Jury Competition Fiction
Cosima Finkbeiner (DE)
Cosima Finkbeiner was born in the north of Germany. Following a gap year in Australia, she studied communication studies in England, managed an art house cinema, and volunteered for the Cambridge Film Festival. Finkbeiner went on to take her master’s degree in Media/Culture in the Netherlands. After working for German Films briefly and traveling around South America, Cosima Finkbeiner joined the Munich-based world sales agency Beta Cinema in 2012, where she is in charge of festival relations.
Karel Och (CZ)
Karel Och, born in 1974, studied law and graduated in film theory and history from Prague’s Charles University. Since 2001, he has worked for the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival as a member of the selection committee: Och has programed the documentary competition and curated tributes and retrospectives to Sam Peckinpah, John Huston, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, and others. In 2010, Karel Och was appointed artistic director of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
Andrei Tănăsescu (RO/CA)
Andrei Tănăsescu is a festival programmer, curator, and filmmaker based in Bucharest and Toronto. After getting a specialist degree in film studies at the University of Toronto, he co-founded the Romanian Film Festival Toronto. He completed a master’s degree in literature at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland with a master’s thesis on Deleuze and Romanian Cinema. Since 2010, he has been part of the programming team at the Toronto International Film Festival as well as a regular collaborator with the Berlin International Film Festival and the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival.
Jury Competition Documentary
Lina Dinkla (DE)
Lina Dinkla, born in 1977, studied cultural studies as well as communication and media studies in Leipzig. She was a film author for various magazines and has worked in different positions for international film festivals (Berlinale Talents, Short Film Festival Hamburg, CROSSING EUROPE, FilmFestival Cottbus). Since 2009, she is program coordinator for DOK Leipzig, where her responsibilities include the selection for the children’s programs. In addition, Dinkla curates film programs for the most diverse institutions and festivals.
Alejandro Díaz Castaño (ES)
Alejandro Díaz Castaño, born in 1979 in Gijón, worked as a programmer for the Gijón International Film Festival in 2010 and 2011. He has served as the Head of Programming for the Seville European Film Festival (2012-16) and, since 2017, he is the Director of the Gijón International Film Festival, where he had already been a programmer (2010-11). He is a regular contributor to cinema and music monthlies, such as Caimán Cuadernos de Cine (formerly Cahiers du Cinéma – Spain) and Rockdelux. Alejandro Díaz Castaño’s directorial credits include the short film The Escape which screened at the San Sebastián International Film Festival 2016.
Audrius Stonys (LT)
Audrius Stonys, born in 1966 in Vilnius, is an awardwinning Lithuanian documentary filmmaker, producer, and lecturer at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. Stonys studied directing in Vilnius and at the Film Anthology Archive New York under Jonas Mekas. He is the recipient of the European Film Award for the documentary film Earth of the Blind. Since 1989, he has created thirteen documentaries and one short fiction film. In 2008, CROSSING EUROPE dedicated its Tribute to Stonys. His directorial credits include Baltic Way (1990), Earth of the Blind (1992), Flying over the Blue Field (1996), Harbour (1998), Fedia, Three Minutes after the Big Bang (1999), The Flight over Lithuania or 510 Seconds of Silence (2000), Alone (2001), The Last Car (2002), Countdown (2004), and Mist of Mists (2006). Stonys’s current film, Woman and the Glacier, will be presented at CROSSING EUROPE 2017.
Jury Competition Local Artist
Felix Sebastian Huber (AT)
Felix Sebastian Huber, born in 1988 in Vöcklabruck, graduated from the technical secondary school HTL Goethestraße for Graphics and Communication Design. Since 2014, he studies Time-based Media at the Art University Linz in the master’s program. Huber’s Farfalla was distinguished in 2015 with the material prize of the CROSSING EUROPE Award – Local Artist and at the Rueda Film Festival Barcelona as the best short documentary film. In addition to his own work as a director – XE (2014), Murl (2015), Farfalla (2015), Ois ok Mama – Texta (2016), and Pistoin – Da Staummtisch (2016) – Felix Sebastian Huber has also worked as a cameraman for filmmakers such as Katharina Gruzei, Markus Mörth (Siblings), and Nasri Hajjaj (The Purple Field).
Katrin Köppert (GERMANY / AUSTRIA)
Katrin Köppert is a queer-media-affects-theorist and teaches at the Art University Linz. She studied gender studies and New German Literature at the Humboldt-Universität Berlin. Köppert wrote her graduation thesis on the theme of “queer pain in (vernacular) photography post-war & pre-stonewall”. She has most recently published, as co-editor: “I is for Impasse. Affektive Queerverbindungen in Theorie_ Aktivismus_Kunst”.
