Ibrahim Alaoui Chrifi works in the public sector for cultural funds and founded a film club in Rotterdam called ciMENA. This film club focuses on films from the Middle East and North Africa for screenings and programs that take place in both formal settings as well as less conventional spaces and attracts younger and diverse groups in the city. The film club has also been collaborating with theatre and festivals such as IFFR.

Camila Kater is a director, screenwriter and animator. She recently directed the animated documentary CARNE (Brazil, Spain, 2019), which was qualified for the 2021 Academy Awards Oscar®️, and was on the shortlist for the 2021 Goya Award. CARNE world premiered at Locarno Int’l Film Festival in 2019. The film was officially selected for over 250 film festivals including TIFF, Annecy, IDFA, DOK Leipzig, AFI and Palm Springs ShortFest among many others. CARNE has received more than 70 awards worldwide, including the Special Mention at Locarno (Young Jury), General Award at Locarno Shorts Weeks 2021, Best Documentary Short Film at ZINEBI (Oscar-qualifying), and Best Animated Short Film at Havana Film Festival, as well as the 2020 Leiden Shorts General Award.

Asli Ozgen is a lecturer at the Media Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam (NL). An internationally accredited (FIPRESCI) film journalist, Asli is a regular contributor to popular magazines, catalogues, festivals, and other film-related events. Since 2014, she is serving on the editorial board of Altyazi (TR), a film magazine and cultural foundation with a focus on cinephile culture and politics of cinema. Asli researches the absences in national film heritage, specifically relating to the film culture(s) of ethnicised and racialised communities. With a specialisation in film history, Asli is particularly interested in feminist and decolonial interventions to historiography.

Mouwafak Chourbagui is an Egyptian-Lebanese festival programmer and writer based in Cairo, Egypt. He first stumbled into the cinema industry by working with a French director on a 2011 documentary about Egyptian Shaabi music for Arte. He has since then worked as a programmer with Zawya, one of the first art-house cinemas in Egypt, as well as with the El Gouna Film Festival.

Charlotte Corchète graduated from La Fémis and EHESS. She’s now a PhD candidate in Sociology at Sciences Po Paris. She worked at the festival Entrevues of Belfort (France) until she was named Head of Pardi di Domani (which selects short and mid-length films at the Locarno Film Festival) from 2018 to 2020. 

Kim Kokosky Deforchaux is a screenwriter and director based in Amsterdam. After studying history at the University of Amsterdam he applied for the Netherlands Film Academy. After graduating in 2017 he has written multiple screenplays for various directors. He has since also directed two short films himself: Ik, Moordenaar and Hantu, the latter of which is to be released later this year.

Sarah Blok graduated in 2015 from Writing for Performance (HKU). Ever since she is been writing and directing theater and film. Together with fashion designer Lisa Konno, she made the films Nobu and Baba. Nobu is a portrait of the world champion of karate and Japanese immigrant Nobuaki Konno. It won 8 International prizes. Their second film Baba is about the Turkish Ceylan Utlu who moved to the Netherlands 40 years ago to provide his left-wing ideology with western knowledge. It screened at Iffr and Clermont-Ferrand. Baba won the National Award at Leiden Shorts 2020.

Dana Linssen is a philosopher and freelance film critic, writer, curator and teacher of film and policy from the Netherlands. Since 1997 she has worked as a regular film critic for NRC Handelsblad. She was also editor-in-chief of the independent film magazine de Filmkrant from 1998-2019. She remained a regular contributor to the Filmkrant and initiator as well as coach of Filmkrant Lab, a year-round training ground for young film critics. Dana teaches film history, analysis and theory at the Drama Academy of ArtEZ Academy of the Arts in Arnhem, the Audiovisual Media department and Writing for Performance at the HKU School of the Arts in Utrecht. Since 2020 she has been working as quartermasters on the pilot phase of FilmForward, a new talent and skills development institute for working professionals in the Dutch film and audiovisual sector.

Julian Ross is a researcher, curator and writer based in Amsterdam. He is a Programmer at International Film Festival Rotterdam and an Assistant Professor at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS).