• Mikael Opstrup

occupation: Organization Representative, Producer
country: Denmark
company: EDN – European Documentary Network

Mikael Opstrup, a dedicated documentarist since making of his first documentary – now hidden from the public in his cellar. In 1979 he graduated in film from the University of Copenhagen. Most of the 1980s Mikael worked in distribution and theatrical release of documentaries. Attended script writing at the Danish Film School in 1988. Worked as freelance producer and production manager up through the 1990s. Organized the film festival Films from the South in 1995 – 98. Made a desk cross-over in 1998 – 2002, working as production adviser at the Danish Film Institute. Attended EAVE in 1998/99. Since 2000 Mikael has worked as tutor at a large number of workshops and forums around Europe and in the Middle East. In 2002 – 2008 he was co-owner and producer at Final Cut Productions in Copenhagen where he produced a number of international documentaries. Was board member of EDN from 2005 to 2008, the last year as chairman. Since 2009 he serves as lead production tutor at Ex Oriente Film Workshop. Since 2011 Mikael works as Head of Studies at EDN.

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• Ivana Pauerová Miloševičová

occupation: Director, Producer, Scriptwriter, TV Representative, Consultant, Script Editor
country: Czech Republic
company: Czech TV

Ivana was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She graduated in Macroeconomics and Political Science at Charles University and in Documentary Film (directing) at FAMU in Prague. Since the fall of 2012, she has been working in the Film Center of the Czech Television as a documentary film script editor. In years 2003 through 2012, she worked in the Institute of Documentary Film as head of the Ex Oriente Film program and of the East European Forum. Since 2009, she has been lecturing at the Prague Film Academy (FAMU). In 2009 she was elected a board member of the European Documentary Network (EDN). Ivana has been working as a script editor and documentary film director as well. Her documentary films have been focused mainly on social and political issues.

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• Filip Remunda

occupation: Director, Producer, Scriptwriter, Consultant
country: Czech Republic
company: Hypermarket Film

Filip Remunda (born in 1973) is a Czech director and producer. In 2005 he graduated from FAMU’s Department of Documentary Film in the masterclass of Karel Vachek. During his studies he attended the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. He lectured at the Flaherty Documentary Seminar in the USA. He co-founded the Institute of Documentary Film (IDF) and is actively involved in lecturing at the Ex Oriente Film, an international documentary development workshop organized by IDF. He runs the independent production company Hypermarket Film. Selected filmography: “Village B”. (2002, 35 mm, 30’, FAMU, Czech TV, YLE, ARTE, awarded at the 2002 Karlovy Vary IFF, 2003 FamuFest, 2003 Art Film Festival); “Czech Dream” (dir. with Vít Klusák, 2004, 35 mm, 87’, Hypermarket Film, Czech TV, Mirage, FAMU); “The Tadpole, the Rabbit and the Holy Ghost” (2007, Digi Beta, 26’, Czech TV, Awards: Jihlava IDFF 2007 Audience Award, Pavel Koutecky Award 2007); “Czech Peace” (dir. with Vít Klusák, 2010, 35 mm, 103’, Hypermarket Film, Czech TV, Taskovski Films); “Epochal Trip of Mr. Triska to Russia” (2011, 52’, Czech TV) and “Czech Journal” (co-director, 2013 – 2015, documentary series, Hypermarket Film, Czech TV).

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• Iikka Vehkalahti

occupation: Commissioning Editor
country: Finland
company: YLE TV2

Iikka Vehkalahti began his career in YLE, Finland as a producer and commissioning editor for the ”Dokumenttiprojekti” strand in 1998. He has been involved in the production of hundreds of documentaries, domestic and international, many of which have received several significant awards at international festivals ( Past is Present, Amal, Inam, Naila, Man from the Shadow, Daughter of a Terrorist, Our Common Future? a Tehri – Two Journeys…). Vehkalahti was a founder of the international Steps organisation in 2001 and the executive producer for the Steps For The Future and Why Democracy? projects. In Finland, he initiated and produced the Third Dimension and Story Tent projects. In 2011–2012 Vehkalahti worked as visiting professor at the University of Tampere. He has received several international and domestic awards for his work with documentary films.

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• Lordan Zafranović

occupation: Director
country: Czech Republic, Croatia
company: Zafra film

A cult Croatian film director, author of over 80 films and a major figure of the Yugoslav Black Wave.

His first works in the 1960s are mostly grotesque and absurdist experiments. Zafranović, together with Emir Kusturica, rose to become one of the prominent figures in the so-called Prague school of Yugoslavian directors.
Zafranović´s most important work is WWII epic trilogy, Occupation in 26 Pictures (1978) – a Cannes´ Palme D´or nominee, The Fall of Italy (1981) and Evening Bells (1986) which became higly controversial, critically very well received and very influental.

