Juries 2024
Prix SAUVAGE Jury
Albert Serra
(President of the Prix SAUVAGE Jury)
Albert Serra is a Catalan artist and filmmaker. For Histoire de ma mort (Story of My Death), Serra received the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 2013. For La Mort de Louis XIV (The Death of Louis XIV), he received the Jean Vigo Prize in 2016. Liberté received the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019. Selected for the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2023, Pacifiction was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022.
Sophie Semin
Sophie Semin is a French actress. She has appeared in Œdipe by Seneca, directed by Jean-Claude Fall (1998), Stella by Goethe, directed by Bruno Bayen (2000), and The Tanner Children by Robert Walser (2002). In cinema, she has appeared in the film Beyond the Clouds directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders, and she participated in The Rite of Spring directed by Oliver Hermann in Berlin in 2003. Familiar with the works of Peter Handke, in 1992, she played the role of the young woman in his film The Absence, and Claus Peymann directed her in The Canoe Trip by Peter Handke.
Henri Béhar
Henri Béhar is a journalist for the Revue du Cinéma, Le Monde, and Paris-Vogue. He has also worked for French radio and television. As a translator of screenplays, adapter, and subtitler for nearly two hundred films, including several by Woody Allen, Ang Lee, and Quentin Tarantino. He has also long been the host of press conferences at the Cannes Film Festival, both in selection and competition.
Kristian Feigelson
Kristian Feigelson, a sociologist, is a professor at the Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Research at Sorbonne Nouvelle University. He has published numerous works on cinema and has served on various film juries in the Caucasus, Colombia, Japan, and Russia. One of his areas of focus is the sociology of profession and occupations (The Film Factory: Trades and Professions, Armand Colin, Paris, 2011), while others focus on cultural industries (Bollywood: Image Industry, 2012, Théorème 16, PSN, Paris).
Monica Fantini
As the author and coordinator of “Listening to the World” at Radio France Internationale, Monica Fantini listens, records, and composes sound pieces using everyday sounds: the clattering of subway turnstiles in Paris, the calls of vendors at the market in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, the cracking of glaciers in Patagonia, the rumble of horse -drawn carriages in Dakar, and the midnight bells of St. Mark’s Square in Venice… These fragments of life are woven together to tell stories about the world, create connections, and share knowledge.
Prix PRESENT Jury
Eva Charlotte Nilsen
(President of the Prix PRESENT Jury)
Eva Charlotte Nilsen studied image and editing at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, where she worked from 1967 to 1973. In 1969, she also took courses in oratory and drama at Stanford University. Subsequently, she obtained a master’s degree in criminology and social science from the University of Oslo. In 1986, she founded her own production company, RAMPELYS, where she worked as a producer, cinematographer, and editor. From 2009 to 2012, she also served as the chair of the North Norwegian Film Center in Honningsvåg. “Smile and Wave” was selected for the opening of two documentary festivals in Norway and won the award for Best Medium-Length Documentary at the NordicDocs festival in 2022.
Ania Szczepanska
Ania Szczepanska, born in Warsaw in 1982, is a lecturer in Film History at Paris 1 University and a documentary filmmaker. She conducts research on the relationship between cinema and politics, focusing on audiovisual archives from the former Eastern Bloc, mainly in Poland. She is the author of the book Do granic negocjacji (At the Borders of Negotiation, Universitas, Krakow, 2017) and co- author with Sylvie Lindeperg of À qui appartiennent les images? (Who Owns the Images? (FMSH, 2017). Drawing from archives and interviews with prominent Polish filmmakers and figures of power from the communist era, she directed Nous filmons le peuple! in 2013, her first feature-length documentary, which received the SCAM Star (2015) and the CNRS Grand Prize (2014). In 2019, Ania Szczepanska also directed Solidarnosc, la chute du mur commence en Pologne (Solidarity, the Fall of the Wall Begins in Poland), broadcasted on Arte.
Béatrice Kordon
After training as a cinematographer at La Femis, Béatrice Kordon quickly turned to directing films that intersect documentary practices, experimental cinema, sound creation, and visual arts. She notably directed Héros Désarmés (1997), Tu crois qu’on peut parler d’autre chose que d’amour (1999), co-directed with Sylvie Ballyot, as well as Dithyrambe pour Dionysos (2007), Les Insensés (2014), and Immémorial, Chants de la Grande Nuit (2024). Alongside her films, she collaborates with other filmmakers in cinematography or editing roles, leads directing workshops in various institutions, and has been engaged in diverse collaborations with the performing arts since 2018.
Prix SAUVAGE CORTO Jury
Knutte Wester
(President of the Prix Sauvage Corto Jury)
Knutte Wester is a contemporary artist and filmmaker born in 1977 in Sweden. From 1998 to 2003, he studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Umeå and at the Wits University in Johannesburg. Wester’s art focuses on our society and its places of defeat. His work often takes shape within the framework of processes, based on collaboration. He works with video, sculpture and installation. Regardless of the technique, there is always a documentary element in his works. He has directed numerous award-winning films, including Dawn in a City without a Name (Tempo Documentary Film Festival 2014) and You can’t show my face (premiered at DOC NYC in New York, SAUVAGE CORTO award at the l’Europe autour de l’Europe festival 2021).
Vassili Schemann
Director, stage director, and actor trained at the University of Paris 8 and then in the directing department of INSAS, Vassili Schemann directed the documentary Autour d’eux, la nuit (Audience Award at FIFF 2020, Festival Dei Popoli, FIFA Montreal…) and the fiction short film Chronique Ordinaire (BSFF, Festival de Contis…). Currently, he is in preparation for a feature-length documentary, developing his first fiction feature film, as well as his first stage direction in theater. The director also conducts numerous on-camera acting workshops in various national drama schools.
Tiphaine Robion
Tiphaine Robion is a French producer born in 1992. In 2021, after several years working in production, she founded her own company, In The Cut, in Bordeaux. She produces feminist, committed, and demanding films in terms of content and/or form. The authors she works with and their vision are at the heart of the production process. Today, she is developing several feature films, the first of which will start shooting in autumn 2024.