Hama Haruka a rejoint le Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF) aux bureaux de Tokyo Office en 2001, bureaux qu’elle dirige depuis 2015. Elle est membre du comité de sélection de la compétition internationale depuis 2003. Elle a coordonné les programmes « Nexus of Borders: Ryukyu Reflections » (YIDFF 2003), « Vista de Cuba » (YIDFF 2011) et « Latinoamérica » (YIDFF 2015). Hama Haruka travaille également pour Cinematrix, une entreprise de distribution de films basée à Tokyo ; elle a produit en particulier le long métrage de Takamine Go Hengyoro (2017), distribué par cette société. Elle est engagée dans la coordination de projections internationales et locales, et s’est occupée notamment du programme de films à la Triennale d’Aichi en 2016.

Born in New York, director, screenwriter and producer Eliza Hittman studied art at the California Institute of the Arts. Her feature film debut It Felt Like Love, which she produced and for which she also wrote the screenplay, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. There, her second film, Beach Rats (2017), also premiered and won the Directing Award. Her third feature film Never Rarely Sometimes Always was presented in the Berlinale Competition in 2020 and was awarded the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2018 and served as jury president at the 2021 Locarno Film Festival. Hittman is currently an assistant professor of film/video at the Pratt Institute.

Athina Rachel Tsangari was a principal instigator of the Greek New Wave. Her genre-bending films explore power in gender, class and alterity.

Her sophomore feature Attenberg premiered in the Venice competition where it won the Coppa Volpi and the Lina Mangiacapre Directing award. Chevalier won Best Film at BFI London Film Festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards. Both films were Greece’s official submissions for Best International Film at the Academy Awards. She was lead director/EP on the BBC2/HBO Max dramedy mini series Trigonometry and a guest director on Greg Daniels’ Amazon sci-fi comedy Upload.

Under the banner of her Athens-based company HAOS FILM, she produced several films, including Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinetta and Alps, Georgis Grigorakis’ Digger, and co-produced on Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight. A member of the DGA and AMPAS, Tsangari has served on juries in Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, Sundance, Toronto and Ficunam CDMX film festivals; as jury president in Venice, Götteborg, and BFI London. She taught cinema at Harvard, UT Austin, Le Fresnoy, Bela Tarr’s Film Fabrica in Sarajevo, and currently teaches at the California Arts Institute.

Her latest feature Harvest, a neo-western starring Caleb Landry Jones, was shot at the Scottish Highlands. It premiered at the Venice competition in 2024 and has been touring the world.

Scott Cummings is a New York City-based filmmaker and editor. A former English teacher and pornographer, his feature debut REALM OF SATAN premiered at Sundance 2024 and was the opening night film of MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight. Made in collaboration with the Church of Satan, the film is a hybrid of experimental, documentary and fiction forms and techniques. His 2014 medium-length film BUFFALO JUGGALOS won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2014 AFI Fest and received the Cinema Eye Honors for Outstanding Achievement in Short Nonfiction Filmmaking. He was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2014. He is also a well-known editor of Independent Films, working with directors such as Eliza Hittman, Benh Zeitlin and Johan Renck.

Thomas Hakim was born in Marseille. He is a producer at Petit Chaos, a company he founded in 2018 with Julien Graff, which produces feature films and documentaries. Thomas has produced thirteen shorts, which have been selected for prestigious festivals like the Berlinale, IFFR, FID, Dok Leipzig, IndieLisboa and CPH:DOX. The most recent, Al Basateen by Antoine Chapon, has just premièred at the Forum Expanded at the Berlinale. He has also produced two full-length features directed by Payal Kapadia: Toute une nuit sans savoir presented at the Director’s Fortnight in 2021, where it won the Œil d’Or for best documentary, and All We Imagine as Light, which won the Grand Prix award at Cannes in 2024.

Elene Naveriani (They, Them), a Georgian director based in Switzerland, creates films that explore hidden lives and give voice to marginalized communities, particularly contributing to queer cinema. Their debut feature, I Am Truly a Drop of Sun on Earth, premiered at Rotterdam and received multiple awards for its bold storytelling. Works like Red Ants Bite and Lantsky Papa’s Stolen Ox earned further acclaim, while their second feature, Wet Sand, premiered in Locarno and won Best Actor for its sensitive portrayal of love and loss. Most recently, Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry premiered at Cannes, winning several awards, including the Swiss Cinema Prize. Elene is currently working on The Trial of Lilia Peradze and was recently awarded the Golden Queer Apple in recognition of their work in queer cinema.

A French-Swiss writer-filmmaker born in Lyon in 1994, Elie Grappe studied classical music at the Lyon Regional Conservatory before joining the film department at the University of Art and Design Lausanne [ECAL] (2011-2015). As part of his curriculum, he directed the short films Répétition and Suspendu, which toured in international festivals. After graduation, he was the casting director and acting coach for Blaise Harrison’s film Particles, selected for the Directors’ Fortnight in 2019. In 2021, his first feature film, Olga, was selected for Cannes Critics’ Week, where it won the SACD prize. In 2022, Olga was the Swiss entry for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and received three Quartz awards at the Swiss Film Awards (Best Film, Best Screenplay and Best Sound). Olga has been distributed in thirty-eight countries.