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• Jon Bang Carlsen

occupation: Director, Distributor
country: Denmark
company: C&C Productions ApS

Jon Bang Carlsen was born in 1950. He is a film director, graduate of the Danish Film School, 1976. He has written and directed more than thirty films, both documentary and feature. The director’s signature hybrid style combines documentary and fictional interpretations, and many of his documentaries are visually and symbolically powerful, often staged portraits of marginal figures and milieus. Jon Bang Carlsen is considered a legendary director who reinvented documentary film and has been a pioneer in this field. In his work, Jon Bang Carlsen has always explored the land between facts and fiction. From 1977 onward, mise-en-scene with real characters plays a very important part in his productions, and this method is detailed in his meta-film, How to Invent Reality (1996). Jon Bang Carlsen says: “To me, documentaries are no more ‘real’ than fiction films and fiction films are no more fabulating than documentaries. There is no “reality” that cannot be seen from a different angle and be revealed as a dream. To describe the world, you have to define the truth in a way that does not exclude lies.“

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• Nino Kirtadzé

occupation: Director
country: France
company: Zadig Productions

Nino Kirtadze was born in 1968 in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. She holds a degree in literature. Her script for a full-length feature film (Monday) won the best script award from the Georgian Union of Cinematographers in 1991. She began her acting career by playing the lead role in a Chef in love (dir. Nana Djordjadze), which was selected at Cannes in 1996 and nominated for an Oscar. During the troubles of the 1990s in the Caucasus, she worked as a war correspondent for AFP and for AP, covering the war in Chechnya and other armed conflicts in the region. Since 1997, Nino Kirtadze has lived in France, where she has worked with Peter Brook, Jean-Pierre Ameris, Philippe Monnier, Claude Goretta and Olivier Langlois. Kirtadze is member of the French writers’ and directors’ society La SCAM and a member of the European Film Academy. Nino Kirtadze collaborates on a regular basis with different national and international organizations as a consultant, jury, lecturer and tutor.Her powerful feature-length documentaries deal with controversial subjects, always placing the accent on the human drama underlying her stories and creating deep insightful human portraits. Her camera turns the natural into the supernatural and back again, blending together the personal and the universal without black and white romanticism. Her films have won international acclaim and numerous prestigious awards at festivals worldwide, including World Cinema Best Director Prize at Sundance for her Durakov-village of fools (2008) and European Film Academy Best documentary Prize for Pipeline next door (2005). Her last film Don’t Breathe (2014) mixes fact and fiction and it had its premiere at Toronto IFF.

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• Peter Kerekes

occupation: Director, Producer, Scriptwriter
country: Slovak Republic
company: Peter Kerekes

Peter Kerekes (born 1973 in Košice) studied film directing at the Academy of Performing Arts (VŠMU) in Bratislava in the years 1991 – 1998. He eventually ended up teaching the same subject at the same institution, where he, together with Dušan Hanák, founded the feature and documentary film studio. Although he originally wanted to make feature films and managed to reach for the university degree, he fell for documentary storytelling ever since his first documentary about Slovakian poet Erik Groch. His feature documentary Cooking History (produced by Austrian director and producer Georg Misch) was awarded at many international festivals, such as Hot Docs and DOK Leipzig, and even nominated for the renowned Prix Arte 2009 European Film Award. His latest film Velvet Terrorists also offers a somewhat different view on history. It tells a story of three men who made an attempt at crushing the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, with varying success. Based on the idea that what marks one political system as terrorism, another will justify, the film also looks at how the discourse on terrorism changes with the political context. Velvet Terrorists is a Slovakian-Czech-Croatian co-production and was co-directed by Palo Pekarcik and Ivan Ostrochovsky.

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• Ralph Wieser

occupation: Producer
country: Austria
company: Mischief Films

Before establishing Mischief Films, Ralph Wieser was programming director of an arthouse cinema and managing cultural events and film projects. In 2002 together with Georg Misch he founded the documentary production company Mischief Films and started producing creative documentaries. Co-producing with e.g. BBC, Channel 4, Arte and European TV Stations like WDR/3sat, VPRO and ZDF, as well as the US-American film fund ITVS, 21 films have been realized. Frequently awarded, Mischief Films won the Vienna Film Award 2009, Hot Docs Toronto- Special Price for international feature and was nominated by the European Film Academy Documentary – Prix Arte. Ralph Wieser is board member of the Austrian Documentary Association (dok.at) and Austrian Ambassador of the European Documentary Network (EDN). Additionally he is a graduate and board member of EURODOC. He is giving lectures at filmschools and art universities and is an expert on international documentary panels and workshops.

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• Jan Gogola ml.

occupation: Director, Commissioning Editor, Scriptwriter, Script Editor
country: Czech Republic
company: Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague

Born in 1971, Jan Gogola works as a director, script editor and lecturer at FAMU (Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts) in Prague. Formerly a commissioning editor for Czech TV, chief of programme Czech TV Brno and lector of the Institute of Documentary Film in Prague. He graduated from the Faculty of Journalism, Charles University and from the Department of Documentary Films at FAMU. As a script editor (dramaturg) Gogola has been involved in the making of numerous documentaries, e.g., Czech Dream, Czech Peace (dir. Filip Remunda, Vít Klusák); 66 Seasons, Cooking History (dir. Peter Kerekes); Ester (dir. Věra Chytilová); Lost Holiday (dir. Lucie Králová); Other Worlds (dir. Marko Skop); Private Century (dir. Jan Šikl), Rene, Katka (dir. Helena Trestikova) and others.

