Grand Jury
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Erika Balsom
United Kingdom
Erika Balsom is a reader in film studies at King’s College London. She is the author of four books, including After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation (2017, Columbia University Press) and TEN SKIES (Fireflies Press, 2021). Her writing has appeared in venues such as Cahiers du cinéma, Cinema Scope, e-flux, Frieze, Grey Room, New Left Review and Screen. With Hila Peleg, she is the editor of Documentary Across Disciplines (MIT Press, 2016) and Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image (MIT Press, 2022). In 2021/22, she was the co-curator of the retrospective exhibition “Peggy Ahwesh: Vision Machines” (Spike Island, Bristol/Kunsthall Stavanger), and in 2022/23, she was the co-curator of “No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image” (HKW Berlin/Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw).
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Stoffel Debuysere
Belgium
Stoffel Debuysere is a curator of cinema and audio/visual arts. He is a programmer for the Courtisane platform for film and audiovisual arts and a lecturer in film-critical studies at the KASK School of Arts in Ghent, where he obtained his PhD in 2017 with the project "Figures of Dissent – Cinema of Politics, Politics of Cinema". Based in Brussels, he continues to organize various film and sound programs and associated discursive events in collaboration with numerous organizations and institutions in Belgium and abroad. His current research is focused on the politics of soundtrack.
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Michael Robinson
United States
Michael Robinson is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker and collage artist whose work explores the emotional mechanics of popular media, the transcendent potential of heartache, and the instability of the collective realities we inhabit. His work has shown internationally at venues including the Austrian Film Museum, RHA Dublin, MoMA, London’s National Portrait Gallery, the 2012 Whitney Biennial, the Walker Art Center, and MMCA Seoul, and has been regularly included in major film festivals like TIFF, Rotterdam, New York, Berlinale, Hong Kong, London BFI, Melbourne, Jeonju, FICUNAM (CDMX), and Cinéma du Réel. Michael has been supported by two MacDowell Fellowships, a Creative Capital grant, a Wexner Center Artist Residency Award, a Yaddo residency, a Kazuko Trust Award presented by The Film Society of Lincoln Center, a residency from The Headlands Center for the Arts, a Teton Artlab residency, a FIDlab Marseille project, and his films have received awards from numerous festivals. He holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), his work is distributed by Video Data Bank, and he is currently on faculty in the Program in Film and Video at CalArts.
Critics Jury
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Bartol Babić Vukmir
Croatia
Bartol Babić Vukmir (Zagreb, 1999) graduated in Comparative Literature and English Studies from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Zagreb. He publishes film criticism in Croatian Film Chronicle and on the Zona filma portal. He is a member of the executive board of Kinoklub Zagreb, where he serves as the archivist and participates in organizing the discursive programs Projections from the Basement and The Film Reader. He has been a collaborator of Film Mutations: Festival of Invisible Cinema since 2020 and is the author of several short experimental films.
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Dario Dunatov
Croatia
Dario Dunatov holds a Master's degree in Sociology (Faculty of Arts, University of Split) and is an independent journalist in the field of culture (vizkultura.hr, croatian-photography.com), as well as a film selector and program advisor for the Festival mediteranskog filma Split (Split Mediterranean Film Festival). He is also the co-author and host of the radio show Slobodno lajanje on KLFM (2021 – present) and has edited and hosted the authorial radio show Torinski konj. He is one of the hosts of the informal educational program KLFM Radio School and the international student workshop INTERAKCIJE 2024: Turizam – Nove dinamike at the Art Academy of Split. He is the editor of the project Teka – kulturna bilježnica and the moderator of the program Krovna tema, MKC Split. His text Do Films Really Have an ‘Expiration Date’? is included in the Croation school textbook, Snaga riječi 7, a Croatian language reader edited by Anita Šojat.
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Vanja Gajić
Slovenia
Vanja Gajić (1997) is a Ljubljana-based film critic and translator. She is currently completing her MA in English Studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. She writes for Radio Študent, Ekran film magazine, Radio ARS, and has also contributed texts to other publications such as the film journal KINO! and various festival catalogues and program booklets. She is involved with several film festival teams, working as a catalogue editor for the short film festival FeKK, a program selector for Animateka, and a moderator at the Ljubljana International Film Festival (LIFFe). In 2024, she was selected as Slovenia's young ambassador for the LUX Audience Award, which aims to promote European art cinema. Above all, she enjoys watching and reflecting on all kinds of cinema.