Guests in Docaviv - Docaviv 2022 – Docaviv International Documentary Film Festival

Filmmakers

Julie Cohen

Director of the films:Julia My Name is Pauli Murray Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down

Directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West are Academy Award-nominated, Emmy winning
filmmakers who directed and produced the theatrical documentary RBG. Their film Julia was
released theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics in 2021 and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. My Name is Pauli Murray premiered last year at the Sundance Film Festival and was released by Amazon Studios. Directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West are Academy Award-nominated, Emmy winning filmmakers who directed and produced the theatrical documentary RBG. Their film Julia was released theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics in 2021 and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. My Name is Pauli Murray premiered last year at the Sundance Film Festival and was released by Amazon Studios. Their newest film Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down premiered at the SXSW Film Festival. Three of their latest films will be screened at this year’s Docaviv.

Betsy West

Director of the films:Julia My Name is Pauli Murray Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down

Yuri Ancarani

Director of the films: Atlantide Da Vinci San Vittore San Siro

Yuri Ancarani is an contemporary video artist and filmmaker based out of Italy. His works are often born out of a continuous mingling of documentary cinema and contemporary art. His works have been shown at national and international museums and exhibitions.

Paweł Łoziński

Director of the film: The Balcony Movie

Polish director, cameraman and producer of documentaries. Author of more than 20 award-winning documentaries. Graduate of the Directing Department at the Film School in Lodz. He makes distinct and emotionally charged films about people of whom he draws intimate portraits.

Ruth Beckerman

Director of the film: Mutzenbacher

Ruth Beckermann is a filmmaker and author based in Vienna. Her films include The Paper Bridge, East of War and American Passages. In 2014 her film Those Who Go Those Who Stay received the big documentary film prize at the Diagonale in Graz. Two years later The Dreamed Ones was also honored there as best feature film. The Waldheim Waltz received several awards, including the Glashütte Original – Documentary Award for best documentary film at the Berlinale 2018, as well as an Oscar nomination. In 2019 Ruth Beckermann created the installation Joyful Joyce for the Salzburg Festival.

Daniel Roher

Director of the film: Navalny

Daniel Roher’s films have taken him to every corner of the globe from Japan to Uganda to Nunavut and beyond. His feature documentary debut, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band, was executively produced by Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard. It was the opening night film at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. He is also an accomplished visual artist.

Courtney Stephens

Director of the film: Terra Femme

Courtney Stephens is a filmmaker whose non-fiction and experimental films explore the contours of language, historical geography, and women’s lives. Her work is exhibited internationally; venues have included MoMA, National Gallery of Art, The Barbican Centre, Exploratorium, The Garage Museum, BAMPFA etc

Nina Menkes

Director of the film: Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power

Considered a cinematic feminist pioneer and one of America’s foremost independent filmmakers, Menkes has shown widely in major international film festivals including the Berlinale, Cannes (ACID), Rotterdam, Locarno, Toronto, La Cinematheque Francaise, the British Film Institute, Whitney Museum of American Art, MOMA in New York and the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art. BRAINWASHED: Sex-Camera-Power is her fourth feature to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Previous Sundance premieres include QUEEN OF DIAMONDS (1991), THE BLOODY CHILD (1996) and PHANTOM LOVE (2008). She also showed a new media project in the Frontier section, THE CRAZY BLOODY FEMALE CENTER in 2000.
Menkes synthesizes inner dream-worlds with harsh, outer realities. She has been called “Brilliant, one of the most provocative artists in film today” by The Los Angeles Times and her body of work was described as “Controversial, intense and visually stunning” by Sight and Sound.

Ahsen Nadeem

Director of the film: Crows are White

Writer, director and producer, Ahsen Nadeem, was born in Saudi Arabia and immigrated first to Ireland and eventually to the United States. He’s collaborated on a wide range of projects including producing projects with Ari Aster (dir.
Hereditary) and John Patton Ford (dir. Emily The Criminal). His non-fiction work has appeared in the New York Times and his
commercial work includes brands such as Mercedes, Opening Ceremony and Kenzo.
Crows are White is his first feature film.

Dawn Light Blackman

protagonist Crows Are White

The Text

Riel Roch Decter

Director/Producer of the films: Producer of the film - Crows are White Director of the film - The Computer Accent

Riel Roch-Decter is a Canadian born, Los Angeles based producer and co-founder of MEMORY along with Sebastian Pardo. Since 2014, the studio has collaborated with artists such as: Zia Anger, Amalia Ulman, Theo Anthony, DIS, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Carson Mell, YACHT, Dean Fleischer-Camp, Max McCabe-Lokos, and Marnie Ellen Hertzler. In 2021, their project ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE by Theo Anthony premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won a Special Jury Prize for Non Fiction. Their most recent films include CROWS ARE WHITE (SXSW 2022) directed by Ahsen Nadeem and THE COMPUTER ACCENT (CPH:DOX 2022), which is Riel and Sebastian’s directorial debut.
Riel has participated in the Cannes Producer’s Network, the IFFRotterdam Lab, the Sundance Creative Producing Lab, and in 2020 was awarded the Cinereach Producing Award.