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• Vanja Jambrović

occupation: Producer
country: Croatia
company: Restart

Vanja Jambrović was born in 1980 in Zagreb, Croatia. In 2005 she graduated philosophy and comparative literature at Faculty for social sciences in Zagreb and in 2011 she graduated film production at Academy of drama art, also in Zagreb. Vanja started working in films in 2002 as production assistant and festival coordinator. Since 2008 she is working exclusively in film production as an independent producer for Restart that she founded with her colleagues and where she acts as one of the key producers. Restart is an organization covering whole circle of documentary and short film industry, including professional production, education, distribution label (Restart label) and running Dokukino small art house cinema in the center of Zagreb dedicated in screening only creative documentaries. Until now Vanja produced as a leading producer 4 documentaries (“Gangster of Love” and “Real Man’s Film” by Nebojša Slijepčecić and “Don Juans: Excuse me Miss” and “Happy Land” by Goran Dević). Vanja also produced short fiction film “Boxed” by Nebojša Slijepčević. Working as producer of Restart Laboratory – platform for first time directors, Vanja also produced numerous short documentaries made by young authors.Apart from production work Vanja is also working as researcher journalist for HRT, scriptwriter and a poet. Her book of poems “Poems for woolen nights” was awarded as the best Croatian book of poetry by young author in 2012. Her next pro…

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• Dalibor Martinis

country: Croatia

Dalibor Martinis is a transmedia artist and a video maker. He has exhibited his videotapes, video/interactive and site-specific installations in many international exhibitions such as Sao Paolo Biennale, Dokumenta, Venice Biennale, and film/video festivals in Berlin, Tokyo, Montreal, San Francisco, and Locarno etc. Martinis received several international awards (Tokyo Video Festival 1984, Wroclaw 1991, Triest 1996, etc.) and his videos have been broadcast by national televisions in Europe. He held numerous personal shows, performances and screenings, and participated in many international exhibitions (Biennales: Sao Paolo, Venice, Kwang-ju, Thessaloniki, Cairo; Dokumenta/Kassel, etc) and film/video festivals (Berlin, Tokyo, Montreal, Locarno etc.). He had grants from Canada Council (1978) Jaica (Japan 1984), and ArtsLink (USA, 1994 and 2010). He was guest professor at Academy of Drama Arts/Zagreb, and Ontario College of Art/Toronto; he is prof. emeritus at University of Rijeka. He was awarded with several international and national awards (Tokyo Video festival 1984, Locarno 1984, Alpe Adria Film festival/Triest 1996, Award HDLU 2009, T-HT award 2013). His works are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art/New York, Stedelijk Museum/Amsterdam, ZKM Karlsruhe, New York Public Library, The Museum of Contemporary Art/Zagreb, Kontakt/Erste Bank etc.

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• Aleš Suk

occupation: Director, Producer, Cinematographer
country: Croatia
company: Udruga Ukus

Aleš Suk is an independent director, producer and artist of new media. He graduated in 2002 from FAMU in Prague in animation and multimedia, and gained his master’s degree in 2005. Since 2004 he is a visiting professor at FAMU, Department of film editing. From 2009 to 2013 he worked as an associate professor at the Academy of Applied Arts, University of Rijeka, on the course “Experimental Film and Animation” and the course “Interactive Design”. Since 2012 he is one of the tutors and the organizers of the Platform for the support and development of hybrid AV creativity REFINERI.

Selected filmography: Winter / Miracle (dir. Željka Suková, Gustavo Beck) – camera and editing; docufiction Marija’s Own (dir. Željka Suková) – camera, editing; Nic proti ničemu (dir. Petr Marek) – composition; Kamo? – directing, camera, editing.

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• Željka Suková

occupation: Director, Producer
country: Croatia
company: Udruga Ukus

Željka Sukova is a documentary film director, screenwriter and producer. Željka studied Graphic Arts at Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and New Media at Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.

Marija’s Own (2011), her docufiction-feature film debut, had its world premiere at Hot Docs, Toronto and European premiere at Karlovy Vary IFF where it was awarded the Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean Award. It was screened at more than 20 festivals including MOMA’s Documentary fortnight’s Gala closing night.

Winter/Miracle (2012), a docufiction film coproduction which she co-directed with Gustavo Beck from Brazil, was screened at CPH:DOX and Goteborg IFF and won award for the best Central and Eastern European Film at Jihlava IDFF 2013.

Since 2012 she is one of the tutors and the organizers of the Platform for the support and development of hybrid AV creativity REFINERI.

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GUESTS AND OBSERVERS:

• Vilka Alfier

occupation: Producer
country: Italy
company: FADE IN – Incredibly Good Institution

Vilka Alfier was born in Šibenik, Croatia in 1982. She graduated from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences with an MA in Sociology and Italian language and literature. From 2012. she has been working at Incredibly good institution – Fade In as the Distribution and promotion programme coordinator and Film and media workshop coordinator. At the same time, she has been working as a production assistant and executive producer on different Fade In’s projects: documentary films (Taste of Home, Elixir, Postponed Revolution) television projects and social service announcement videos.