Decision-makers
Martina Valentina Baumgartner
Berlinale, Documentary Coordinator for the European Film Market
Born in Frankfurt Main, Germany, Martina Valentina Baumgartner discovered her love for film and stories at an early age in her father’s cinema Harmonie (always from the best seats on the balcony : ) She holds a degree in Architecture and then pursued her passion, working as an art director e.g. for such films as BARBARA, DAS KLEINE GESPENST and ME AND KAMINSKI. In recent years, she has been increasingly involved in film production as a freelancer for companies such as POLA PANDORA, MATCH FACTORY PRODUCTIONS and AMUSEMENT PARK FILM. In 2015, she launched the BAUMI AWARD, which she has been overseeing ever since. From 2018 to 2020 she worked as a project manager with the NIPKOW PROGRAMM, a highly regarded fellowship programme for international filmmakers. In 2021 she began working for the INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL BERLIN as a documentary coordinator for the EFM – European Film Market. Martina Valentina Baumgartner is always curious to filter reality through films.
Vitezslav Chovanec
Czech Film Centar
Graduated from Film and Audio-Visual Culture Studies at Masaryk University in Brno. During his studies he worked for Czech Television as an assistant dramaturge. Since 2010, he worked for several film festivals including Cinema Mundi, Karlovy Vary IFF, Ji.hlava IDFF or Mezipatra IQFF. As a journalist, Vítězslav has contributed to various Czech outlets including 25fps, Film a doba, and he is still writing for magazine Cinepur. He is also a member of programming team of One World Human Rights Film Festival in Prague. In September 2017, he joined the team of the Czech Film Center, a division of Czech Film Fund, where he is responsible for promotion of Czech documentary and short films abroad.
Marion Czarny
FIPADOC
Marion Czarny has been working for FIPADOC since 2008 where she oversees the elaboration of all editorial content for the young audience and emerging directors. She coordinates educational screenings and workshops and manages the Young Europeans Jury operation and curates an international selection of student films (New Talent). Holder of a postgraduate degree in Cultural Project Management, she worked for the Forum des Images between 1999 and 2001, in the Educational Action Department and Programme Management (in charge of acquisitions). She was editorial assistant for 3 cinema magazines and curated several film festivals: Paris Festival (2001/2002), Rencontres Internationales de cinéma (2003), Ohrid French Film Festival in Macedonia (2008/2009).
Carmen Gray
Programmer Berlin Film Festival
Carmen Gray is a freelance arts and culture journalist, film critic and programmer who grew up in New Zealand and now lives in Berlin. She has written on cinema, often focused on Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Caucasus, for many publications, including The New York Times, Criterion, The Guardian, Sight & Sound, MUBI, and Modern Times Review. She was previously the Film Editor of Dazed & Confused magazine in London. She is on the selection committees of the Generation section of the Berlin International Film Festival, and the Winterthur International Short Film Festival in Switzerland, and is a programme adviser for Open City Docs in London. She also works as an industry adviser on films at the editing stage for First Cut Lab.
Daniel Vadocky
PLUTO FILM
Daniel Vadocky has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Trnava and in Film Studies from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. He has lectured on Philosophy and Aesthetics at the Department of Film and has published articles on world cinema, film history and theory in various magazines and newspapers. He was a Programmer of the short film competition at the Art Film Fest in Slovakia. He also worked as a Head of Sales in National Film Archive and as a Sales Agent for Negativ Film Productions both based in Prague. He currently works as a Festival and Sales Manager for Pluto Film.
Peter Mitrić
Acquisitions & Festivals
Taskovski Films
Founded in 2003 Taskovski Films is a documentary company that integrates production, sales, professional film business training and film & art residencies. We believe film has transformative power to change the world for the better. Our passion is discovering and supporting new and well established talent to tell stories that can spark social change. We welcome innovative, playful and risky forms of filmmaking and authorial stories in fields of arts and culture, history, society, politics and environment, while still maintaining high criteria when it comes to production value, content and form.
Suzanne Nodale
CERCAMON
A documentary sales specialist with 7 years of experience in the field, Suzanne previously worked for companies Doc & Film International and then Mediawan Rights. During these tenures, she worked on titles such as Fuocoammare by Gianfranco Rosi (Golden Bear 2016), Frederick Wiseman’s documentaries and most recently Kubrick by Kubrick by Gregory Monro (Tribeca FF 2020, International Emmy Awards for Best Arts Programming 2021). She joined sales company Cercamon in November 2021 to spearhead the launch of a feature length docs catalogue within the company.
