July 29, 2025
We are deeply honored to announce the members of the jury for the 24th edition of DokuFest. Spanning seven competition categories, this diverse mix of professionals and cinema enthusiasts will evaluate the films during the festival and select the winners from a pool of 100 films, representing around 50 countries.
BALKAN DOX COMPETITION JURY: ROBERT TOMIĆ ZUBER, BLERINA HANKOLLARI, BAŞAK EMRE
ROBERT TOMIĆ ZUBER
Robert Tomić Zuber is a journalist, director and a producer who has more than twenty years of experience working as a journalist and editor in the Croatian press, on radio and on television, as well as working for international media like the BBC. He has received two awards from the Croatian Journalists’ Association for his work. Over the past decade he has directed four long feature documentaries. At the Station in Pula (2001), Accidental Son (2008), Mila Seeking Senida (2010) awarded with the Human Rights Award at Sarajevo Film Festival, Million Dollar Life (2017). From 2013 – 2016 he was Head of Documentary Production on Croatian national television. Today he is a freelancer, and owner of a production house TOROlab, and lecturer at Zagreb’s faculty of Vern. He is founder and director of RAFF - Rab Film Festival in Croatia...
BLERINA HANKOLLARI
Blerina Hankollari studied European Philosophy and has been active in the film industry since 2012. She worked as a creative consultant on Gentian Koçi’s documentary Not a Carwash (2012), which premiered at Hot Docs, and produced his feature films Daybreak (2017) and A Cup of Coffee and New Shoes On (2022). Both films earned international acclaim and numerous festival awards and were Albania’s official Oscar submissions in 2018 and 2023. Blerina is currently producing Koçi’s third feature, Cold Sun, and developing Beyond the Blue Mountains is the Sea, the second feature-length documentary by director Eneos Çarka. on Croatian national television.
BAŞAK EMRE
Başak Emre is a producer and festival director. She led the Festival on Wheels since 2000, and served in key roles at major Turkish festivals including Ankara, Adana, and Antalya. She has coordinated Turkish Film Weeks in 25+ countries, served on international juries, and worked as producer and executive producer with directors like Zeki Demirkubuz. She is a Board Member of the European Film Academy and heads Meetings on the Bridge at the Istanbul Film Festival..
INTERNATIONAL FEATURE DOX COMPETITION JURY: BEN RUSSELL, SOFIA BOHDANOWICZ, KAMAL ALJAFARI
BEN RUSSELL
Ben Russell (1976) is an American artist, filmmaker and curator whose work lies at the intersection of experimental cinema, visual anthropology and the documentary image. Russell was an exhibiting artist at documenta 14 (2017) and his work has been presented at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art Chicago, the Venice Film Festival and the Berlinale, among others. Curatorial projects include Magic Lantern (Providence, USA, 2005-2007), BEN RUSSELL (Chicago, USA, 2009-2011), Hallucinations (Athens, Greece, 2017) and Double Vision (Marseille, France 2024-). He is currently based in Marseille, France.
SOFIA BOHDANOWICZ
Sofia Bohdanowicz is a Toronto-based filmmaker and founder of Maison du bonheur. Her latest film, Measures for a Funeral, won the Grand Prix at FNC Montréal and premiered in TIFF’s Centrepiece. Her work has screened at Berlinale, Locarno, FIDMarseille, BAFICI, DocLisboa, and the ICA. Her films are currently featured on the Criterion Channel.
KAMAL ALJAFARI
Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker and artist. His films have screened at major festivals and museums, including Locarno, London, Viennale, and the 35th Bienal de São Paulo. He has received prestigious awards from FIDMarseille, Pesaro, and Visions du Réel. In 2024, IndieLisboa hosted a full retrospective of his work. Aljafari has taught at The New School and DFFB in Berlin. He was a Film Study Center fellow at Harvard and at Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination.
