Anglo-Scottish film director-producer-writer, Hugh Hudson began his career as a filmmaker in documentaries, producing and directing many award winning films. Opera director in Germany 2016. His films include: Fangio (1975), Chariots of Fire (1981, 4 Oscars including Best Picture, BAFTA - Best Picture), Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984, 4 Oscar Nominations), Revolution (1985), Lost Angels (1989, nominated for Cannes Palme d’Or), My Life So Far (1999), I Dreamed of Africa (2000, Closing Film Cannes), Rupture (2011, 70 minute doc. for BBC4) Altamira (2016).

Ciro Guerra was born in Cesar, Colombia, in 1981. He studied film and television at the National University of Colombia. At the age of 21, after directing four multi-award winning short films, he wrote and directed The Wandering Shadows, his feature directorial debut, which won awards at the San Sebastian, Toulouse, Mar del Plata, Trieste, Havana, Quito, Cartagena, Santiago and Warsaw IFFs, and was selected for 60 more, including Tribeca, Locarno, Seoul, Pesaro, Seattle, Hamburg, Kolkata, Rio de Janeirօ, Istanbul and Guadalajara. His second feature film The Wind Journeys was part of the Official Selection – un Certain Regard of the Cannes FF in 2009. It was released in 17 countries and selected in 90 festivals, including Toronto, Rotterdam, San Sebastian, Hong Kong, Jerusalem and London, receiving different awards in Cannes, Santa Barbara, Malaga, Santiago, Bogota and Cartagena.

Alexey Fedorchenko was born in 1966. After engineering studies he worked on space defense projects in a factory in Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg). In 1990, he became official economist then deputy director of the Sverdlovsk State Studio. Since 2000, he has managed the studio’s production department, and participated in the production of over 80 films. He has studied dramaturgy at the Moscow All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), and written screenplays for documentaries that were awarded numerous prizes at festivals worldwide. Since 2004, Alexey Fedorchenko is an co-owner, film director and general producer of the 29 February Film Company. He currently lives and works in Ekaterinburg. Member of the European Film Academy. Member of the Asia Pacific Screen Academy. Member of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia.

From ages 17-26, Eugene Corr was a factory worker, warehouse man, forklift driver, crane operator, auto, steel, and cannery worker. He started his career in film in 1973 as a member of Cine Manifest, a radical San Francisco film group in the 1970s. A restored print of his first feature, Over-Under, Sideways-Down, screened recently at the Film Anthology Center in NYC. Eugene Corr has broad experience in both fiction and non-fiction filmmaking. He wrote and directed the feature documentary Waldo Salt: A Screenwriter's Journey (with Robert Hillmann), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award (1991). He also wrote and directed the dramatic feature film, Desert Bloom (with Jon Voight, AnnaBeth Gish, Sélection Officielle, Cannes IFF, 1986). Corr has worked as a second unit director on major motion pictures (Bull Durham, Cobb), written or co-written dramatic features (Prefontaine, Never Cry Wolf, Wildrose), and written for TV. He has also directed episodic television. His current documentary, Ghost Town to Havana (2015) has been on the festival circuit, winning the Sebastopol Documentary FF Audience Award and the Syracuse IFF Bassel Shehade Award For Social Justice.

Filmmaker Tom Fassaert (born 1979) grew up in the Netherlands and partly in South Africa. These extreme differences already opened his eyes at a young age. But it was his dad's obsession with making home movies that undoubtedly planted the first seeds that ultimately grew into Fassaert's passion for film. Tom Fassaert debuted with his feature length documentary An Angel in Doel about a small Belgian village threatened with demolition. It premiered at the Berlinale, screened at +50 festivals worldwide and won several international awards. Fassaert's second feature length documentary is A family affair. A film that explores the delicate terrain along the fault lines of his own family. It was the Opening Film of IDFA 2015 where Fassaert also received the prestigious Prins Bernhard Cultuur Fonds Documentary Award for his works. After winning the Special Jury Award at IDFA, the film started its journey to many international festivals and received numerous awards. It recently won the Gouden Kalf (Dutch Academy Award) for best long documentary and is acquired by Netflix to be broadcasted globally. Variety recently named Fassaert ‘One of the Ten Docu-makers to Watch'. Parallel to his passion for filmmaking Tom Fassaert also teaches at international film schools.

Born 1962 in Ischia, Italy. Location manager since 1996 Michelangelo Messina supports and cooperates with several Italian and international film productions. In 2001, he instituted the project Cinema and Territory which aim is to create a commercial dialogue between audiovisual productions and the territory. Since 2003, Messina is the producer and artistic director of the Ischia FF. In 2005, he expanded the project creating the International Exchange of Location and Movie Tourism, the first international appointment for discussion and exchange experience on movie tourism, collaborating with different Italian and international film commissions. In partnership with the BIT (Italian Tourism Exchange) in 2006, Messina commissioned the first Italian study of choosing Italy thought films by the foreign tourists. In 2009, he founded and currently is the Senior President of the permanent scientific observatory on Movie tourism. With the studies and the research collected over the years he collaborates with several Italian Universities on territorial marketing and the impact of audiovisual works on the territory. Since 2005, Messina contributes sharing those experiences and data at the international conferences on the phenomenon of World Movie Induced Tourism. Since 2007, he is a member of the Italian Board of Film Festivals and part of Jury of IFFs.

