FESTIVAL

Buddy Giovinazzo is a filmmaker known for his gritty low-budget debut film, Combat Shot. He also directed No Way Home and Life is Hot in Cracktown, based on his collection of short stories of the same name, published in 1993.

Mark Kermode is chief film critic at the Observer and resident critic for The Film Review on the BBC News Channel. He hosts the weekly “Kermode on Film” podcast, and presents the showMK3D at the British Film Institute in London.

Angel Sala is a film critic, programmer and cultural manager. A former programmer for Catalan television, today he heads the Sitges International Film Festival, one of the world’s most prestigious fantastic film events.

I’ve worked at Park Circus for 8 years overseeing sales, ensuring distribution for many of the greatest films ever made. I work with cinemas worldwide who share the same passion as me – seeing films back on the big screen. There’s nothing better.

Martine Bounaix has taught French literature since the year 2000 at the lycée Marc Bloch in Bischheim. When the school’s cinema section opened, she joined the teaching staff to introduce students to screenplay writing. Her interests lie in the visual arts, theatre and literature.

Executive producer of more than 25 films, including Pan’s Labyrinth and The Life of Adèle, I am also a buyer and programmer for Canal + Cinema in Spain, and also programme for Venice Days and the Miami International Film Festival.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Chris Oosterom worked as a film programmer for various venues in the Netherlands. After six years at the Dutch Filmmuseum, he started his own distribution company and today is the artistic director of the Imagine Film Festival in Amsterdam.

Flore Tournois has 17 years’ experience at the Star cinemas in Strasbourg and has been their operations manager since 2011. Committed to cinemas at the national level, she chaired the Commission de Réflexion des Jeunes Exploitants at the National Federation of French Cinemas for four years.

Film professor at Exeter University in the UK, Williams is the author of The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema and the forthcoming Steven Spielberg’s Children. She’s currently working on a book about British women writer-directors.

After studying at the Ecole des Gobelins, Eléa Gobbé Mévellec made the short film Escale, before working as a character animator for such films as Ernest and Celestine, The Rabbi’s Cat and April and the Extraordinary World. In 2019, she co-directed The Swallows of Kabul.

Vincent Patar and Séphane Aubier are both graduates of the National School of Visual Arts (La Cambre) in Brussels and have worked together since graduating. Their first collaboration was the creation of Pic-Pic the pig and André the horse. They co-directed A Town Called Panic which was selected as an out of competition film at Cannes and was nominated for a French César award in the foreign film category. Their film Ernest and Celestine (co-directed with Benjamin Renner), won the César in 2013 for the best animated film.

Vincent Patar and Séphane Aubier are both graduates of the National School of Visual Arts (La Cambre) in Brussels and have worked together since graduating. Their first collaboration was the creation of Pic-Pic the pig and André the horse. They co-directed A Town Called Panic which was selected as an out of competition film at Cannes and was nominated for a French César award in the foreign film category. Their film Ernest and Celestine (co-directed with Benjamin Renner), won the César in 2013 for the best animated film.

Zouhair Chebbale is an author-director who makes society-themed TV documentaries about immigration and integration, such as C’est mieux là-bas, Un Piranha sous la capuche, as well as short fiction films.

Afsaneh Chehrehgosha is a photographer and documentary filmmaker. Thanks to her art agency Persanophone, unicorns, elves and demons come to life. She’s also co-president of Strass’Iran and the Quinzaine Culturelle iranienne.

Anne Fantinel finds that comedy makes life sweeter. She co-writes and co-produces the Hopla Trio comedy series and works on other projects that make their readers laugh. She hopes they will become films that will make even more people laugh.