INTERNATIONAL SHORT DOX COMPETITION JURY: MARIANA HRISTOVA, CAVEH ZAHEDI, JENNY LUUKKONEN
MARIANA HRISTOVA
Mariana Hristova is a Bulgarian film critic, cultural journalist, and programmer with a special interest in the cinema from Eastern and Central Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, with additional interests in avant-garde, amateur, and underrepresented films. She regularly contributes to Cineuropa, The New Arab, Filmsociety.bg and the Bulgarian KINO magazine; a member of FIPRESCI and the European Film Academy. She also serves on the selection committee of Sheffield DocFest and is a freelance indexer at the FIAF’s Periodicals Indexing Project (PIP) for Eastern European journals.
CAVEH ZAHEDI
Iranian-American independent filmmaker Caveh Zahedi made his Sundance debut with a striking fusion of documentary and fiction, A Little Stiff (1991). For three decades, Zahedi has mined his personal life with an unrelenting honesty in such cult docs as In the Bathtub of the World (2001), The Sheik and I (2012) and his magnum opus I Am a Sex Addict (2005).
JENNY LUUKKONEN
Jenny Luukkonen is a film and festival producer currently based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Since 2019, she is the co-production executive for short format and documentary at Film i Väst, one of Europe’s leading regional film funds. Some of their recent titles include DECK 5B by Malin Ingrid Johansson, O by Rúnar Rúnarsson and Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 by Göran Hugo Olsson. In addition to co-production, she runs several talent schemes aimed at emerging directors, producers and script writers, as part of Film i Väst’s focus on talent development.
INTERNATIONAL SHORTS COMPETITION JURY: HILKE RÖNNFELDT, VISAR KRUSHA, ANDREEA PĂTRU
HILKE RÖNNFELDT
Hilke Rönnfeldt is a screenwriter and film director. She is a Berlinale Talents, Torino Script Lab, LIM – Less Is more, Oxbelly Episodic Lab and European Short Pitch alumna. Her previous film A STUDY OF EMPATHY won the Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival and was a candidate for the European Film Awards. She is also one of 10 emerging European film directors selected for European Film Promotion Future Frames Program. Her projects revolve around life in rural communities, worlds of work, intimacy, and the sea. She has a strong faith in the poetic capabilities of the image.
VISAR KRUSHA
Visar K writer and producer whose plays—translated into five languages—have been performed in Skopje, Prishtina, and Izmir, with The Key also published in Fjala. His screen work includes Inside Justice, Modern Family, and two short films: Three Minutes of Solitude (2009) and Kaçanik Girl (2011). He founded Produksioni Krusha, which co- produced Babai (2015), winner of multiple international awards including Munich, Karlovy Vary, Angers, and Prix Europe. An EFA member and Bosch Prize winner, he has taught at Prishtina University, directed Pristina City Theatre “Dodona,” and now manages Barabar Centre.
ANDREEA PĂTRU
Andreea Pătru is a programmer and film critic member of FIPRESCI. She is the short film programmer of the Las Palmas International Film Festival and a selection committee member of feature-length films, working in the programming of SEMINCI, Tenerife Shorts and Minimalen. She has been the executive director of the Bucharest Biennale for Contemporary Art. Her writing has appeared in several international publications, including Senses of Cinema, Kinoscope, Vague Visages, Indiewire and Films in Frame. Previously worked for Romanian Film Promotion.
HUMAN RIGHTS DOX COMPETITION JURY: JARMILA OUTRATOVÁ, IMMY SUTTON, ARES SHPORTA
JARMILA OUTRATOVÁ
Jarmila Outratová began her career as an acquisition and program manager for HBO/Supermax Kids. After working at a British distribution company, she launched her own business in music production and international documentary distribution. Since 2013, she has been Head of Industry and Training at Ji.hlava IDFF, supporting documentary professionals globally.