In 1975, David Safarian graduated from the Fine Arts and Theatre Institute in Yerevan. From 1972-78, he was an actor at the State TV Theatre in Yerevan, assistant director and director at Armenian Documentary Film Studio. In 1983, he graduated from Moscow Film Institute (VGIK). Since 1983, he was a director at Armenfilm Studio. In 1991, he had special screening of films in Cinemathèque Francaise in Paris. Since 1991, he is a member of the General Assembly of Cinemathèque Francaise. From 1995-2001, he made series of short documentaries about Armenian culture and history on German TV (ORB/SFB/RBB). In 1996, he had a Retrospective of films in Cinematheque Francaise at the 60th Anniversary of the Cinematheque in Paris. In 1999, there was a one-week screenings of his selected films in Berlin. From 2001-02, he was a Guest-Professor at the Film and TV Department in the University of Kassel, Germany. In 2002, he founded Studio DS Film Production and Art Development Fund. From 2003-07, he was a Professor, co-heading the Film and TV Department at the University of Kassel, Germany. From 2001-16, he made Outstanding Personalities. 20th Century and Centuries Change portrait series using exclusively shot documentary footages with Marcel Marceau, Pope John Paul II, Krzysztof Penderecki (work in progress).

Gaga Chkheidze is the founder and director of the Cinema Art Center Prometheus NGO and Tbilisi IFF. From 2005 to the present, he is also a Board Member of the Georgian Film Fund. After studying two years German language and literature at Tbilisi State University Chkheidze graduated from the Faculty of Literature and Arts of Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. He worked as an Editor at the State Broadcasting Company of Georgia. From 2005 to 2008, Gaga Chkheidze was the director of the Georgian National Film Center. From 1991 to 2000, he worked as a Program Coordinator at the Forum of New Cinema (Berlin IFF).

Maryam d’Abo was born in London in 1960 and raised in Paris and Geneva. She returned to the UK to study art and acting. In 1980’s Maryam worked on the French stage and in TV co-productions between France & UK. In 1987, she played opposite Timothy Dalton’s James Bond in The Living Daylights which brought her to Los Angeles where she got a lead in a TV series for NBC Something Is օut There. She moved to Los Angeles and continued working for American television. In 1989, she returned to England to work in an independent feature Leon the Pigfarmer, a Jewish comedy which became a cult film. In 1999, she produced and acted with Myriam Cyr on the British stage in Abundance written by Beth Henley. In 2001, she played Lara, Keyra Knightley's mother in Dr. Zhivago adapted by Andrew Davies for Granada TV. In 2002, she hosted and produced Bond Girls Are Forever, a documentary and she co-wrote with John Cork a book on the Bond girls Bond Girls Are Forever. In 2005, she developed a documentary on five female war reporters Bearing Witness, and cօ-produced the doc directed by Barbara Kopple - it premiered at the Tribeka FF. In 2007, she made a documentary with Hugh Hudson called Rupture - Living with My Broken Brain after surviving a brain hemorrhage, which prmiered on the BBC in the UK in 2011. In 2013-14, she played in feature film Tigers by Danis Tanovic – the film premiered at the Toronto IFF and the San Sebastian IFF in 2014. Maryam d’Abo is currently developping a documentary The Call of Georgia and a feature film Hedda Gabler, a scrren adaptation by Christopher Hampton from his stage adaptation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler.

Gareth Evans is a London-based critic, writer, curator, presenter, producer and Whitechapel Gallery’s Film Curator. He is also co-curator of Swedenborg FF, Estuary 2016, Whitstable Biennale and Utopia 2016 at Somerset House. He created and programmed PLACE, the annual cross-platform festival at Aldeburgh Music, is Co-Director of production agency Artevents and has curated numerous film and event seasons across the UK (e.g. J. G. Ballard, Portugal, Roma Cinema, Armenia). He produced the essay film Patience (after Sebald) by Grant Gee as part of his nationwide arts project The Re-Enchantment (2008-11) and has recently executive-produced the feature-length works Unseen (Dryden Goodwin); By Our Selves (Andrew Kotting and Iain Sinclair); In Time: an Archive Life (Lasse Johansson) and is in development with Fly Film and the BFI for The Lighthouse (directed by Grant Gee and written with Sasha Hails). He commissioned Things by Ben Rivers, which won the 2015 Tiger Award at Rotterdam IFF. He worked on the film pages of Time Out from 2000-05, edited the print edition of the international moving image magazine Vertigo from 2002-09 and now edits Artesian and co-edits for Go Together Press and House Sparrow Press. He has written numerous catalogue essays and articles on artists' moving image.

A film critic and member of FIPRESCI. He publishes regularly at La voz del interior, Ñ, Quid and Con los ojos abiertos. He is also the host of a TV program, El cinematógrafo, in Argentina and permanente guest in Filmoteca. He is the programmer of the Vitrina Section of the Hamburg IFF since 2006, and part of the FICUNAM programming team since 2011. Since 2014, he is the Artistic Director of the Cosquín IFF. He has also curated a tribute to Raúl Perrone, entitled The Man from Ituzaingó, at the Viennale, in Austria (2015). He has participated as a jury member in several IFFs (Rotterdam, Locarno, FidValdivia) and has taken part in conversations and masterclasses together with figures such as Peleshyan, Reygadas, Akerman, Loznitsa, etc.

Working in media since 2006. Since 2007 to 2013, Artavazd Yeghiazaryan has been working as a journalist in Yerevan Magazine’s Russian edition covering culture and film industry. Since 2011, he is an editor in chief of Yerevan Magazine’s Armenian version. In 2010, he participated in Warsaw FF’s FIPRESCI project. As a film writer he also contributed to RBA Magazine, Kinopoisk.ru, Kinomania.ru, Golden Apricot Daily, etc. Has two short stories collections (Rendezvous; The City under Moon) published, currently contributing to two film projects as a screenwriter.