INTERNATIONAL FEATURE COMPETITION JURY
Sylvaine Dufaux
One of the first women of her generation to work behind the camera in Quebec, Sylvaine Dufaux has practised the art of image-making for many years now. Beginning her career in the early 1980s as a second assistant camera on feature films, she became a camera operator and director of photography in the late 1990s. Through works ranging from fiction — Le violon rouge (1997), Soie (2006), Barney’s Version (2009) — to documentary, Sylvaine explores all facets of her craft.
Robert Koehler
Robert Koehler is a film critic and festival programmer. As a film critic, he has written for Variety, Cinema Scope, Cineaste, Film Comment, Indie Wire, The Christian Science Monitor and Filmjourney.org, as well as Cahiers du Cinéma. He has served on juries at film festivals including Cannes, Locarno, Berlin, BAFICI, Indie Lisboa, FICCO, Santiago, Vancouver, Guadalajara and Palm Springs. In 2009, he was appointed director of programming at AFI Fest Los Angeles.
Mathieu Bouchard-Malo
Mathieu Bouchard-Malo has been an editor of feature films, documentaries and art videos since 1996. Recognized for his work with Rodrigue Jean in Hommes à louer and Lost Song, with Maxime Giroux in Demain and Jo pour Jonathan, with Philippe Lesage in Ce cœur qui bat and Jean-François Caissy in La belle visite, he recently edited Marécages by Guy Édoin and Nuit #1 by Anne Émond.
Ruth Beckermann
Ruth Beckermann, director of Zorro’s Bar Mitzva (2006) and American Passages (2011), was born in Vienna, where she also spent her childhood. She contributed as a journalist to several Austrian and Swiss magazines. In 1978 she co-founded the distribution company filmladen, in which she was active for seven years. During this period Ruth Beckermann started to make films and to write books. Since 1985 she has worked as a writer and filmmaker.
Alessandro Raja
Alessandro Raja was director of sales for Celluloid Dreams. He is the founder and president of Festival Scope, an Internet platform exclusively for professionals that is devoted to promoting films and directors selected for the major international festivals. Of Italian nationality, he has lived in Paris since 2003, after five years in London, where he worked for a festival, a movie theatre and in distribution.
CANADIAN FEATURE COMPETITION JURY
Anaïs Clanet
In 2007, Anaïs Clanet became head of sales and acquisitions for fiction and documentaries at Wide Management, the international representative of Her Name is Sabine, sold in more than 20 territories. With Loïc Magneron, she started and is currently managing the documentary arm Wide House. Currently, Wide House’s highlights are A Life for Ballet and The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975.
Javier Packer Comyn
Javier Packer Comyn has been the artistic director of the Festival International Cinéma du Réel in Paris since 2009. Before that, he worked at the Filmer à tout prix festival in Brussels from 1992 to 2004 and was in charge of P’tit Ciné for over 12 years. In 2008, he was awarded the Prix Coq by the French Community of Belgium for his work distributing documentary films.
Helene Klodawsky
Helene Klodawsky has been writing and directing documentaries for 25 years. Screened and televised around the world, films such as Painted Landscapes of the Times (1986), Motherland (1994), What If (1998), Undying Love (2002), No More Tears Sister (2005) and the alternative drama Family Motel (2007) have garnered over twenty-five awards. Helene’s most recent feature documentary Malls R Us premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
CRITICS’ JURY
Daniel Racine
Host and producer of the popular show CINÉFIX on Thursdays at 6 p.m. on CIBL 101.5 FM, Daniel Racine has been giving film workshops for 15 years, in particular on the evolution of the documentary in Quebec. Specializing in Quebec films, he also lectures, blogs and hosts discussions with filmmakers at festivals.
Miquel Martí Freixas
Miquel Martí Freixas is a critic, programmer and film professor specializing in contemporary documentaries. Since 2006, he has also been the co-director of the website Blogs&Docs, the leading Spanish-language magazine specializing in non-fiction and experimental film. He has worked for a variety of magazines (Decine, Cahiers du Cinéma — Espagne, Cultura/s La Vanguardia) and festivals (DocsBarcelona, Festival dei Popoli in Florence). He has also directed several documentaries for Catalan television.
Ismaël Houdassine
Ismaël Houdassine is the assistant managing editor of the webzine Zabmag.com, a film critic for Séquences magazine and film expert at Yahoo! A journalism graduate from Université de Montréal and a huge fan of fiction and documentary film, he never gets tired of travelling from festival to festival. His many favourite genres include manga, fantasy/science fiction and animation. His only motto is “Enjoy watching films.”
INTERNATIONAL SHORT AND MEDIUM LENGTH COMPETITION JURY
Halima Ouardiri
Halima Ouardiri was born in Geneva to a Swiss mother and an Algerian/Moroccan father. She moved to Montreal to study political science and film at Concordia University. She joined the team at EyeSteelFilm, quickly gaining wide-ranging experience in producing independent feature films. After winning a scriptwriting competition, she produced and directed her first short, Mokhtar (2010), which won many awards around the world.
David Wilson
Together with Paul Sturtz, David Wilson founded the Ragtag Cinema and the True/False Film Fest. As director of True/False, David has served as an associate programmer for the Sundance Film Festival and a consultant for the Creative Capital Foundation, the LEF Moving Image Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Danny Lennon
Danny Lennon is the founder and director of the Prends ça court! series. He is involved in over 20 Quebec festivals and events as well as working with over 60 festivals in 24 countries. He works in promotion, distribution and production for independent and professional short film both here and abroad. He also acts as an instructor at INIS and he is the film curator for Montreal’s PHI Centre.
WOMEN INMATES’ JURY
The Women Inmates’ Jury is made up of five female residents of the Joliette Institution, the only federal women’s penitentiary in Quebec. Mélanie, Danielle, Despina, Christine and Ginette chose a winner from among the eight films screened for them. This initiative, a first in Quebec, is carried out in partnership with the Quebec branch of the Elizabeth Fry Society.
