JURYs & NOMINATions

BURHAN QURBANI

Burhan Qurbani, born in 1980, is a graduate of the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. As a child of Afghan war refugees, he grew up in various German cities due to his father’s employment with the US Army. After graduating from high school, he works as an assistant dramaturg and director at various theaters. While still a student, he won various awards for his short films, including the 2008 German Film Critics Award and the Middle East International Film Festival’s Black Pearl for Best upcoming filmmaker of the year 2008. His latest film Berlin Alexanderplatz won an award in compfilmpetition at the 70th Berlinale in 2020 and was nominated for 11 Lolas at the German Film Awards, winning five of them. Burhan Quebani lives and works in Berlin.

STEFAN WULFF

Stefan Wulff is a Musician, composer, film music producer and FOH technician for Achim Reichel, Etta Scollo, Bob Wilson and Lou Reed at the Thalia Theater with Timerocker and PoeTry. Has managed the O’ton Studio in front of Hamburg’s Elbbrücken since 1980. Since 1993 collaboration with director Lars Becker as score composer together with Hinrich Dageför and until 2010 with Frank Wulff-Raven, starting with the feature films Schattenboxer, Bunte Hunde and Landgang for Ringo. Score music for various Tatort episodes and other TV movies for Lars Becker, Lars Jessen and Ilse Hoffmann as well as for the ARD series Die Kanzlei.

Nurhan Şekerci-Porst

Nurhan Şekerci-Porst, born in Marburg in 1975, is the daughter of Turkish migrants. She studied English literature and political science in Germany and England, including Hamburg, where a mutual acquaintance introduced Fatih Akin and Nurhan Şekerci to each other in 1998. They have been working together since 2005, first Şekerci assisted Fatih Akin as a tutor during his guest professorship at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, then as his assistant in the film production corazón international, where she worked on internationally renowned films by Akin as well as other directors and creatives. In 2012, Akin and Şekerci decided to take a new path together and founded the production company bombero international. Since then, Şekerci has mainly produced and developed Akin’s own material and films.

Gabriele Czypionka

Gabriele Czypionka grew up with five siblings in the Ruhr area and completed her studies of Indology, Philosophy and Art History there. After graduating, she worked for four years at the Institute of Philosophy and began working part-time at an acting agency in Bochum. In 2002 she founded the agency schneider in Berlin and currently represents 45 actors.

Dayan Kodua

Dayan Kodua is an actress, speaker, author and founder of Gratitude Publishing. Born in Ghana and raised in Kiel Dayan followed her heart after graduating as a business assistant and studied acting in Berlin and Los Angeles. In addition to her work as an actress and speaker, she is passionate about empowering People of Color and making them more visible as role models. In 2014, she therefore published the illustrated book My Black Skin: Black. Successful. German and launched a traveling exhibition and corresponding workshops. At the end of August 2022, Dayan published the second part of her illustrated book, entitled My Black Skin: Hero’s Journey.

Maike Rasch

Maike Rasch worked for a long time as a freelance copywriter and concept developer in the design and advertising industry and as a writer for Viva TV. From 2012 to 2014, she completed her Master in Arts in Film with a focus on screenwriting at the Hamburg Media School. Her first feature film Bonnie & Bonnie screened at FILMFEST HAMBURG in 2019 in the Hamburg Film Show section. Among other things, she writes and develops series (e.g. Jenseits der Spree with Jürgen Vogel) and serials (e.g. Höllgrund) for television. Another focus of her work is content for children and young people. The youth mystery drama Geheime Schatten was nominated for the Golden Sparrow 2022 this year and is currently continuing its festival journey.

Alexander Mohrenberg

At 27, Alexander Mohrenberg is one of the youngest members of the Hamburg State Parliament, where he is primarily involved in climate protection and environmental policy. He grew up in Bergedorf, where his political involvement began as a district deputy. He was the first member of his family to study law in Hamburg. In Hamburg’s SPD, he was Juso chairman from 2018 to 2021 and is currently deputy state chairman.

Barbara Denz

Barbara Denz (born 1954) worked in print and radio for Norddeutscher Rundfunk and was responsible for documentaries in the television editorial department for documentaries and reports. Productions she has been responsible for have been awarded the Grimme Prize and the German Television Prize, among others. In MOIN film funding, she was active as a jury member in panel 2 until her retirement.

Dominique Henz

Dominique Henz is a programmer and curator for the Lumière&Méliès cinema in Göttingen. Professional stations as editor and director include ZDF and SWR. She was managing director of the Kassel arthouse cinema Filmladen and programmer at the film theater Capitol Kino Witzenhausen. As a film scholar and critic, she publishes articles and is active as a jury member for SI STAR, the film award for female directors.

