Tiina Lokk is a film producer and script doctor. After graduating from Moscow All-Union Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) as a master of film theory and criticism in 1981, worked for a decade in the Estonian film studio Tallinnfilm as a scriptwriter, story editor and member of its art council. In 1993, she co-founded a film distribution company Filmimax. In 1997, she founded Tallinn Black Nights FF (currently the festival director), Marvofilm Film Production and Consalting Company, Baltic Event (co-founded), and Black Market On-line. Since 1975, she has published numerous articles and film criticism while working as a film correspondent for TV and radio programmes. Lokk has given lectures on film history, film theory, script writing and cultural management in Tallinn Pedagogical University, Concordia International University and Estonian Academy of Music. Since 2011 she has been the Head of Film Studies at the Baltic Film and Media School and is a professor of Film Arts. Since 1991, Lokk has been invited as an expert for several round-tables, reform groups and selection committees for Estonian Cultural Endowment, Ministery of Culture and Media Programme of European Commission. She was elected a member of the European Film Academy in 2000. In 2004, she was appointed as a member of the Executive Board of the European Coordination of FFs. In 2009, Lokk was appointed as the member of the Advicers’ Board of the Summit IFF.

Serge Avedikian is a French-Armenian actor and director. He was born in Soviet Armenia, 1955. His grandparents were born in Anatolia and after the Armenian Genocide they move to France where his parents were born. In 1947, his family went to Armenia in hope of rebuilding the country as other patriots did and in 1970 they return to France. Avedikian studied at the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Meudon, France and afterwards created a theater company and produced many films. From 1979 on he began pursuing a career of theater, movie and as a television actor. In 1982, he began making documentary films and since 1990, he has been making short and medium-length films. His own production company produced most of his films until 2000. He is the director of many animated, documentary and fiction films produced by others. He acted in a number of French and Armenian films.

Šešić was born in Croatia and is a mentor at the Master of Film at The Netherlands Film and TV Academy in Amsterdam. She is head of the documentary film competition at Sarajevo FF and has acted as a programmer and a program advisor for more than a decade with the two biggest festivals in The Netherlands- IFF Rotterdam, where she also participates on the selection comity of the festival’s Hubert Bals Fund, and at the IDFA. For several years, Šešić lectured on cinema at University of Amsterdam in the Department of Film Theory. In The Netherlands she directed the films, Room Without a View (1997), Soske (2001), In Whitest Solitude (2001) and The Way to School, 2007. They were selected for 60 festivals worldwide, screened and archived at MoMA New York and won several awards. She is a program advisor for Dok Leipzig and film programmer for InKo Chennai. Šešić is artistic director of the Eastern Neighbors FF and The Hague, that focuses on non-EU European cinema. She regularly tutors at several documentary workshops in Europe and Asia and was published in several European publications while also collaborating on several professional books.

Born in Esslingen, Germany, Georg Restle studied law and economics in Freiburg/Germany and at the London School of Economics. He started his journalistic career as a freelancer for several German newspapers. After his exams he became a trainee at Germany's biggest public broadcasting company Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). Subsequently he worked as a freelancer for Germany's public television channel ARD. In 2000 he became editor of Monitor, one of the best-known investigative TV programmes in Germany. From 2010-2012 he was foreign correspondent (ARD) in Moscow. He returned to Germany to become host and chief editor of Monitor. Restle has produced many TV-documentaries on national and international political issues. Additionally, he is teaching international journalists in investigative journalism.

In 1985, Jean Radvanyi was awarded the title of a docent at INALCO - National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations, Paris. In 2008-12, he was the director of French-Russian Research Centre of Humanities and Social Sciences in Moscow. Since 2012, Radvanyi has been a professor and the director of INALCO. Throughout his career Rodvanyi has published and edited several books and articles on cinematography, the most notable ones are: Le cinéma géorgien (Georgian Cinema) 1988, Le cinéma d'Asie centrale soviétique (Central Asia Soviet Cinema) 1991, Le cinéma arménien (Armenian cinema) 1993, Les 100 portes de la Russie (100 Doors to Russia) 1999, La Russie entre deux mondes (Russia between Two Worlds), 2005, La nouvelle Russie (New Russia), 2007, Caucasus, a Game of Influences, 2010 and Back from a Different Russia, 2013.

St. Petersburg-based, Anjelika Artyukh, has been published in several Russian and international professional film magazines including Iskusstvo Kino, Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, Seans, Film Comment, as well as in newspapers. Additionally, Artyukh works as a professor at the St. Petersburg University of Film and Television and the Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In 2002 she received the Michail Levitin Award given by the Russian Guild of Film Critics. She is a member of FIPRESCI and has participated in many international festival juries, some of which are Berlinale, Rotterdam IFF, Moscow IFF, Oslo IFF and Vienna IFF.

Marine Ales (Vardanyan) whose nickname “Ales” is the composition of the initial two letters of the names of her children, respectively Alexander, her son, and Seda, her daughter, were born in Moscow into the family of an architect and a chemist. Till her teenage years her life was based on the triangle of the three cities: Yerevan, Moscow, Tbilisi. She attended piano courses at the Yerevan R. Melikyan Musical Institution, the Department of Theatre Critics of Yerevan State Institute of Theatre and post-graduate studies at Russian University of Theatre Arts (GITIS), Moscow. She authored 5 music albums (I Shall Leave You, Poplars, Thoughts, With You and without, Barefoot in the Sky) and poetry both in Armenian and Russian languages in the collection titled Debris. She is a co-founder of Gift of Life Benevolent Foundation in Armenia.