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JURY
Documentary Film Jury Members
Fiction Film Jury Members
Seray Genç
Born in Istanbul, London-based film critic, programmer and curator. Studied Economics at Boğazici University and received PhD in Communication Studies from Marmara University. Wrote on cinema in several periodicals, daily newspapers and web-sites. She worked at national and international film festivals and focused on documentary cinema. Organized cinema workshops for the kids and joined to a collective short animation as Berkinimiz. She organizes film screenings at the Refugee and Immigrant Workers & Cultural Association in London. Currently editor and writer of Yeni Film Magazine.
Joanna Bocheńska
Joanna Bocheńska, is the associated professor at the Department of Iranian Studies of the Jagiellonian University and the head of the Section of Kurdish Studies. Until now she was principal investigator in the three research projects, How to make a voice audible? Continuity and change of Kurdish culture and social reality in postcolonial perspectives (2013-2018), Citizens of the World: Modern Kurdish Literature and Heritagisation as Ameans for Transforming and Revitalising The Kurdish Language and The Oral Tradition (2020-2023) and Activism And Its Moral and Cultural Foundation: Alternative Citizenship and Women’s Roles in Kurdistan and the Diaspora
(ALCITfem) supported by National Science Centre -Poland and the Norway Grants (ALCITfem, 2021-2024).
Zahavi Sanjavi
Zahavi Sanjavi was born in Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Due to the ongoing wars in Iraq, he has spent much of his life in displacement, living in various countries. Although he studied fiction film directing and screenwriting at university, he turned to documentary filmmaking early in his career. He has repeatedly attempted to return to fiction filmmaking, but each time, circumstances or
new ideas have drawn him back to documentaries. He often says that a filmmaker may work in fiction cinema but lives in the world of documentary. Over the past twenty-five years, his fiction and documentary films have received numerous awards from festivals worldwide.
Arsalan Amiri
Arsalan Amiri is a Kurdish-Iranian filmmaker who won Critics’ Week Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI Prize at the Venice Film Festival (2021) for his debut film “Zalava”. He worked as a screenwriter and editor on the feature film
“Nahid” (Dir. Ida Panahandeh), which received the Prix de l’Avenir at the Cannes Film Festival (2015). In recent years, Amiri has collaborated on acclaimed films and series as a screenwriter and editor.
The most recent of which is the series “At the end of the night “, is now a candidate for awards at the 2025 Series Mania
Festival.
Dimitris Kerkinos
Dimitris Kerkinos was born in Athens. He studied Film Studies at the University of Manitoba, Canada and he did his Ph.D dissertation on “Society and Cinema in Cuba of the 90s” for the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of the Aegean, Greece. He joined the Thessaloniki IFF in 1999, where he is the Head of Tributes and Survey Expanded (ex- Balkan Survey which he curated for 22 years); he has published essays and academic papers on cinema and anthropology and has edited documentary and fiction film monographs, such as, Carol Reed, Goran Paskaljević, Cristian Mungiu, Patricio Guzmán, Peter Wintonick. He lectured Visual Anthropology and Ethnographic Documentary at the Panteion University in Athens (2004- 2008). Since 2019 he serves as the Artistic Director of ARAD Documentary Festival in Romania.
Ozgur Amed
I am from Diyarbakır and the author of two books: Who Ate the Kidney (2018) and Kurdish Works (2011). I contribute to various newspapers and magazines, focusing on memory, cinema, humor, and politics. For two years, I taught film grammar at the Cegerxwîn City Conservatory in Diyarbakır and have also organized long-term training courses on film analysis in various cities and institutions. I continue my research to this day.
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