Erdmann Lange

Erdmann Lange has been program designer and marketing manager of the traditional Mannheim arthouse cinemas ATLANTIS and ODEON since 2004. During this time, the cinemas have received several awards at the national and state level for their outstanding programming, including a top award as »best program cinema in Baden-Württemberg« from the Medien- und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg (MFG). In recent years, he has already served as a jury member for the European program cinema association CICAE at the film festivals in Locarno, Sarajevo, Vilnius, Hamburg as well as at the Berlinale; furthermore, for Europa Cinemas at the Venice Film Festival. In 2022, he is a member of the jury appointed by the German Film Critics Association (VdFk) for the Siegfried Kracauer Prize for best film criticism. In addition to his work in the cinema industry, Erdmann Lange is active as a songwriter and lyricist and has been a member of the board of the German Lyricists Association (DTV) since 2021. 

Adina Vetter

Adina Vetter was born in Berlin in 1980. In 2004 she completed her acting training at the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst »Ernst Busch« Berlin. She gained her first acting experience at the Berlin Volksbühne and the Hans Otto Theater in Potsdam. From 2006 to 2016 she was a member of the ensemble of the Vienna Burgtheater. There she worked with Nicolas Stemann, Jan Bosse, Matthias Hartmann, Michael Thalheimer, Thomas Vinterberg and Luc Bondy, among others. She is known to television audiences for her role in Vorstadtweiber or for her leading role in the ZDF production Die Braut sagt leider nein. She was seen on television in a continuous role in the series Frau Jordan stellt gleich.

Farahnaz Sharifi

Farahnaz Sharifi studied directing in Tehran. Her films include Moon’s Voice (2002), Destiny (2003), Iran According To Ads (2005), My Sad Face (2008), Revolutionary Memories of Bahman Who Loved Leila (2013), Profession: Documentarist (2014) and Missing (2016).

Philipp Stadelmaier

Philipp Stadelmaier is a film critic (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Filmbulletin, sissymag), film scholar and author. He studied comparative literature and Romance studies and earned a doctorate in film studies on Jean-Luc Godard and Serge Daney. Verbrecher Verlag published his diary essay Die mittleren Regionen in 2016, awarded the Clemens Brentano Prize 2018, and his debut novel Queen July (2019).

Yun-hua Chen

Yun-hua Chen holds a PhD in film studies, is a critic and curator. She writes scholarly articles and film reviews in English, Chinese and German for Directory of World Cinema, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Film International, Cinephilia and several anthologies, among others. Her monograph Mosaic Space and Mosaic Auteurs: On the Cinema of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Atom Egoyan, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Michael Haneke, funded by the Geschwister Boehringer Ingelheim Stiftung, was published in 2017 by Neofelis Verlag in Berlin. Yun-hua Chen worked as festival director of dokumentART, an annual film festival in Neubrandenburg and as a Fipresci jury member at EMAF and DOK Leipzig.

Katrin Hillgruber

Katrin Hillgruber is a freelance journalist as well as a film and literary critic (e.g. Deutschlandfunk, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Der Tagesspiegel, artechock). She studied Modern German Literature, Theater Studies and History of Eastern and Southeastern Europe in Hamburg and Munich and is particularly interested in Eastern European, Italian and French cinema. Since 2015 volunteer program and press work for the Munich festival filmPOLSKA and its successor, the Mittel Punkt Europa Filmfest.

Karsten Munt

Karsten Munt, born in 1985, studied film directing in Hamburg. Today he prefers to write about cinema, preferably Asian cinema, even though he actually likes all films.

DANNY MARQUES

Danny Marques Marcalo is a reporter at NDR Landesfunkhaus Hamburg. Every week he reports on radio and television about films and books that everyone should know. Before that, he wrote print reviews for various magazines, newspapers and online portals and produced his own radio programmes. After completing his traineeship at NDR, he has been constantly checkecking out the city’s cinemas. He has known FILMFEST HAMBURG for a long time, first as a fan and most recently as a live reporter from the red carpet.

Parvin Sadigh

Parvin Sadigh, literary scholar and cultural manager, is an editor at ZEIT ONLINE. She deals primarily with social issues, but also with films. 

Eva Neymann

Eva Neymann graduated as a director from the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin in 2007. Her feature films and documentaries have been screened and awarded at numerous international film festivals. Her feature film debut At the River (2007) had its international premiere at IFFR Rotterdam. Her second feature film House with the Turret (2012) received numerous awards, including Karlovy Vary East of the West Award, Tallinn Back Nights Grand Prix, Istanbul Audience Award. Her film Song of Songs (2015) premiered in the Karlovy Vary Official Competition and was nominated for the Eurimage Audentia Award 2016 and the European Film Academy Award 2016. It was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section of the Toronto Film Festival and won, among others, the Best Film Award and the Best Ukrainian Film Award at the Odessa Festival and the FIPRESCI Award in Fribourg, Switzerland.

Farazd Pak 

Farazd Pak is an award-winning film producer. His film career spans more than 24 years. He has worked on many award-winning feature films and documentaries, including the 70th Berlinale Golden Bear-winning film »Denn das Böse gibt es nicht«, directed by Mohammad Rasoulof. He is the managing director of the Hamburg-based production company PakFilm GmbH.

Feature films

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