18th Session

March, 2 to July, 15 2009 Jury's president : Gilles Jacob

Participants

Andreas Bolm

Andreas Bolm was born in 1971 in Cologne, Germany, from a Hungarian mother and a German father. After working as a musician and sound engineer in Manchester, England, he began to experiment in photography and video. He studied film and theatre science in Berlin and at the film FAMU academy in Prague. In 1999, Andreas enrolled in the documentary department of the University of Television and Film in Munich. Living and working in Germany, Hungary and France, Andreas shot his first short documentaries in Hungary. His films portray people in their social and familial environments, examining the fine line between documentary and fiction. Ròzsa (2000), The Sleepers (2003), Jaba (2006) and All The Children But One (2008) have been screened at many festivals worldwide. Jaba was presented by the Cinefondation at the Festival de Cannes in 2006. Andreas is currently writing the screenplay for his first feature film. The story is set in the barren moors of Northern Germany. A young man, lost in his own life, wanders aimlessly through the lives of others. However, his game takes a deadly serious turn and ends in a disaster.

Julio Hernández Cordón

Julio Hernández Cordón born in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, in 1975. Julio grew up in México, Guatemala and Costa Rica. He studied communications sciences at the Universidad Rafael Landívar, Guatemala, and took the General Course in Movie Making at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, México. In 2006 he won the Cinergia prize to make his opera prima, Gasolina. In 2007 he won three awards with Gasolina at the San Sebastian Film Festival, in Cinema in Construction section: Industry prize, Casa de America prize and CICAE prize. In 2008, Gasolina won the Horizontes Latinos prize (better Latin-American movie), at the San Sebastián Film Festival. In 2008 his second full-length script Polvo, won the screenplay development fund in Amiens. Polvo is the history of the relationship between mother and son, in the context of a war that ended 12 years ago. He is also producing with his company Melindrosa Films young Guatemalan directors.

Yula Gidron

Yula Gidron was born in 1981 in Tel-Aviv, Israel. She graduated from Thelma Yellin High School, Department of Visual Arts. Following her military service in the IDF, she studied cinema at the Hamidrasha School of Art where she directed 3 short films. At the same time, she performed with the Givol Choir, an alternative choir directed by Maya Dunietz. Later she joined the "Public Movement" - a performance group studying and creating public choreographies. She graduated magna cum laude from the Film School and started to work as a director and editor in Israeli TV, as well as directed several musical video clips. Yula is currently working on her first feature film, NATURE. The film tells the story of an 18-year-old girl who runs away from her military basic training to a nature reserve, and the fleeing becomes a trip.

Rafael Kapelinski

Rafael Kapelinski was born in Torun, Poland. He studied American literature at the Nicholas Copernicus University and trained at the London Film School. He also worked as director of the festival office for the Camerimage film festival. His short films Emily Cries and The Ballad of Piotrowski won many Polish and international awards, including Best Mid-Length European film at the Brest International Short Film Festival for Emily Cries. He is based in London, England.

Esteban Larrain

Esteban Larrain was born in 1973 in Santiago, Chile. In 1997 he graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Chile with a thesis about Michelangelo Antonioni. Between 1999-2001 he studied cinema direction and cinematography in Cuba and Italy, in 2004 he graduated with a Master of Political Sciences from the Université Paris VIII, France. Esteban started his carrier with documentaries: between 1997 and 2004 he wrote, directed and produced three feature documentaries - Patio 29, Ralco and The Veil of Bertha - selected in more than 70 international festivals and has won several awards. In 2006 he began writing his first fiction feature, inspired by the hard and magical trip of a Bolivian girl who walked alone for more than 180 kms to find a job in Chile. Alice in the Land won the Special Jury Prize at Locarno in 2008 and is currently showing at many festivals. These days, he is in development of his second fiction feature The Virgin of Peñablanca, the mysterious story of a boy who, at the beginning of the eighties, was the center of a massive religious phenomena in which the government and the church measured forces in the middle of the worst period of Pinochet regime.

Martin Turk

Martin Turk was born in 1978 in Trieste (Italy). He is a member of the Slovenian ethnic minority living in Italy. His love of cinema started with horror movies. He studied film theory at the University of Trieste but when he bought his first video camera, he decided that he preferred practice over theory. In 1998 he began his film studies and TV direction at the Ljubljana Film Academy. He graduated in 2004 with the analysis of George Romero's Trilogy Of The Dead and a short film The Excursion which won several international awards (Montpellier, Bologna, Wiesbaden). While studying he worked as an assistant director on feature films like No Man's Land by Danis Tanovic (2nd AD), Ljubljana the Beloved by Matjaz Klopcic and Installation of Love by Maja Weiss (both 1st AD). His professional debut film, A Slice of Life was presented in several international film festivals (Edinburgh, Angers, Huesca, Valencia, Bristol, Montpellier...) and won the best Slovenian short film award in 2006. His short film Every Day Is Not The Same premiered at the Director's fortnight in 2008. Martin is currently working on his feature project Feed Me With Your Words: a film about a family marked with mental disability.