After studiying literature, Petar (1974) channeled his passion for independent film through producing, editing, presenting and distributing art-house films and alternative content, and has been part of the international film industry for more than 20 years. He was a long-time programmer of the Palic European Film Festival (2004-2017), always on the outlook for new discoveries and bold, daring auteurs with unique poetics and styles. Programmer of the Authors Film section at the Skopje Film Festival in North Macedonia (2008-2010) and of the Le Meute section at L’Europe autour de l`Europe Film Festival in Paris (2014-2017). Founder of an art house cinema and a film club in his native town, both of which still exist today. Organizer and moderator of numerous retrospectives, masterclasses and Q&A sessions with prominent directors such as Ken Russell, Roy Andersson, Joao Pedro Rodrigues, Ulrich Seidl, Ruben Östlund at various international film festivals and events. Worked as acquisitions executive at Taskovski Films (2021-2023) and gained experience as PR & Publicity coordinator for a large number of creative documentaries premiering at IDFA, Visions du Reel, Berlinale, CPH:DOX, Locarno. Since 2023, works as head producer and distribution coordinator at Beldocs IDFF. Very happy to work with Filmotor in acquisitions, festival services, PR promotion and consultancies, trying to do his best to share the impact and power of the idea of making this world a better place for everyone. In his spare time, he plays analog electronic music in various experimental projects.

Elaheh Nobakht is a producer in Iranian cinema, renowned for her achievements in international film production and distribution. 

With a portfolio that includes seven feature films and two short films, she has earned recognition at prestigious festivals like Berlinale, IDFA, and Hot Docs. Her notable works include Dreams’ Gate (Berlinale 2023), The Apple Day (Berlinale 2022), Silent House (IDFA 2022), Holy Bread (IDFA 2020, Hot Docs 2021, ZagrebDox 2021), and Beloved (IDFA, Berlinale, Hot Docs; over 65 international festivals). She also distributed Finding Farideh, Iran’s official Oscar entry in 2020.Elaheh has served as a jury member at multiple international film festivals and received prestigious accolades, including the Producers Network Prize for Promising Young Producers at Cannes Marché du Film (Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2022). In 2025, she was selected as a Berlinale Talent. 

As the CEO of ELI Image since 2018, Elaheh plays a pivotal role in global film production and distribution. She is also a board member of the Iranian Producers Association (IPA) and a member of the Iranian Documentary Producers Association (AOIDP). Currently, she is working on four feature films in co-production with France, Norway, and Germany.

Qila Gill is a film programmer. She is currently the Co-Head of Programme at the London Short Film Festival and serves on the selection committee for Berlinale Generation (features). She recently programmed for the Singapore International Film Festival, curating the Southeast Asian Shorts Competition and Undercurrent, the festival’s experimental section. Her previous programming roles include work with Berlinale Shorts, Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Experimenta (London Film Festival), Aesthetica Film Festival and SXSW documentary screener (2024). Prior to her current roles, she was the Distribution Director at LUX, London, and has produced artists’ films under Marginalia Pictures.

Jenna Hasse (born in Lisbon in 1989) has dual Swiss and Portuguese nationality.

She grew up in Switzerland and studied Film History and Aesthetics at the University of Lausanne before obtaining her Master’s degree in Drama in 2014 at INSAS, in Brussels. That same year, she presented her first short film, In August, at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, which went on to win numerous awards at international festivals. She alternates between writing, directing and acting in film and on the stage. She recently appeared in La gravidité by Jela Hasler, a short film that won the Swiss Film Award 2024. In 2016, she presented her short film Soltar at the Namur International Francophone Film Festival (FIFF) and at the Curtas Vila do Conde international film festival. In 2020, she presented her medium-length documentary The Protagonist at the DocLisboa documentary film festival and at the Centre d’art contemporain (Contemporary Art Exhibition Centre) in Geneva. Longing for the World is her first feature film, presented at the Berlinale 2023 at Generation Kplus, where she won a special mention from the international jury. The film was nominated for the Young Audience Award at the European Film Academy in 2023 and nominated for the Swiss Film Award (Best Feature) in 2024. It won the Zürcher Filmpreis (Best Feature Film) in 2023.

Valentin Noujaïm was born in 1991 and has French-Lebanese nationality. He graduated from the French national film school La Fémis in Paris and was a guest student at the Städelschule art academy in Frankfurt am Main. In his films, he sheds light on the lives of historically marginalized individuals, while combining various formats: 16 mm, archives and special effects. 

His films have been selected for numerous festivals, including CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel, IFFR, DocLisboa, BAFICI, DokuFest, BlackStar Film Festival and Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, and have been screened at a number of international exhibitions. His film Pacific Club was nominated for the 2024 César Awards in the Best Short Film Documentary category. His first solo exhibition will be at the Kunsthalle Basel art museum in 2025.

Sanjin Pejković holds a PhD in Film Studies from Lund university. Pejković writes mainly for Swedish film and culture magazines, but also contributes to various international film magazines and film scholarly journals. He cooperates with several film festivals in Scandinavia and the Balkans.

