Presiding over the jury will be one of the most notable European directors, Šarūnas Bartas. His original masterpieces were screened at almost every major film festival in the world; Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, Venice. Awards he received clearly signify a specific aesthetics of Bartas’s films, which reflect his desire to create films devoid of any form of commercial censorship, in conditions where original creation is allowed, without outside interference. This year Cinema City will present a retrospective of his best achievements, among them In Memory of the Day Passed By, The Corridor, Few of Us, The House, Seven Invisible Men and Eastern Drift.
The notable French film critic, Philippe Azoury is also a member of the jury. Azoury works as a columnist for a well-known French newspaper Libération and cooperates with many internationally recognized magazines, among them Cahiers du Cinéma, French weekly magazine Les Inrockuptibles and Vogue. Azoury published several books on film, last one being about the famous German cineaste Werner Schroeter.
Regional representative in the jury is a young Slovenian film author, Jan Cvitkovic. An archaeologist by profession, Cvitkovic also does acting, directing and screenwriting. Films he signed as both screenwriter and director, such as Bread and Milk, Gravehopping and Total Gambit , received numerous awards at various international film festivals. Our audience will have a chance to see one of these awarded films, Total Gambit.
Eva Hubert is a long term executive director of Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, which, next to its core operations of supporting quality production also invests great amounts of energy into discovering and supporting new talents. Eva Hubert has been working for eight years as an editor at the Hans-Bredow-Institute, a media research centre in Hamburg, where she was responsible for the publication "International Handbook for Radio and Television". She is a member of European Film Academy and holds several other honorary positions in Hamburg.
Head of the European Film Market since 1988, Beki Probst is a highly significant name in European film. Under her management European Film Market became one of the biggest and most significant international film fairs. Her contribution to the world of film was recognized through the Order of Arts and Letters presented to her by the French Minister of Culture in 1992.