Juries

The Irish-born filmmaker, now based in California, is known for his groundbreaking contemporary 3D animation. He has received over 75 awards for his short films that have been shown worldwide at more than 200 festivals. His first festival was at the Berlinale 2008, where he presented RGB XYZ. At the 2009 Berlinale he won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film with Please Say Something. His latest short film, The External World, screened at Venice (2010) and Sundance (2011), and went on to win numerous awards.

The performances of the award-winning American actor include Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, Robert Altman’s Shortcuts and Alan Parker’s Birdy. Matthew Modine made his screenplay/directorial feature debut with If...Dog…Rabbit. Jesus Was a Commie, his award winning short film, is currently playing at festivals around the globe. His recent roles include Girl in Progress, Family Weekend and The Dark Knight Rises.

Hania Mroué is founder and director of the Metropolis Art Cinema, the first art-house cinema in Lebanon opened in 2006. Since 2001 she is the Managing Director of the Arab film festival “Cinema Days of Beirut”. For the release of Arab and international auteur films she started the MC Distribution company. At the Doha Film Institute she is in charge as Chief Arab programmer for the Doha Tribeca Film festival and DFI’s year round initiatives.

The dramatist and novelist received the 1997 PEN Club Literature Award for his second play “The Man Who Never Yet Saw Woman's Nakedness”. His new adaptation of “Die Nibelungen” became one of the most successful German theatre productions. In 2008 Franziska Stünkel filmed his award-winning work “The Vineta Republic”, and in 2010 his first novel “Der Mann, der durch das Jahrhundert fiel” became a bestseller.

Isabella Rossellini is one of the most renowned actresses in international cinema. In recent years she has also made her mark as a producer and director. The daughter of Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and Italian director Roberto Rossellini has played in more than 40 feature films and worked with such directors as Robert Zemeckis, Joel Schumacher, Peter Weir, Abel Ferrara, Peter Greenaway and David Lynch or John Schlesinger, with whom she filmed The Innocent in Berlin in 1992. She celebrated her international breakthrough in 1986 with Lynch’s cult film Blue Velvet. She was a guest at the Berlinale for the first time in 1994 as the leading actress in Fearless. In 2005 she presented the short film My Dad is 100 Years Old, a tribute to her father. She returned in 2007 as narrator to Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon The Brain! and in 2008 she presented her directorial debut Green Porno about the sex life of insects. In autumn 2010, filming was finished on Late Bloomers (Berlinale Special 2011), the romantic comedy directed by Julie Gavras in which Isabella Rossellini stars alongside William Hurt.

Producer Jan Chapman is an outstanding figure in the Australian film industry. Her first international success came with The Piano (1993), which went on to win three Oscars. Since then she has continued working successfully with director Jane Campion, most recently in 2009 on the historical romantic drama Bright Star. In 1989 she founded her own production company, Jan Chapman Films, and has subsequently produced numerous films with different directors that have been acclaimed by both critics and audiences (Love Serenade, Holy Smoke, Lantana, Somersault). In 2004 she received the “Officer of the Order of Australia” for her contributions to Australian cinema.

The talented German film, television and theatre actress Nina Hoss celebrated her first major success in 1996 in the title role of Bernd Eichinger’s A Girl Called Rosemarie. In 2000 she was one of the Shooting Stars at the Berlinale. Her close collaboration with director Christian Petzold has been extremely successful: she won the 2001 Adolf Grimme Award for her role in his film Something To Remind Me and two years later the Adolf Grimme Award in Gold for Wolfsburg. Her performance of Yella earned her the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2007. Her most recent screen roles include the modern vampire thriller We Are the Night (by Dennis Gansel) and the romantic movie Summer Window (by Hendrik Handloegten).

Aamir Khan is a Bollywood superstar: He rose to overnight fame with the film Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988). In 2001 he achieved international success in the drama Lagaan - Once Upon A Time In India which was nominated for an Academy Award. After his directorial debut in 2007 with Taare Zameen Par, Khan starred in the film 3 Idiots which broke all box-office records in his home country. Aamir Khan is also an acclaimed producer: the film satire Peepli Live (2010) was chosen as the Indian entry for an Academy Award nomination. Altogether, four of his last ten films entered the running for an Academy Award nomination.

Filmmaker Guy Maddin, who grew up in Winnipeg, Canada, created a cult classic with his first feature film Tales from the Gimli Hospital of 1988. He has since notched up nine feature films and countless shorts, often integrating stylistic features that draw on the aesthetics of old silent movies and early sound productions. In 2007 he presented his silent movie Brand Upon the Brain! at the Berlinale. It was accompanied by a live orchestra, three Foley artists, a singer and Isabella Rossellini as narrator. In 2008 Guy Maddin opened the Berlinale Forum with My Winnipeg. For this tribute to his Canadian hometown he combined documentary footage with family photos and old film excerpts.

