Juries

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.