Jessica Hausner was born in Vienna, Austria in 1972. She studied directing at the Film Academy of Vienna where she made the award-winning short films Flora (1996) and Inter-View (1999). In 2001, her debut feature film, Lovely Rita premiered at the Cannes FF in Un Certain Regard. She returned to Un Certain Regard with her second feature, Hotel in 2004. In 2009, Lourdes was selected in Competition at the Venice FF where it was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize. Amour Fou was Hausner’s third film to be presented in Un Certain Regard, where it premiered in 2014. Jessica Hausner’s English-language debut, LittleJoe (2019), also premiered in Cannes, but this time in Competition, as well as her newest feature Club Zero (2023).

Mark Cousins is an Irish-Scottish director and writer. His films—including The Story of Film: An Odyssey, What Is This Film Called Love?, Life May Be, A Story of Children and Film, Atomic, Stockholm My Love, I Am Belfast, and The Eyes of Orson Welles—have premiered at Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, and Venice, winning the Prix Italia, a Peabody, the Stanley Kubrick Award, and the European Film Award for Innovative Storytelling. He has filmed in Iraq, Sarajevo during the siege, Iran, Mexico, across Asia, and in the US and Europe. Cousins’ books include Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary and The Story of Looking. He has collaborated with Tilda Swinton on innovative film events, and he continually tries to find new filmic ways to explore his themes: looking, cities, cinema, childhood, and recovery. His fourteen-hour documentary Women Make Film seeks to rethink cinema. His newest films are The Storms of Jeremy Thomas, The Story of Looking, and The Story of Film: A New Generation.

A programmer, writer, producer, and filmmaker from Toronto, Canada, Mark Peranson is the founder and former editor/publisher of Cinema Scope magazine (1999-2024). A frequent contributor to The Globe and Mail, his writing on film has appeared in publications including The Believer, Cineaste, Sight & Sound, CineAction, Film Comment, Cahiers du Cinema, Revolver, Senses of Cinema, and The Village Voice. From 2019-2024, he was Head of Programming for the Berlinale and was Head of Programming for Locarno from 2013-2018, and was a member of the selection committee from 2010-2012. From 2001-2018, he was a programming associate for the Vancouver IFF. His films include Waiting for Sancho (2008) and La última película (2013), and he has acted in a number of films, including Albert Serra’s Birdsong and Story of My Death and Hong Sangsoo’s On the Beach at Night Alone and Claire’s Camera. He is currently producing a series of short films for the Museo Nationale di Cinema in Turin, and curating a screening series and writing a book on films and museums.

Photographer, cinematographer and filmmaker, Born in Tehran in 1951. He became interested in photography as a teenager. Kalari set up the first exhibition of his works in Tehran 1977. After completing a professional photography course in New York 1980, he was hired by SYGMA Photo News Agency, then his photos have been published in most of the world's prestigious publications. He started his career in cinematography with the film Frosty Roads 1998. For nearly 4 decades, he has collaborated with the most famous and prestigious filmmakers of Iran including Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Jafar Panahi, and Asghar Farhadi whose film A Separation won the Academy Award 2012. Kalari's first experience in film directing is the Cloud and the Rising Sun, which won the Best Film Award from the Mardel Plata IFF in Argentina 1998.The Commemorations has been held for Kalari in different countries: a tribute in Nantes IFF in France 2000; Lifetime Achievement in Silk Road Festival in Dublin, Ireland 2014; a tribute by French Association of Cinematographers AFC in Paris 2016, and his Retrospective under the title Eye Of Iran in the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) 2018․ Kalari's latest film as a director is Summertime (2023)..

Hailed as a “virtuoso” by The New York Times, trumpet superstar Ibrahim Maalouf has spent his career crossing borders and blurring genres, mixing jazz, pop, classical, electronic, Middle Eastern, and African influences into an explosive, cross-cultural swirl. Born in the midst of a deadly civil war, Maalouf escaped Beirut with his family as a child and spent his formative years in France, where he first fell in love with music’s power to transcend geography and language. After winning a string of prestigious international trumpet competitions, Maalouf began composing his own music, releasing more than a dozen acclaimed albums and establishing himself as a household name in his adopted homeland. Over the past decade alone, he’s performed in 40 countries, sold out arenas from Paris to Istanbul, been scouted by Quincy Jones, appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, raised millions for charity, and collaborated with everyone from Wynton Marsalis and Jon Batiste to Josh Groban and Sting. In 2021, Maalouf performed in front of the Eiffel Tower on Bastille Day for an audience of six million, and in 2022, he teamed up with Angelique Kidjo for Queen Of Sheba, a seven movement symphonic suite with lyrics sung in the Yoruba language of West Africa, which earned him his first ever Grammy nomination for Best Global Music Album. One of Ibrahim Maalouf’s latest albums, Capacity To Love, found him breaking down barriers yet again as he collaborates with a host of hip-hop and R&B artists from around the world for a revelatory exploration of identity, community, and unity. From this album, the track Todo Colores featuring Cimafunk & Tank and the Bangas, earned him his second Grammy nomination (two years in a row) for Best Global Music Performance. In 2023, he sold out for the 3rd time the Paris Accor Arena and performed for more than 17,000 people. 