Renown director, author and producer Jafar Panahi made a number of short films and documentaries before he filmed his directorial debut, Badkonake sefid (The White Balloon), which earned him the Camera d’or in Cannes in 1995. In 1997 he won the Golden Leopard in Locarno for Ayneh (The Mirror), and in 2000 the Golden Lion in Venice for Dayereh (The Circle). Offside won the Silver Bear (Grand Prix of the Jury) at the Berlinale in 2006. In his films Jafar Panahi critically examines the social circumstances in his country. Shortly after the Berlinale invited him to be on the International Jury in 2011, Panahi was sentenced to six years imprisonment and banned from filmmaking for the next 20 years. There has been worldwide protest against this verdict that violates the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Unfortunately Jafar Panahi was denied permission to leave his home country for Berlin. The Berlinale was holding a place open in the Jury for him and in doing so wanted to signalize its support for his struggle for freedom.

Trained in London, Sandy Powell designs costumes for film, theatre, dance and opera. She works on outstanding productions designing costumes for the most diverse historical epochs. To date she has been nominated for a total of nine Academy Awards - most recently for the costume design in The Tempest. She won the first of three Oscars for her work on the film Shakespeare In Love (1999). Her costumes for Martin Scorsese’s biopic The Aviator brought her a second Academy Award in 2005. Most recently she was honoured for her work on the film The Young Victoria (2010). In addition she has been nominated nine times for the BAFTA, and took home the award twice, for Velvet Goldmine in 1999 and The Young Victoria in 2010.

Nan Goldin is one of the world's most celebrated photographers. She first became known internationally in the 1980s, when the main theme of her art was her own life and that of her friends: her most famous photographs focus on sexuality and relationships, and on living and dying with AIDS. In 1996 she won the Berlinale Teddy Award for her autobiographical documentary I'll Be Your Mirror. She had screened her first slide show at the Arsenal in 1983 through Alf Bold who was a dear friend. In 2007 Nan Goldin received the Hasselblad Award for her photography.

As director and producer Ibrahim Letaief is one of the most famous representatives of Tunisian film. In 1997 he founded his own production company, “Long et Court”. With it he realized short films, commercials and a number of longer films. In 2008 Letaief made his first feature, Cinecittà, a comedy about a director who is so hard-pressed for money he robs a bank. The film was a hit at box offices in Tunisia. Letaief now works on his second feature and teaches at the National Film School ESAC, a state film school in Tunis. In 2009 he was honoured with the National Culture Award as best director in Tunisia.

Director Renen Schorr is the founder and director of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem, which became one of the most prestigious film schools in the world under his leadership. He is one of the leading architects of the new Israeli cinema as initiator and founder of four Israeli film funds. In 1987 his film Late Summer Blues, a portrayal of teenage life before the army draft, won the Silver Menorah Award for Best Film - the Israeli equivalent to the Oscar.

The producer learnt her profession at the University of Television and Film, Munich. In 2003 she founded the production company Heimatfilm with which she has celebrated national and international successes, most recently Bal (Honey, Golden Bear 2010). In 2001 she became established as managing director of Zentropa Entertainment in Cologne, co-producing films such as Lars von Trier’s Dogville and Antichrist.

The bestselling Israeli author has published four novels, including the internationally acclaimed “Almost Dead”. Gavron is singer and songwriter in the Israeli cult pop band “The Mouth and Foot” and was the chief writer of the award-winning computer game “Peacemaker”. He was awarded a DAAD artists-in-Berlin fellowship in 2010 and last December was honoured with Israel's Prime Minister's Award for Authors.

The Moroccan-Isralei director rose to fame in 1997 with the Oscar-nominated film Colors Straight Up. She has since celebrated repeated successes with her feature documentary works. She presented her film Steal A Pencil For Me at the 2008 Berlinale Special, followed in 2010 by S.O.S./State Of Security, a documentary about National Security challenges as viewed by the former US head of counter-terrorism Richard A. Clarke.

As one of the most significant personalities of New German Cinema, Werner Herzog has influenced an entire generation of filmmakers. In his almost 50-year career, Herzog has made over 50 feature and documentary films, amongst them Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982, Silver Palm in Cannes for Best Director), Grizzly Man (2005) and Encounters at the End of the World (2007), for which he received an Oscar nomination. Werner Herzog has been honoured with numerous awards from major international film festivals; for his debut feature film Signs of Life he was awarded a Silver Bear for the best first film at the Berlinale 1968.

