Feature Jury
TOLGA KARAÇELIK
Director in Residence
Tolga Karaçelik has directed two feature films and several award winning shorts. His debut feature, Toll Booth, screened at various festivals around the world, winning 13 awards. His second film, Ivy, premiered in Sundance and has been shown at more than 30 international festivals, including Toronto, Karlovy Vary and EEFF, where it won the 2015 Best Feature prize.
RON PERLMAN
Ron Perlman is an American actor and voice actor. He is best known for his award winning role as Vincent in the television series Beauty and the Beast, as the comic book character Hellboy in the Hellboy franchise and as Clay Morrow in television series Sons of Anarchy.
MOSTOFA SARWAR FAROOKI
Mostofa Sarwar Farooki has been dubbed ‘the next south Asian filmmaker to break out’, and as a key exemplar of new wave Bangladeshi cinema. He has made five films, including award winning Television and Ant Story. He is currently working on No Bed of Roses.
KALEEM AFTAB
Kaleem Aftab is a film writer and producer. He authored a biography on Spike Lee. His producing credits include This is What it Is and Sundance competition entry The Imperialists Are Alive. He is also a proprietor of Woof Coffee, serving the best brew in London.
SARAH GAVRON
Sarah’s film Suffragette opened the BFI London Film Festival in 2015. She has also directed the BAFTA nominated Brick Lane and the Grierson nominated The Village at the End of the World, and was selected as one of Variety’s 10 directors to watch at Sundance.
Documentary Jury
BOB & ROBERTA SMITH
A multimedia artist, Bob & Roberta Smith was the subject of the film Make Your Own Damn Art (EEFF 2012). Best known for Make Art Not War (Tate), and Interview, a painted transcription of a BBC radio interview, he lives and works in Leytonstone.
KATHARINE ROUND
Katharine Round is a filmmaker with over 17 years experience in creative documentary for broadcast and cinema. Director of the critically acclaimed The Divide, she has made films for the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery. She has had work exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery, the Barbican and the European Parliament
MARK DONNE
Mark Donne is the writer-director behind documentaries Rime of the Modern Mariner (2010) and UK Gold (2013)—the latter a collaboration with musicians Thom Yorke (Radiohead) and 3D (Massive Attack). Previously commissioned by TATE Britain, he regularly collaborates with 3D and Young Fathers.
BRUNO WIZARD
Bruno Wizard is a London punk legend, founder, principal singer and co-writer of The Homosexuals and The Rejects. The award winning fly-on-thewall documentary about his life, The Heart of Bruno Wizard, had its World Premiere at EEFF in 2013.
Shorts Jury
RACHEL TUNNARD
Rachel is a writer-director and editor represented by United Agents. Her short film Emotional Fusebox was nominated for a BAFTA and a BIFA and her first feature, Adult Life Skills, won the Nora Ephron Prize at Tribeca (2016). It is released in the UK on June 24th. www.racheltunnard.com
CELINE HADDAD
Celine is Creative England’s Senior Film Executive – Talent. With over 20 years experience in the industry in England, France and the US, she is responsible for discovering and nurturing the next generation of film talent, helping them progress to making their first feature film.
WILL MASSA
Will is the Senior Programme Manager for Film at British Council and advises the organisation’s offices in Latin America and EU Europe on their year-round film activity. Until March 2016 he headed up the department’s short film activity.
ALEX TAYLOR
Alex Taylor is an award winning writer-director whose debut feature film Spaceship (BFI, BBC Films and CE) received its World Premiere at SXSW this year. Spaceship is about a girl who fakes her own alien abduction and disappears—‘a day-glo fever dream of a movie’ (Screen International).
Accession Award: Screenwriting Juror
BOLA AGBAJE
Bola is a screenwriter and playwright whose first play Gone Too Far! was performed at the Royal Court Theatre, Hackney Empire and Albany Theatre, winning the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliated Theatre and earning her a nomination for the Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright of the Year. Bola’s screenplay adaptation of Gone Too Far! premiered at the London Film Festival in 2013. She is currently developing the sequel.