Angeliki Vergou
Coordinator of Agora Docs, Thessaloniki Documentary Festival
Angeliki Vergou is Coordinator of all Agora Docs industry events of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, including the Thessaloniki Pitching Forum, Agora Docs in Progress and Meet the Future. She is also Head of Crossroads Co-production Forum of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. She has been working at both festivals in various departments and positions since 2001. She is a graduate of the Hellenic Open University and has a diploma in European Culture & Civilization (2018). She has participated in Sources 2: Training Mentors for Screenwriters (2013) and as an assistant trainer at MFI’s Script 2 Film Workshop (2019), Script Consultant trainee Midpoint Institute Feature Launch Workshop (2020) and MFI Doc Lab assistant trainer (2021).
Alba Qakali
Festival Producer, DokuFest
Alba Cakalli is born and raised in Prizren. As one of the former volunteers, she started her career at DokuFest as a program assistant and now leads the role of a Festival Producer. Throughout the years, Alba has also been part of many cultural organisations (RroK, Prizma Medium, Bekim Fehmiu Theater, Zambaku i Prizrenit) and engaged in different film crews (In Between, Pavend, Home) co-produced by DokuFest. Through her engagements, Alba is constantly involved in empowering youth against the challenges of social development.
Joan Gonzales
Director, DocsBarcelona
Joan González is the founder-director of DocsBarcelona, a film Festival with 25 editions and El Documental del Mes, a network of 80 cinemas that have been premiering a documentary since 2005. In 2013 he was recognised with the EDN International award for his contribution to documentary culture in Southern Europe. He has been a film editor, director and executive producer and he likes to hold workshops at Universities and Film Festivals, to help grow projects. His latest project is HYPERLINK “http://www.nextus.global” www.nextus.global, the DocsBarcelona educational project. In 2021 he was appointed honorary member of the Catalan Film Academy.
Ingibjörg Halldórsdóttir
Director, IceDocs
Ingibjörg is the co-founder and director of Iceland Documentary Film Festival (IceDocs), She helmed the festival’s fourth edition this summer as well as being part of the festival’s programming committee. IceDocs is Iceland’s first and only film festival dedicated solely to international creative documentaries.The festival aims at bringing quality documentaries to the local market as well as being a creative hub for filmmakers in the near future. It is part of the newly founded Time for Docs festival network. Ingibjörg serves in a selection committee for the Icelandic film and TV academy’s Edda awards.
Ieva Ubele
Head of Industry, Beldocs
Ieva Ūbele is an experienced creative producer from Latvia. She has produced and worked as a scriptwriter and offline editor on more than 20 documentary films mainly focusing on social and environmental issues. Her most well-known projects are HOMO@LV (2010, dir. Kaspars Goba), the first documentary from Latvia ever screened at Berlin International Film Festival, and INGA CAN HEAR (2018, dir. Kaspars Goba), which had its international premiere in Hot Docs 2019. In 2019 Ieva established her own production company Baltic Balkan Productions and is currently producing and co-producing four creative documentaries. In addition to her work as a producer she is also a Head of Industry programme of the IDFF Beldocs in Belgrade, Serbia.
Nevena Milašinović
Sales agent, LIGHTDOX
As part of Lightdox team, Nevena oversees distribution and sales in Central & Eastern Europe, Asia, LATAM and Africa. She embraced the challenge of mastering the most promising and excitingly evolving markets with worlds of creativity and innovativeness. She graduated Painting at the Academy of Arts Banjaluka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and holds a Master’s degree in Stage Design from Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno.
Nevena has been working in sales and distribution of documentary films since 2015, with a deep focus on VOD and festival distribution.
Sina Weber
Head of DOK.forum at DOK.fest Munich
Sina studied Social and Cultural Anthropology, Art History and Art Education at LMU Munich. She completed her MA with a thesis in Visual Anthropology on atmospheres and aesthetic research, explored in her documentary film “Dentro de Babylon”. After several years of initiating and coordinating art and culture projects for the city laboratory and think tank “die urbanauten”, she joined DOK.fest München in 2017. Here, she is in charge of the festival’s market for co-creation and co-production of documentaries in development – as head of DOK.forum Marketplace from 2020. She also worked as an Impact Producer for Evolution Film in 2019 and supported a documentary production in Bethlehem, Palestine in 2020 as a CrossCulture fellow of the Institute of Foreign Affairs (ifa). Since January 2022, she is part of the ERC research project “Foraging at the Edge of Capitalism” rooted in Visual Anthropology and based at Rachel Carson Center in Munich.
