Jury

Head of Jury Oleg Sentsov is a Ukrainian film director, screenwriter, writer, former Kremlin political prisoner, and a soldier in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He is the director of the films Gamer (2011), Rhino (2019), and Real (2025). He is a laureate of the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought (2018), the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine (2016), and a Knight of the Legion of Honour.

Mahnaz Mohammadi is an Iranian filmmaker whose work moves between documentary and fiction. For more than two decades, she has worked on the fractures of human experience: the distance between what is seen and what is lived, between what can be said and what remains unspoken.

Her documentaries have been shown and awarded internationally. Her first fiction feature, SON-MOTHER (2019), premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and went on to receive several international awards.

Her latest feature, ROYA (2026), continues her exploration of perception, repression, memory, and the unstable boundary between inner and external reality. The film premiered in Berlinale Panorama and was subsequently released theatrically in Germany.

Mohammadi has received international recognition for her commitment to freedom of expression, including the Freedom of Speech Award in Austria in 2015.

Since 2021, Matthijs Wouter Knol has been CEO and Director of the European Film Academy. He is responsible for the executive management, the vision and all related programming of current and future activities of the Academy.

Before graduating with an MA in Contemporary History at Leiden University and the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, he worked as a magazine editor and journalist. From 2001 onwards, he worked in Amsterdam as creative and associate producer on 30 award-winning documentary films. After a short stint at IDFA (2007-2008), he spent 12 years as part of the senior Berlinale team, first as Head of Programming of Berlinale Talents (2008-2014), then as Director of the European Film Market (2014-2020).

Dr. art. Anita Uzulniece studied German language and literature at the State University of Latvia and film science at the Film Institute in Moscow. She is co-author of "Film History in Latvia" and "Marija Leiko" (1989). She is Assistant Professor at RISEBA (University of Applied Sciences – Business, Art and Technology).

She has organized the Riga film forum "And the Word Became Film" since 1999, screening internationally awarded films with a humanist message. As a film critic, she writes about films and publishes reviews and festival reports. In 2020 and 2022, a two-volume collection of her texts was published under the title "Mans kino (un) laiks" (My Films and My Time). She has served on the Ecumenical and FIPRESCI juries in Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Karlovy Vary, and elsewhere.

Eugene Lavrenchuk is an Honored Artist of Ukraine (2021), a recipient of the "Meritorious for Polish Culture" honor, and a laureate of the Les Kurbas State Prize as well as the GRA (Great Real Art) All-Ukrainian Theater Award.

Since 2023, he has been a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Acting and Directing at the I. Kotlyarevsky Kharkiv National University of Arts. Previously, he served as Chief Director of the Odesa National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater (2018-2021). He has also been Rector of the First Ukrainian School of Theater and Film since 2018. A laureate of numerous international competitions and festivals across Europe, Lavrenchuk is the creator of an original methodology for teaching acting and directing.