Fifi Howls from Happiness (2013), two feature documentaries, were each premiered in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival. In 2007, her documentary Behjat Sadr: Suspended Time portrayed one of the pioneers of Abstract Expressionist painting in Iran. In parallel, Mitra Farahani’s painting works pursue the same issue of realism that she deals with in her cinema works.

Over the course of just a few years, Greta Gerwig has become not only a figurehead of American independent film, but also one of the freshest new voices in Hollywood. She had her breakthrough at the 2010 Berlinale Competition, in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg. Last year, the two of them returned to Berlin with the cooperatively written comedy Frances Ha, which became a favourite of Panorama audiences. For her role in Frances Ha, she earned a Golden Globe and a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award nomination. In between those two films, Greta Gerwig also worked with legendary filmmakers like Woody Allen (To Rome with Love) and Whit Stillman (Damsels in Distress).

Like many of his colleagues, French filmmaker Michel Gondry began his career as a television ad director, and with music videos for artists such as the Rolling Stones, Björk or Daft Punk. The director, screenwriter and producer presented his feature film debut, Human Nature, in 2001. He received an Academy Award for his film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. His films The Science of Sleep and Be Kind Rewind both screened out of competition in the Berlinale Competition programme. His documentary Dave Chapelle's Block Party was presented in 2006 in Panorama, where his film Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? celebrated its European premiere in 2014. In addition, Michel Gondry has directed such diverse productions as The Green Hornet, starring Seth Rogen and Christoph Waltz, The We and the I, and Mood Indigo, starring Roman Duris and Audrey Tautou.

For over 20 years, Hong Kong born Tony Leung has been one of the most popular actors in Chinese cinema. Among his films with frequent collaborator Wong Kar Wai are Ashes of Time, Chungking Express, Happy Together, 2046, and The Grandmaster, opening film of the 2013 Berlinale. In 2000, he was awarded the Actor’s Prize of the Cannes Film Festival for In the Mood for Love. Leung, who is equally at home in the action genre as he is in auteur cinema, also worked with filmmakers such as Ang Lee (Lust, Caution), John Woo (Hard Boiled, Red Cliff), Hou Hsiao-Hsien (A City of Sadness), or Zhang Yimou (Hero) and played a lead part in the international success Infernal Affairs by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak. Over the course of his career, he has so far received seven Hong Kong Film Awards as well as countless other awards.