Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 

Juries at the Karlovy Vary IFF

Following juries will work at the 44th Karlovy Vary IFF:

• Grand Jury
• Documentary Jury
• East of the West Jury
• Non-statutory Juries

East of the West Jury

The East of the West Jury is presenting the prizes in the East of the West - Films in Competition.

Bojidar Manov, Chairman

Bulgarian film critic and journalist. He lectures at the New Bulgarian University, he heads the Cinema Studies Department at the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts, and has been a member of the National Film Board since 2004. In the years 2001–2005 he was vice-president of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI). He has sat on the jury of a number of film festivals, and has published hundreds of articles for the Bulgarian and foreign press. He has written several books, e.g. Theory of the Cinema Image and Cinema and Other Temptations.

Birgit Beumers

A German film historian, publicist and university professor, she completed a D. Phil. at Oxford, and she is a reader in Russian Studies at Bristol University. She specialises in contemporary Russian culture, in particular, film and theatre. Her publications include Burnt by the Sun, Nikita Mikhalkov: Between Nostalgia and Nationalism and A History of Russian Cinema. In 2003 she founded the online journal KinoKultura, of which she is also editor. She also contributes to the magazine Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema.

Maria Procházková

Czech film director who studied animation at FAMU. In 2006 she completed her doctorate on the theme “Man in Animated Film”. She worked for Czech Television in the children’s programming department on more than thirty animated video clips. Shark in the Head (Žralok v hlavě, 2005) is her feature film debut; her new film Who Is Afraid of the Wolf (Kdopak by se vlka bál) was screened at this year’s Berlinale and was selected by critics of the most influential film journal for the programme Variety Critics' Choice at this year’s KVIFF.

Jānis Putniņš

Latvian film director, publicist and curator. Since his studies at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, he has had a particular interest in experimental filmmaking which led to interdisciplinary work, including collaboration with celebrated stage director Alvis Hermanis. He gave his feature debut, the psychological crime film Hide and Seek, in 2001. Last year, KVIFF’s East of the West section screened the collection of film stories Vogelfrei, in which he participated as one of the directors.

Michael Wellner-Pospíšil

After a career as a child actor appearing in a number of Czech films, he studied documentary filmmaking at FAMU. He moved to France in 1980. He worked as a director, screenwriter, editor, cinematographer and producer on more than sixty non-feature films for French and German TV channels and for audiovisual organizations. He taught at the National Audiovisual Institute INA, and has published a series of film reviews. In the years 2000–2007 he was director of the Czech Cultural Centre in Paris; in 2005 he received the title Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has been director of the Czech Cultural Centre in Sofia since 2007.