Anne-Sophie Scholl is the features editor at the Swiss online magazine Republik and specialises in film. She previously worked as a culture editor at various Swiss media outlets, occasionally as a freelance author for media such as NZZ am Sonntag, Das Magazin and ZEIT, and as an external expert for SRF cultural programmes on radio and TV. She has also worked as a lecturer and was nominated for the Swiss Reporter Award.

Štěpánka Zapata is a film critic and editor of the print and online platform Film a doba (CZ). She regularly reports from festivals such as Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Locarno or Karlovy Vary IFF. Additionally she dramaturgically curates the program of Das Film Fest Olomouc, which presents newest movies from Germany, Switzerland and Austria in the Czech context. Štěpánka is particularly interested in experimental and documentary film, moving images, and radical forms of auteur expression.

Faye Corthésy is a programmer, editor and lecturer in film theory. She studied Film History and Aesthetics at the University of Lausanne, where she also taught for several years, and also studied at the Freie Universität in Berlin. She has published research articles in exhibition catalogues, books and journals, and was a visiting scholar at New York University (NYU) between 2016 and 2018. She has also taken part in the Oberhausen Seminar (2017) and the IFFR Sessions programme at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2020).

She currently works as an editor at the Publications Office of HEAD (Geneva University of Art and Design) where she also lectures in film history. After completing a number of cultural outreach and programming projects commissioned by art venues and institutions, she joined the collective that has been running the Cinématographe cinema in Lausanne since 2024, where she is a programmer and head of outreach.

Noé Maggetti is artistic and administrative co-director of the Tourne-Films Festival Lausanne (TFFL). He is also currently writing his doctoral thesis while working as a graduate assistant in the Department of Film History and Aesthetics at the University of Lausanne. Alongside this, he also carries out various editorial and publishing tasks for the communications and marketing department of the national film archive Cinémathèque suisse, and is involved in programming films for the Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival (LUFF). He is also a member of the editorial boards of the scientific journal Décadrages and the literary journal Archipel.

After obtaining a diploma as an art teacher from the Ecole cantonale d’Art de Lausanne in 1969, Elisabeth Ruey-Ray ran a graphic design studio for 30 years graphic design studio before devoting herself to political commitments, as a member of the of the town of Nyon, the Constituent Assembly and the Grand Council of the canton of Vaud. of the canton of Vaud. Now that she has retired from politics, she remains very active active in governing bodies in the fields of education and childcare.

Aziyadé Poltier-Mutal is Senior Officer of Partnerships in the Office of the Director General of UN Geneva. She heads the Coordination Team of the future Portail des Nations / Visitor’s Center of UN Geneva and also supervises the Perception Change Project, which aims to broaden the understanding and the importance of the work done by international actors based in Geneva. She has worked in the field of communications in public relations firms and United Nations agencies for more than 25 years, during which she initiated and managed successful partnerships with world leading advertising agencies, media, artists, film makers, cultural entities, sports organizations and the private sector to boost corporate communication and benefit projects in the field. Aziyadé Poltier-Mutal graduated from la Sorbonne, the Institute of International Relations Studies in Paris and the Graduate Institute of Development Studies in Geneva. Originally from The Netherlands, she lived many years in South America and is fluent in English, French and Spanish.

François Vioud joined the UN Geneva Perception Change Project in 2016 as an intern and is now a Programme Management Specialist. In charge of youth programmes, he organises numerous conferences with different Swiss school classes, but also public events such as exhibitions, sports and cultural gatherings, open doors, inaugurations, etc. Before joining the United Nations, François Vioud worked as a freelance writer for the ecotourism website Evaneos. Originally from Annemasse in Haute-Savoie, François Vioud holds a Master’s degree in International Relations and Diplomacy from Lyon III University. He is passionate about cinema, photography and nature.

Jean-Claude Boillat is a professional catechist and adult educator, and serves as a Permanent Deacon in the Catholic Church. He headed a communications department from 2016 to 2023, and is active as a director and producer, having written a feature-length fiction film, Le trophée Richard Besson. His work has included partnering with the International Catholic Film Office (OCIC) in Burkina Faso to train a production team in the Nouna and Dédougou regions. From 2002 to 2022, he shared his ICT expertise, teaching the New Information Technologies and Communications course at the business school at Delémont. In 2013, he co-authored a book with François-Xavier Amherdt titled Web&Co et pastorale. Since 2015, he has been a member of the management committee of Cath-Info, the Catholic media centre for French-speaking Switzerland and partner of RTS.

Mohammad Rezaeian, born 1986 in Tehran, grew up in Berlin, Tehran and Bern, studied law in Berne and business administration in Tehran. He works with and in the different cultures of the East and West as a builder of bridges, intercultural translator, lawyer and project manager, and brings people and cultures together. His main topics are economic analyses, legal implementation and the development of culturally appropriate implementations in new market openings. Through his interest in literature and film, which oscillates between the rationalism of Descartes and the love of Rumi, he tries to better understand his own and other cultures and to bring people together.