The jury

The competition program includes documentary, animation and fiction films, altogether 46 films from 31 film schools.
The international jury will judge the films in three categories named above. The Grand Prix will be awarded to the most outstanding work, regardless of its category.
The jury consists of equal members.

BERT BEYENS  (Belgium)

Bert Beyens is a well known documentary director from Belgium. He is also the leader of Belgium film school Rits. He himself studied film-directing also in the same university – at Rits in Brussels. After graduating he worked for a film and television as a writer-director.
His best known film is together with Pierre De Clercq directed „Jan Cox A Painter’s Odyssey”, feature-length documentary about the famous Flemish painter. In 1993 started to work in Rits film department and 2001 he was appointed head of the university. For his work in Rits he was nominated for the Filmprize of Flemish Culture in 2003.

MIKKO KUPARINEN(Finland)
Mikko Kuparinen is studying fiction film directing at University of Art and Design, in Helsinki. His previous award winning short film „Homevideo” has been screened in competition programme at many international film festivals. This film also won the grand prix of Sleepwalkers’ International Student Film Festival 2006.
Besides film making Mikko has been working as one of the directors of the Finnish version of the reality-television hit „Big Brother”, with all of its three seasons so far. His graduation film, a 30 min comedy „One-way-ticket” is currently in pre-productio. Mikko is also preparing a multicamera production of the theatre play „The Unknown Soldier” directed by Kristian Smeds for The Finnish National Theatre.

Helena Bulaja (Croatia)

Helena Bulaja in an animator, who makes animated books.
Helena studied history of art and comparative literature at Zagreb University. She worked as an art director, designer and illustrator for various computer magazines, and started to work as a digital artist in 1995. In 1999, with her husband Zvonimir she founded a publishing company Alt F4-Bulaja Naklada, which became the leading Croatian multimedia and CD-ROM publisher. The company had its first success with the edition „Classics of Croatian Literature”, a collection of Croatian literature classics in e-book form.
In 2000, she started the most successful Croatian interactive animation project: „Croatian Tales of Long Ago”, based on a fairytale book written in 1916 by Ivana Brliæ Mažuraniæ. The project won international awards and recognitions, at the animation and new media festivals worldwide. CD-ROMs „Croatian Tales” was selected to be the most important project in Croatian animation and cinematography of the decade by the leading Croatian media.Helena is now working on her newest project, experimental interactive film inspired with the scientist Nikola Tesla.

JAN STEHLIK (Czech Republik)
Jan Stehlik is an artistic director of the International student film festival Fresh Film Fest, which takes place in Karlovy Vary (www.freshfilmfest.net). He graduated at Famu in Prague as a scriptwriter. After finishing studies he started to work with one of his schoolfellow Petr Vachler. Together they participated in the creation and realisation of periodical TV-programmes („Kinobox, The Prologues: insights to the world of short films”), dramaturgy and scriptwriting the Annual Film Awards Czech Lion and Annual Television Awards Elsa.
He is also co-writer of documentary serial for Czech TV concerning the genres of Czech film „Faces of Czech film” (2002). He wrote the script for the feature „Indianos a Pheòori” („Indian and the Nurse” 2006, director Dan Wlodarczyk). Jan Stehlik is also the co-writer of Petr Vachler’s black comedy „Doblba!” („Over and Over!” 2005) and project in production „Josefova cesta” („Joseph’s Journey” 2007, director Ivo Trajkov).

KATRIN KISSA (Eesti)

Katrin Kissa is working as a producer and she is the former head of the Sleepwalkers Student Film Festival. She has produced two Estonian films „Empty” (2006) and „Autumn Ball” (2007), directed by Veiko Õunpuu. These two films have been very successful and have won many prizes. The premiere screen of „Autumn Ball” took place in the Venice film festival and it won the main prize of the Orizzont contest. Currently Katrin is working with her new project: a new fiction, which is again directed by Veiko Õunpuu. Lately she established a film production company called Work. Katrin did her directing studies in the University of Tallinn, also she has been studying in Lyngby Mediaschool in Denmark and she took part of the training course EAVE ment for Europe filmproducers.