Dominique Welinski’s company DW has operated as a production and consulting force since 2012. From 2013 to 2025, DW created and co-produced the Factory program at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. In 2026, the initiative is boldly reinvented as Next Step Studio under La Semaine de la Critique, launching with Indonesia as host country. DW has co-produced films worldwide with directors including Sanjeewa Pushpakumara, Alireza Khatami, Midi Z, Yona Rozenkier, Marianna Brennand, and Saumyananda Sahi and Tanushree Das. Dominique Welinski is an independent producer and international film consultant with over 20 years of experience in independent film distribution. She is known for building bridges between emerging filmmakers and the global industry. She created the Factory program at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, which she led from 2013 to 2025, and in 2026 launched its new iteration, Next Step Studio, with La Semaine de la Critique. Her work spans Europe, Asia, and South America.

Born in Los Angeles, Christine Haroutounian is a director, writer, and producer working between Armenia and the diaspora. Her debut feature, After Dreaming (2025), premiered at the 75th Berlinale, where it opened the Forum. After Dreaming became a significant showcase of contemporary Armenian cinema, screening at Busan IFF, Thessaloniki IFF, São Paulo IFF, Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and more. Co-produced by Brad Becker-Parton and Carlos Reygadas, After Dreaming was featured in The New York Times Critic’s Notebook and praised by BFI as “the most transfixing, formally experimental first feature seen in an age,” while Variety described it as a “self-assured first feature” that “captures a political spirituality.” Haroutounian was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Her short, World (2020), premiered at the Rotterdam IFF and won the top award at the Golden Apricot IFF. It has been featured in cultural programs at Moving Arts Center Amsterdam, Maxim Gorki Theater, and Centres Wallonie-Bruxelles. Her production company, Mankazar Film, is developing her sophomore feature, Black Star Angel, which received the highest honor at the Asian Project Market and has garnered support by the Cinema Foundation of Armenia.

In the mid-90s, when Kees Driessen was sa psychology student at University of Amsterdam, as volunteer he worked for the International Documentary FF Amsterdam, turned into a freelance career covering festival dailies and catalogues for IDFA, the Netherlands FF, IFFR and the theater festivals Oerol and Holland Festival; the film magazine Skrien, editing remarkable film books like Annemieke Hendriks’ The Pioneers and Mieke Bernink’s biography of Fons Rademakers, writing texts for the Canon of Dutch Film, and articles on film (and sometimes other subjects) for a wide range of publications including, for many years, Vrij Nederland. Meanwhile, his seasonal rhythm is largely determined by travelling the international festival circuit of Berlinale, Mostra and Cannes. At the moment  he is writing mostly for English-language documentary website Business Doc Europe and Holland’s one and only general film magazine, Filmkrant. His articles cover pretty much everything, but he have a special interest in animation, sexuality, identity politics and representation, XR and documentary.

Lika Glurjidze is a film researcher, curator, programmer, and playwright based in Georgia. She holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from Ilia State University, where she has been an invited lecturer since 2019, teaching courses on documentary cinema and road movies. She is a member of FIPRESCI and vice-president of FIPRESCI Georgia. She has worked with several film platforms in Georgia, including CinExpress, the Kutaisi International Short Film Festival, the Documentary Association Georgia (DOCA), and Projection 24. Her main research focus is Georgian documentary cinema. Since 2024, she has been collaborating with the Documentary Association Georgia (DOCA) on research and curatorial projects dedicated to Georgian documentary history, including archival research on documentary cinema of the 1990s and ongoing research on documentary practices of the 1970s and 1980s. Alongside her research, she has been engaged in film curation and programming for several years. She is the Program Coordinator of the Kutaisi International Short Film Festival, with a focus on cinema classics and retrospectives, and has curated film screenings and discussions in collaboration with CinExpress at Cinema House. She also studied playwriting at Temur Chkheidze Studio of the Royal District Theatre in Tbilisi. Her first play, Solomon’s Heart, won first place at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Prize in Dramaturgy 2025 and was presented in a public reading at the Royal District Theatre. Her second play, Eurydice, was published in the collective volume Not a Single Play by Temur Chkheidze’s Studio (2025). Her work bridges theory and practice, focusing on documentary cinema, archives, cultural memory, displacement, feminist theory, and underrepresented voices in film history.

Diana Martirosyan is a film critic, cultural journalist, and lecturer based in Yerevan, Armenia. She holds degrees in Journalism from the Russian-Armenian University and in Film Studies from the Yerevan State Institute of Theater and Cinema. Her career began in television and radio, where she covered cinema and culture, conducted interviews, and produced media content. Since 2007, she has been actively engaged in cultural initiatives, urban projects, and the international film festival circuit. DianaMartirosyan collaborates with the Golden Apricot Yerevan IFF and ReA International Animation Film & Comics Art Festival of Yerevan (ReAnimania), contributing as a journalist, moderator and film content creator. She has served on FIPRESCI juries and official festival juries at numerous IFFs, including Berlinale, Ljubljana, Kyiv, Torino, Odessa, Athens, Batumi, Almaty, Cairo, and others. Alongside her journalistic and media work, Diana Martirosyan teaches contemporary cinema at the Yerevan State Institute of Theater and Cinema, where she works with emerging filmmakers.

Michel Franco, born in Mexico City in 1979, is one of the leading contemporary Mexican filmmakers. His films frequently examine social inequality, moral ambiguity, violence, and human relationships. His major works include After Lucia, Chronic, New Order, Sundown, Memory, and Dreams.
Franco has received numerous awards in film festivals like Cannes, Venice and Chicago. He frequently works with Jessica Chastain, Darío Yazbek Bernal, Nailea Norvind, and Tim Roth.