Speakers & Juries

Select the speaker group / jury in the drop-down menu below

Moderators

Cinematic Focus Speakers Screen Focus Speakers Czech Film Industry Forum Speakers Casting Day Speakers Workshop Stage Speakers Moderators Eurimages Co-production Development Award Jury KVIFF & MIDPOINT Development Award Jury MIDPOINT Feature Launch Script Consultant Trainees

Diana Lodderhose

Diana has been working in global film journalism since 2005. Before returning to Deadline in 2021 to focus on features for international film and television, she was previously International Reporter for the site. She is based in London and has frequently covered all the major film festivals and markets including Cannes, Berlin, AFM, Toronto and Sundance. Prior to joining Deadline, Diana was the UK correspondent for Variety and also covered film news and box office at Screen International.

Zac Ntim

Zac is the International Film Reporter at Deadline where he writes about movies and film festivals.

Alyssa Dillard

Alyssa Dillard is a multidisciplinary artist, arts manager, and creative director whose work moves fluidly between film, theatre, performance, and music. As Artistic Director of the O.K.R.A Foundation and the artist behind LEDET, she brings a director's eye and a performer's instinct to every stage she steps onto. At the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Alyssa moderates KVIFF Talents, the festival's program supporting bold new voices in Czech and Slovak audiovisual storytelling, and co-moderates KVIFF Central Stage alongside Sasha Michailidis, where emerging projects meet the producers and investors who can bring them to life.

Based in Prague, Alyssa holds an MA in Directing from DAMU and a BA in Theatre Arts from St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas.

Veronika Bednářová

Veronika Bednářová is a Czech journalist and cultural reporter, author of numerous interviews and reports from the USA and Great Britain. A lecturer at New York University in Prague and occasional English-language presenter, she was the head of the Festival Diary at the IFF KV between 2002-2019. She has published a book and an audiobook of reports My American Beauty. Her favorite cities besides Prague include, of course, New York.

Gerhard Maier

After working in the film and TV industry for over a decade, where he escorted movies and series through their life cycles by scouting on markets, creating press books, articles, and reviews Gerhard Maier was editor-in-chief of two of Germany's largest point-of-sale entertainment print publications. Since 2014 Gerhard put his life-long obsession with TV series to better use as part of the founding trio of Seriencamp, Germany's first festival dedicated exclusively to serial storytelling.

As artistic director of Seriencamp Festival and Seriencamp Conference, he curates formats, speakers, and topics and is head of the festival’s programming team. When he is not working on Seriencamp, hosting its podcast or curating for conferences like Reeperbahn Festival or Input>Output Symposium, he’s a guest lecturer at film schools and training programs.

With Seriencamp's new format PLOT NEXT, he is curating a conference on the impact of AI on the creative industries with a heavy focus on film & series.

Joanna Szymańska

Joanna Szymańska is a Warsaw-based film producer, founder of Shipsboy, and co-host of The Sideletters — a business podcast on the European audiovisual market. Her credits include Operation Hyacinth (Netflix Original), the family franchise Detective Bruno, and Red Path — an international co-production awarded at the Warsaw Film Festival and Red Sea IFF. A graduate of Berlinale Talents, EAVE, and ACE, she serves as Chairwoman of the Producers Guild of Poland and is a former Deputy Chair of the European Film Academy Board. She is currently completing her PhD at the Łódź Film School and lectures at universities in Poland and abroad.

Niki Théron

As a Senior Manager International Projects & Films at Frankfurter Buchmesse, I oversee international cooperations and book-to-screen partnerships and events on behalf of the largest book fair worldwide. I am a Books at Berlinale and Book-to-Screen at KVIFF jury member, a European Film Academy and French-German Film Academy member and an EAVE Future Partners’ alumna. Born and raised in France, I have lived in Germany for more than two decades and travel Europe for my work – bringing book and film lovers together.