April 12 – 20, 2024

 

International jury

Abel Ferrara

Jury President
Born in the Bronx, in 1951 Abel Ferrara started making films on Super 8 in his teens, in upstate New York with Nicholas St. John – writer of Ms.45, King Of New York, The Addiction as well as The Funeral – and John Mcintyre – creative consultant and key crew member.
His career moved to downtown New York City in the mid ‘70s with the movies Driller Killer and Ms. 45. When Ms.45 found distribution at Warner Bros., with the help of William Friedkin, the reviews and international circulation lead to a cult reputation, larger budgets, studio funding and ‘name’ actors – Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel, Melanie Griffith and Juliette Binoche. King of New York in the beginning of the ‘90s followed by Bad Lieutenant, The Funeral, The Addiction and New Rose Hotel consolidated his position as a director of controversial cinema.
His career combines larger budget with no budget features and documentaries, from New York City to Napoli, Alabama, Jerusalem, Los Angeles and back to Roma. The 21st century began with R’Xmas, Mary and his documentary on the Chelsea hotel, Chelsea On The Rocks, continuing into the present decade with 4:44 – Last Day On Earth, his third feature with Willem Dafoe, Welcome To New-York, starring Gérard Depardieu and Jacqueline Bisset and with Pasolini, again starring Willem Dafoe in 2014, about the last days of the Italian director. His new documentary work includes Padre Pio and Piazza Vittorio. Abel Ferrara directs Alive in France, a documentary, also a self-portrait, that follows him and his family actress Cristina Chiriac, daughter Anna and friends and long-time collaborators composer Joe Delia and actor/composer Paul Hipp during a film Retrospective/music tour in France.

Elina Psykou

Born in Greece in 1977, Elina Psykou studied Filmmaking and Sociology in Athens. She continued her studies in Cultural History in Paris and participated in the 2007 Berlinale Talent Campus. Her first feature, The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas, won the Works in Progress Award at the Karlovy Vary IFF in 2012 and premiered at the Berlinale Forum in 2013. During that same year, trade publication Variety singled her out as one of the “10 European Directors to Watch”.
Her second feature, Son of Sofia, was selected to participate in the 2013 Berlinale Residency programme, as well as the 2014 Berlinale co-production market, won the Works in Progress Award at Les Arcs EFF in 2015, premiered in competition at the Tribeca FF in 2017 and won the Best International Narrative Feature Award. Elina is currently researching her first documentary, Europe, oh Europe, supported by Creative Europe and EAVE, and is writing her third feature.

Olivier Clinckart

Olivier Clinckart was born in 1970 in Brussels. He studied Journalism at the ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles). He took his first steps as a movie critic for the monthly magazine Grand Angle from 1996 to 2009. Since 2010, he has been collaborating with the weekly magazine Moustique, one of the oldest magazines in the Belgian press, in its film selection.
He also takes part in thematic supplements dealing with social issues for Mediaplanet Belgium. Since September 2017, he has been giving film analysis sessions at ESRA Brussels, an international film school. Passionate about the Seventh Art, Olivier is a member of the Union de la Critique de Cinéma (UCC), the Belgian Critics Association of which he was the President from 2011 to 2017 and of which he is currently the Vice President.

Ralitza Petrova

Ralitza Petrova studied Film and Video Art at the University of the Arts London, and, later, Fiction Directing at the British National Film and Television School. Her short films have won wide acclaim at the film festivals circuit, including Cannes and Berlin, as well as on numerous art platforms, such as Tate Modern and the Centre Pompidou.
In 2016, her feature debut Godless premiered at Locarno Film Festival, where it won four awards, among which the Golden Leopard for Best Film. Since then, the film has won 27 awards and has been nominated for the European Discovery 2017 Award – Prix FIPRESCI award by the European Film Academy.

Petros Charalambous

Petros Charalambous was born in Nicosia, Cyprus in 1976. His early exposure to photography and cinema led him to Hollywood where he studied film and television directing at the California State University, Northridge. In 2000, he returned to Cyprus, where he taught television production at Frederick University. Since then, he has been working as a freelance film director shooting commercials, corporate videos, music videos, narratives and documentaries. His short film The Escape of the Queen travelled to various film festivals worldwide, winning awards and distinctions. Several of his commercials were shortlisted in advertising competitions winning various awards. Today, Petros also teaches Acting for Camera at Vladimiros Kafkarides Drama School. His first feature film Boy on the Bridge had its world premiere at Rome Film Festival 2016, its Greek Premiere at Thessaloniki Film Festival 2016 and its Cyprus premiere at the Cyprus Film Days Film Festival 2017, where it won the Audience Award.
It participated in the competition section of more than 40 festivals around the world winning 13 awards so far, among which Best Film Award, Audience Award, Best Actor award (Constantinos Farmakas).
Recently, he won two awards in Russia for Best Directing and Best Screenplay (Eve Makis, Stavros Pamballis), as well as for Best Music Score (Andrey Dergachev). Boy on the Bridge continues its successful festival journey. Petros has recently completed the docudrama The Bullet Within and his feature documentary From Here to Everest is currently in post-production. Today, Petros is in the development stages of his second feature film titled Patchwork.