Juries of the 17th Edition
JURY OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
The award for the best film of the international competition, together with a financial prize of 3,000 Euro and two special mentions, will be awarded by a three-member jury composed of David Boulter, Tereza Hofová and Dušan Husár.
Musician and composer David Boulter has been a member of the band Tindersticks since its founding. With the band, he has recorded numerous studio albums, toured the world, and composed the soundtrack for works of film and television, including nearly all the films by French director Claire Denis. David has written music for film and television as a solo artist as well, notably the Czech HBO production Pustina (2016, dir. Ivan Zachariáš, Alice Nelis). He has also recorded solo albums of instrumental music and spoken word set to music. David has lived in Prague since 1998.
Tereza Hofová studied acting at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU) and debuted as Marla Singer in a Činoherní Studio production of the legendary Fight Club. One of her most successful and most distinctive roles was in the award-winning monodrama Skugga Baldur, based on the novel by Icelandic author Sjón and directed by Kamila Polívková, on which Hofová collaborated as part of the creative team. She spent several years living in Reykjavik, and her connection to Icelandic culture has continued in her other projects, including the recent production of Moonstone at Prague’s Studio Hrdinů. Cinematically, she has worked with leading directors such as Vladimír Michálek, Marek Najbrt, Robert Sedláček, Šimon Holý, Zdeněk Jiráský, and Adam Sedlák. She was nominated for an acting award for her performance in the lead role in Sedlák’s successful Domestique, which was shown in competition at the Karlovy Vary film festival. In Iceland, she shot a film with artist and director Katrin Ólafsdóttir, who was a juror at the 2019 Pragueshorts festival.
Freelance cinematographer Dušan Husár has worked on a variety of feature films, commercials, TV series, and documentaries. In 2018, he debuted as the director of photography of the Czech feature film Domestique (dir. Adam Sedlák), which premiered in the main competition at that year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. He also worked on Marek Partyš’s charity project Jágrláma, which won the Gold Screen for Charity Commercial at the 2018 Young Director Award. His most recent feature film work was for Arvéd (2022, dir. Vojta Mašek) and BANGER. (2022, dir. Adam Sedlák), both of which are now in Czech distribution. He is currently completing two new feature films scheduled to premiere this year: the Icelandic drama Solitude (dir. Ninna Pálmadóttir) and the Czech road movie Sensitive Man (an adaptation of the book by Jáchym Topol, dir. Tomáš Klein).
NATIONAL JURY COMPETITION
The prize for the best Czech film, which includes a financial award of 2000 Euro and one special mention, will be awarded by an international jury composed of Cristina Grosan, Wim Vanacker and Jarosław Kamiński.
Cristina Groșan is a Hungarian-Romanian filmmaker and visual artist keen on exploring themes of inner struggle and (mis)communication. Her film Ordinary Failures premiered in 2022 in the Giornate degli Autori sidebar section at the 79th Venice International Film Festival, where she received the Best Director under 40 award. Her debut film Things Worth Weeping For (2021) premiered at the Sarajevo International Film Festival, went on to screen at various festivals worldwide, and was distributed in several regions. In addition to her feature film work, Cristina believes in the short film as an art form in itself. Her most recent short film, Along Came a Prince (2020), is an exploration of consent from two points of view, reversing the usual gender roles.
Wim Vanacker is a consultant, creative advisor, programmer, curator and tutor for many workshops, film festivals and projects in development. He’s a member of the Selection Committee for the Official Short Film Competition of the Cannes Film Festival, he works as an Editorial Consultant for the First Cut Lab and he’s the curator and editing consultant of the Works-in-Progress Showcase as part of the Red Sea Souk in the context of the Red Sea International Film Festival.
Jarosław Kamiński graduated in film editing from FAMU, Prague. Since 1992, he has taught editing at the Łódź Film School. He is also a founding member and former president of PSM (the Polish Film Editors Association) and a member of the Polish Film Academy, the European Film Academy (EFA), and AMPAS. His most notable award recognitions include Best Editor at the 2018 European Film Awards for Cold War (dir. Pawel Pawlikowski), eleven nominations and five awards from the Polish Film Academy, and two-time winner in the Best Editing category at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia. He is also the editor of the Oscar-winning Ida (2013, dir. Pawel Pawlikowski).
LABO JURY
The Jury of the Labo section will award one film with the Best Film of the Section Award accompanied by a financial prize of EUR 1,000. Members of the jury are Tereza Šiklová, Jonáš Zbořil and Filip Míšek.
Tereza Šiklová is currently doing her Master’s degree at UMPRUM’s Illustration and Printmaking Studio. In 2018, she did a study exchange at the Glasgow School of Art. Her book Obr (The Giant, Baobab, 2021) earned her numerous awards, including the 2022 Gold Ribbon and second place in the 2021 Most Beautiful Czech Book of the Year Award. She was nominated for the Illustrator of the Year award in the Czech Grand Design survey and was a finalist in the illustrator category at the 2023 Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Publishers for whom she has worked include Taketaketake, Kher, and Latvia’s Kuš!Comics.
Jonáš Zbořil is a poet and writer who has worked as a contributing editor for Czech Radio’s Radio Wave and as a host of the Liberatura program. He is currently responsible for the culture section at the Seznam Zprávy website. He has published two collections of poetry.
Filip Míšek is a musician and composer who has composed the music for various films, including A Certain Kind of Silence (2019, dir. Michal Hogenauer) and Fugue (2018, dir. Agnieszka Smoczynska). The latter film premiered at the 2018 Cannes film festival and was nominated for numerous awards, including a nomination for an Eagle for Best Film Score at the Polish Film Awards. He also composes the music for theater and dance performances and is a member of the band Khoiba, with whom he has written and recorded three albums and two EPs and has performed throughout the Czech Republic and Europe. Under the pseudonym Dikolson, he released the album The Bear Is Sleeping Now with Minority Records in 2011. The album later came out with Friend of Mine Records in Japan, where he played several concerts the following year. His second album, Unbelievable Friendship, was released in 2022 with Slovakia’s Weltschmerzen label.