Ina Fichman

Producer of the film: Fire of Love

Ina Fichman – Producer

For more than 25 years, Ina Fichman, Intuitive Pictures, has produced award-winning documentary and ﬁction ﬁlms and interactive projects. Many of her creative documentaries have been released in theaters in Canada and abroad, and she has played at festivals including Sundance, Berlin, Hot Docs, RIDM, CPHDOX, Venice, SXSW, Tribeca, TIFF and others. Award-winning productions include Amer Shomali’s “The Wanted 18,” “Monsoon” (Canada’s Top 10) and “Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt.” Recent productions include “Stray,” “The Gig Is Up,” “Once Upon A Sea,” “Blue Box,” “The Oslo Diaries,” “Inside Lehman Brothers,” “Gift” and “Laila at the Bridge.” In 2018, Fichman was the recipient of the Don Haig Award from Hot Docs, which recognizes the work of a Canadian independent producer. She is currently chair of the national board of the Documentary Association of Canada and is one of the chairs of the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA). Fichman is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Shaunak Sen

Director of the film:All That Breathes

Katharina Wartena

Editor of the film: Three Minutes: A Lengthening

Katharina Wartena is an editor of international feature films and many documentaries (Three Minutes a Lengthening by Bianca Stigter), she received the Dutch award for best editor (It’s All So Quiet by Nanouk Leopold). She directed the documentary Keeping a Distance, selected for the competition of the Cinema du Réel in Paris.

Loup Bureau

Director of the film: Trenches

Loup Bureau was born in 1990 and is a French director and journalist who spent several years working as an international reporter. Since 2017, Loup Bureau has been living between France and Ukraine. Trenches is his first feature film.

Eva Vitija

Director of the film: Loving Highsmith

Diploma in screenwriting from the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. She has been working as a screenwriter since, and written scripts for cinema and TV, including Meier, Marilyn, Madly in Love as well as Sommervogel. In 2015, she directed her first feature-length documentary film: Das Leben Drehen.

Jakob Krese

Director of the film: What Remains on the Way

Jakob Krese grew up between former Yugoslavia and Germany. He studied Cinematography and Directing in Berlin, Havana and Sarajevo. His films have been shown at numerous festivals, like IFFR, Palm Springs, Guanajuato, Busan and DOK-Leipzig. In 2019, he co-founded the production company Majmun Films based in Berlin.

Annika Mayer

Producer of the film: What Remains on the Way

Annika Mayer is a producer based in Berlin. She studied Film Editing at the Konrad Wolf Film University and holds a PhD in Social Anthropology. She is co-founder of the production company Majmun Films. Her films have been shown in the competition program of numerous festivals such as IFFR Rotterdam, Visions du Réels, Palm Springs, DocAviv, Guanajuato, Busan and DOK-Leipzig.

Sofia Machado

Editor of the film: What Remains on the Way

The Text

Karol Palka

Director of the film: Bukolika

Born in Rabka Zdrój in 1991, Karol is a photographer, documentary film director and graduate of both the Radio and Television Department of the University of Silesia and the Wajda School. Currently, Rabka is a PhD student at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts and a member of the Association of Polish Art Photographers.

Flavia Montini

Director of the film: Los Zuluagas

Flavia Montini (1983) graduated in Political Science and International Relations and attended the Documentary Film Lab at the School of Cinematographic Art G. Volontè in Rome.
She collaborates with associations of the Third Sector, realizing storytelling projects valorizing historical heritage and collective memory. Los Zuluagas is her first feature film.

Daniel Turcan

Producer of the film: 2nd Chance

Daniel is a Swiss producer living in New York. After graduating from NYU’s Tisch Film School, he worked as an editor, before transitioning into production, where he worked in both scripted and documentaries, including producing MARJORIE PRIME (starring Jon Hamm and Tim Robbins). The film premiered at Sundance where it went on to receive the Alfred P. Sloan Award. In 2016 he co-founded Vespucci.

Johnny Galvin

Producer of the film: 2nd Chance

Johnny began his career working in advertising and fashion, with placements at Saatchi & Saatchi, M&C Saatchi and Vivienne Westwood. After graduating from St. Andrews University with a Masters in Film, he worked in development for producer Brad Fischer and screenwriter Jamie Vanderbilt. Films included WHITE HOUSE DOWN (starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx) and SUGE KNIGHT, a documentary for Showtime. After that he worked for director Marc Forster, developing and producing film, TV, and commercials—including the Amazon Studios original drama HAND OF GOD. In 2016 he co-founded Vespucci.

Katharina Pethke

Director of the film: Everyman and I

Katharina Pethke studied German language and literature, art history and visual communication in Hamburg before moving to the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne in 2003, where she graduated in 2010. Her films won numerous prizes, awards, artist-in-residencies and scholarships.

Marusya Syroechkovskaya

Director of the film: How to Save a Dead Friend

Marusya Syroechkovskaya (1989) is a Moscow-born award-winning filmmaker and visual artist, who had to flee Russia as the March 2022 crackdown on opposition voices increased. Marusya studied filmmaking at the School for Documentary Film in Moscow under professor Marina Razbezhkina and received her MA in Film Directing at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Moscow (graduated with honors).
Her student short, Exploration of Confinement received a Jury Award at the New Orleans Film Festival 2013 and qualified for the 2013 Academy Awards. It was also selected for the 35th Moscow International Film Festival, the Message to Man International Film Festival
2013, Tenerife Shorts Film Festival 2014, and a number of other international film festivals.
Her training includes workshops such as Ex Oriente Film, Flahertiana, and IDFAcademy.
Marusya is a 2015 Nipkow Program Fellow (Berlin, Germany).

Barbora Bereznakova

Director of the film: Strigov

Barbora Bereznakova is a film director and artist from Slovakia based in New York City, USA. Barbora’s work contextualizes contemporary social challenges through film, site-specific interventions, music videos, and video art installations. Her feature documentary debut, Never Happened, premiered at Warsaw International Film Festival in 2019.

Matthäus Wörle

Director of the Film: Geamana

Matthäus Wörle studied journalism at the University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Then he got a videojournalism scholarship from the Mediencampus Bayern. His following professional positions took place at Süddeutsche Zeitung, Bayerischer Rundfunk and nautilusfilm GmbH. These days, he works as a freelance video journalist and is studying documentary film at the HFF Munich.