VdR–Industry Juries & Awards 2024

After working as a banker in the audiovisual sector in London and Paris, Remi Burah joined HAUT ET COURT as a partner, managing director and CEO of the communication agency, working there for 8 years. He joined ARTE in 2001 where he currently is CEO of the cinema co-production branch and ARTE Cofinova, a finance company that he initiated in 2004 through the French tax system. He has collaborated in feature-film coproductions of well-known filmmakers : Leos Carax, Agnès Varda, Olivier Assayas, Céline Sciamma, Mathieu Amalric, Claire Denis, Patrice Chéreau, Maiwenn, Bruno Dumont, Mia Hansen-Løve, Bertrand Bonello, Alice Rohrwacher, Lars Von Trier, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Michael Haneke, Naomi Kawase, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Lucrecia Martel, Nadav Lapid, Asghar Farhadi, among others. He is also President of ArteKino Endowment Fund started in 2016 to organize the ArteKino Festival, the first European film festival fully online.

Lisa Kleiner Chanoff is co-founder of Catapult Film Fund. Catapult provides research and development funding and mentorship to launch important, moving and artful documentary films. Before her career in filmmaking, she practised law in San Francisco and with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Lisa also has a master’s degree in museum studies. Lisa’s executive producer credits include documentaries Watchers of the Sky, Art and Craft, Brimstone and Glory, When God Sleeps, Extremis, Life Overtakes Me, and Lift, as well as several fiction feature films. She is president of the board of Catapult Film Fund and serves on the boards of SFFILM and the photojournalism nonprofit Catchlight. She is also an advisor to the Close Up Initiative, and on the grants advisory board for the Redford Center. Lisa is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Kristy Matheson is the Director of BFI London Film Festival. Most recently she was Creative Director of the 2022 Edinburgh International Film Festival and prior to moving to the UK, Kristy was the Director of Film at ACMI, Australia’s national museum of screen culture. Before her role on the Executive Team at ACMI, Kristy worked at the Sydney Film Festival, Dendy Films and Brisbane International Film Festival. She served on Screen Australia’s Gender Matters Taskforce, is a recipient of the Natalie Miller Fellowship and jury member for BAFTA’s Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer.

Eleni Chandrinou works as an international film consultant and audiovisual expert, based in Brussels and Athens. Her mission is to support the development and production of independent films, with an emphasis on documentaries. To that end, when she is not developing or producing, she advises filmmakers on all aspects of the creative process from early-stage development to advanced presentations and funding strategies. She also provides expertise to festivals, markets, and major national and international film funding bodies. From 2020 to 2022 she served as vice president of the board of the Greek Film Center and currently represents Greece at Eurimages.

Vadim Jendreyko is a director, writer, and producer based in Switzerland. In 2002, he co-founded Mira Film, a production company focused on the development and production of independent films for cinema and television. He teaches on a project basis at film schools and serves as a coach and tutor at rough-cut labs, such as dok.incubator. As a director, he has won the Swiss Film Award for Best Documentary twice, along with numerous festival awards, and has received nominations for the German and European Film Awards. As a producer, he values directors who pursue authentic cinematic paths and production partners who appreciate shared creative processes.

Susana Santos Rodrigues is the co-director of IndieLisboa International Film Festival, programming advisor at the Intl Film Festival Rotterdam, and programmer at the Bildrausch FilmFest Basel. She also serves as a member of the selection committee of the Hubert Bals Fund and CineMart, and an international consultant for the Doha Film Institute, as well as a mentor at IFFR Pro and at Noka – Tabakalera. Formerly, Santos Rodrigues has collaborated with Karlovy Vary, Jeonju, Cinéma du Réel, Kerala and Rio de Janeiro, among others. She is the co-founder of the festival and film distribution company VAIVEM.

Zsuzsi began working as the head of acquisition and programming for Cirko Film, an independent cinema and distribution company in Budapest, in 2000. In addition, she served as the head of acquisition at Szuez Film (and Kino theatre) in 2007 and advised many Hungarian independent productions on worldwide festivals and distribution strategies. She moved to Cologne at the beginning of 2012 to start as the head of acquisition at The Match Factory. For 8 years, she supervised independent film productions, sales activities, festival and marketing strategies, film production, and development. In 2020, she founded the Cutting Edge Talent Camp, which focuses on new German talents during the Mannheim IFF. Since 2020, she has worked for the Open Doors section at the Locarno IFF, first as a Talent Development Manager and since 2022 as the program head. In addition, she consults on international strategies for Doha Film Institute, Torino Film Lab, and Cinemart.

John Canciani is a film collector since he’s a teenager. He acquired his first experiences in curating films, when he founded and organised a film club in Winterthur. In 2009 he became member of the selection team and board member at the Swiss Youth Film Festival in Zurich. In 2009 he joined the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur and was, amongst others, Head of Youth Programme, Programmer of the International Competition and Assistant to the Artistic Director. In 2012 he was assigned as Artistic Director. John is also a film curator at Kino Cameo Winterthur, where he advices the programme manager, regularly curates film programmes and moderates film talks.

Meret Ruggle is Co-head of the Swiss film distributor trigon-film. The film foundation trigon-film has been releasing carefully selected films from Latin America, Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe since 1988 and runs its own DVD edition and the video-on-demand platform filmingo.