IMMY SUTTON
Imogen oversees Festivals and Acquisitions at Autlook, a leading sales agency for feature documentaries, hybrids, and doc series. As well as leading international premiere strategy, she handles educational and theatrical sales. Currently representing CUTTING THROUGH ROCKS (Sundance awarded), NO OTHER LAND (97th Oscar ® Winner) and THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF IBELIN (Sundance awarded).
ARES SHPORTA
Ares Shporta (1991) is a cultural worker and producer active in film, music, and heritage. He co-founded Lumbardhi Foundation in 2015, leading the revival of Lumbardhi Cinema through collaborative processes of research, public programming, advocacy, and restoration. Shporta is currently director at Lumbardhi Foundation and producer of the upcoming films Bleach and Thirst with Vera Films.
GREEN DOX COMPETITION JURY: ASLIHAN DEMIRTAŞ, KAROL PIEKARCZYK, LIA FURXHI
ASLIHAN DEMIRTAŞ
Aslıhan Demirtaş is a practicing architect, educator, and co- founder of KHORA—an expanded architectural practice grounded in research, art and ecology. Her office leads the adaptive reuse of Lumbardhi Cinema in Prizren, Kosovo. She is a recipient of Graham Foundation Grant and has served as a technical evaluator for the 15th Aga Khan Awards for Architecture. Demirtaş collaborated with I.M.Pei as his lead designer on Museum of Islamic Arts Qatar and Miho Chapel and is an alumna of MIT and METU.
KAROL PIEKARCZYK
Karol Piekarczyk is the Artistic Director of Millennium Docs Against Gravity. With an audience of over 180,000 it is the second biggest documentary festival in Europe. He has been working with documentary films and film festivals for over 15 years. He graduated from the University of Glasgow. He also oversees film distribution, releasing over 35 documentaries in recent years. He has been a consultant on numerous documentary productions. He is a member of the European Film Academy.
LIA FURXHI
After graduating in History and Film Criticism at the University of Turin, Lia Furxhi worked as a production manager on several notable Italian independent films. She has played various roles in numerous cultural projects, including the organization of festivals (she has been the director of CinemAmbiente – Environmental Film Festival since 2024) and the establishment of the CNC – Italian Short Film Centre.
NATIONAL COMPETITION JURY: BARIŞ KARAMUÇO, SARA RAJAEI, JOSE CABRERA BETANCORT
BARIŞ KARAMUÇO
Barış Karamuço is a Prizren-born visual artist, writer, and cultural entrepreneur whose work probes Kosovo’s layered histories, preserving and reimagining overlooked cultural values. After earning a BA in Photography in Istanbul and an MA in Film Studies, he is now pursuing a PhD in Sociology, a trajectory that deepens the social lens of his practice. Guided by cinematic theory, Barış tells stories through photography and video documentaries while expanding his ideas in written form. He is also a cofounding director of Autostrada Biennale.
SARA RAJAEI
Sara RAJAEI is an Iranian/Dutch video artist and filmmaker based in the Netherlands. She graduated from the University of the Arts in Tehran and the Royal Academy for Visual Arts in the Hague, where she specialised in 3D art. In her work, she studies the notion of time by reflecting on the absence of image, memory psychology, oral history, narrative techniques, and physical/psychological space. She mainly works with short films and video installations. Her works have been shown at various festivals and exhibitions worldwide, including De Appel arts centre in Amsterdam, Rencontres Internationales Paris/ Berlin/Madrid, Stiftelsen 3,14 in Bergen, and Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka. In 2009, she was awarded the Prix de Rome.
JOSE CABRERA BETANCORT
Jose Cabrera Betancort is a film programmer based in Spain. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Audiovisual Communication and 20 years of experience in programming and coordinating international film festivals. He has also been awarded a fellowship in Cinema at the Royal Spanish Academy of Arts in Rome. He worked for MiradasDoc and Transilvania IFF. In 2013 he founded the Tenerife Shorts Festival, which he has directed since then. He’s currently a programmer and the head of film management at Valladolid IFF as well as the head of programming for Bucharest IFF.