The talented Italian director and writer Francesca Comencini was 23 when she made her first film Pianoforte which won her the Best First Feature award at the Venice Film Festival in 1985. She has been invited to the Cannes Film Festival with The Words of my Father and the documentary Carlo Giuliani, ragazzo (Carlo Giuliani, Boy). In 2004, she was awarded the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury in Berlin for I like to Work (Mobbing). Her latest work Lo spazio bianco (White Space) celebrated its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2009.

Nuruddin Farah is one of modern Africa’s most important writers. His first novel “From a Crooked Rib” (1970) already made him internationally famous. Farah’s works, which often depict the search for social and family identity, have been translated into more than 20 languages. In 1998 he was awarded the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature. His latest novel “Knots”, published in 2007, is the second part of a trilogy about Farah’s home country, Somalia.

After her rise to fame as a child singer, Cornelia Froboess became one of Germany’s most popular and versatile stage and screen actresses. She has received numerous prizes and awards in her career, including the Ernst Lubitsch Award for her role as Claire in the screen adaptation of Tucholsky’s Rheinsberg (1967). In 1982, she also starred in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (Veronika Voss).

Renowned Spanish producer José Maria Morales has made over 50 films with directors such as Arturo Ripstein, Costa Gavras and Goran Paskaljevic. In 2001, he presented Lucrecia Martel’s La ciénaga (The Swamp) in the Berlinale Competition. In 2004, this was followed by the powerful story of a family, El Abrazo Partido (Lost Embrace), by Argentinian director Daniel Burman, which won the Jury Grand Prix. Claudia Llosa’s moving drama La Teta Asustada (The Milk of Sorrow) won the Golden Bear in 2009.

Actress Yu Nan, who is hailed in her homeland of China as an “arthouse queen”, has played many compelling female characters (Lunar Eclipse, The Story of Er Mei) and received many awards for her portrayal of them. For her role in Tuya de hun shi (Tuya’s Marriage), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2007, she was awarded the prize for best actress at the Chicago International Film Festival. In 2008, she also starred in Speed Racer, a Hollywood action film made in Babelsberg.

The internationally renowned Oscar-winner Renée Zellweger, who was born in Texas, began her film career with such acclaimed projects as Jerry Maguire, A Price Above Rubies and Nurse Betty. She celebrated international success with audiences and critics alike playing the leading role in the romantic comedy Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Lead Actress and the follow-up Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004). Zellweger shone with her brilliant performance in the 2003 Berlinale opening film Chicago for which she also received an Academy Award nomination for Lead Actress and in the 2004 Competition entry Cold Mountain, which won her an Academy Award.

Founder and director of the São Paulo International Short Film Festival, Zita Carvalhosa is also a successful producer. As managing director of the Brazilian company Superfilmes, she has brought many films to the screen, including the drama A Casa de Alice (Alice's House, Panorama 2007). In 2009 she organized and staged the Festival de Video Tela Digital, a short film competition for film, TV and new media. Zita Carvalhosa is also active as film curator and publisher.

As chief editor of Spex, a German magazine for pop culture, Max Dax is an expert on youth and pop cultures. For several years he was chief editor of the interview magazine Alert and has also authored a number of books. His publications include a biography of Nick Cave and the story of the band Einstürzende Neubauten. Max Dax also produced the CD compilation “Il Canto di Malavita - La Musica della Mafia”.

Samm Haillay was born in Wiltshire in 1973. He was studying film when he met Duane Hopkins and discovered they shared an interest in cinematic grammar. Their debut feature film Better Things premiered at “Critics Week” in Cannes in 2008. As well as producing all of Duane’s film and gallery work, Samm produces a number of other talented directors as well as lectures at Teesside University. His short films have won over 40 international awards, including the 2009 Silver Bear for Jade, which he co-produced. He is currently developing Bypass by Duane Hopkins, Frontier by Daniel Elliott and is co-producing Self-Made by Gillian Wearing.

Ben Foster is one of the most versatile young actors of his generation. He has played a troubled teenager (Bang Bang Your Dead, Six Feet Under), a comic hero (X-Men: The Last Stand), a volatile cowboy (3:10 to Yuma) and received the 2006 Young Hollywood Award for his role in Nick Cassavetes' Alpha Dog. He was a guest at the 2009 Berlinale Competition with his role in the drama The Messenger.

The producer Lorna Tee is a well-known personality in the Asian film scene. In 2005 she managed the marketing and distribution at Focus Films Hong Kong. Today she is both general manager of the Hong Kong based Asian investment fund Irresistible Films and proprietor of her own film production company Paperheart (Malaysia). With Paperheart she produced Rain Dogs, At The End of Daybreak and My Daughter.