Victor Ede
Producer, Cinephage
Victor Ede is living and working in Marseilles, France. He co-founded Cinéphage with the awarded filmmaker Jean-Robert Viallet.
He has had a transversal carrier in the field of picture, sound and post-production, and a detour through art books publishing (In Libris).
He edited several documentaries, mainly those of Jean-Robert Viallet. And then he wanted to resume the project initiative, meetings, accompany and defend filmmakers and singular projects.
He started focusing on production in 2014 and has produced 10 documentaries, several international coproductions and one short animation. He is currently developing or coproducing with Slovenian, Macedonian, Hungarian, Syrian, Lebanese, Swedish, North American and Belgian partners for theatrical and commissioned projects.
He is part of the Eurodoc network, DAE, SPI, LPA, and has been part of the 2021 Emerging Producers selection (Ji.Hlava).
He has participated to the Procirep commission, to the CNC-FAIA commission and is currently member of the CNC – Cinémas du Monde commission.
Guilin Ustun
Head, Meetings on the Bridge
She is the head of Meetings on the Bridge curating the workshops, training programs and the yearly planning. She has started her career in international advertising agencies and established their production departments. In 2000, she joined Atlantik Film, one of the biggest production companies, as a producer. She was in charge of the promotion, marketing, financing and international sales of the films. She established GU-FILM for production and consultancy for project development and marketing. She has done several line production services and also a co-production with Belgium. She also is the cinema programmer at Soho House İstanbul. She also works as script and project development consultant. She is an Eave and Torino Film Lab Script&Pitch program alumni. She has been member of the jury at Toronto Film Festival and also advisor for funds and workshops. Currently she is also deveoping the 4th film of an award winning director.
Neraida Cukali
Editor in Chief RTSH – ALBANIAN PUBLIC TELEVISION
The Albanian Public Radio Television, RTSH is the only public broadcaster in Albania founded in 1960 in Tirana. Since 7 years it has enlarged its platform with 12 new free digital TV channels. One of them is RTSH MOVIE & DOCU CHANNEL, a 24/7 digital channel which broadcasts foreign documentaries and movies in the territory of Albania. The channel broadcasts all genres of film documentaries, docu-series and movies and has a really good interest and share in the audience.
Aleksandra Derwienko
Distributor, CAT&Docs
Aleksandra Derewienko completed postgraduate studies in TV and Film Organization at the National Film School in Lodz, and the MEGA Plus course – European Master in Audio-visual Management in Spain. In 2016, after working as a sales manager at Taskovski Films for four years, she joined CAT&Docs in sales and acquisition. She has participated in many international festivals and markets and was a member of the pitching panels at Baltic Sea Docs, Visions du Reel, Krakow Film Festival or Doc Lisboa, among others.
Choy Lin Mok
Commissioning editor, TRT World
Choy Lin Mok, an alumnus of Cambridge University and John Hopkins University, has over 20 years of experience in international broadcasting. She is an experienced documentary Commissioning Editor, Executive Producer and Series Producer. Choy Lin has held senior management positions at renowned global and regional television networks. She was Director of Regional Production at National Geographic Channel from 2001 to 2011 and Vice-President of International Production at Channel NewsAsia from 2011 to 2017. Choy Lin is currently Commissioning Editor for TRT World, based in Istanbul. TRT World is the English language news channel of Turkey’s national broadcaster, reaching over 260 million viewers worldwide.
Đelo Hadžiselimović
Co-founder, Doku TV
Đelo Hadžiselimović finished elementary school in Zagreb, where he grew up. After elementary school, he entered the demanding IV. gymnasium in Zagreb.
In 1974, he graduated in comparative literature and English language.
In the same year, he started working at Television Zagreb, later HRT, in an entertainment program. He became the editor of the entertainment program in 1990, after which he became editor of 2nd program, foreign program and 1st program of HRT. He retired after 41 years of work on television, in October 2015, but continues to work as an associate of festivals such as Porečdox, Vukovar film festival and Media Festival. Co-founder of Doku TV, channel which offers 24 hours of documentary program.
Margot Mecca
Festival Dei Popoi
Margot Mecca is an Italian programmer, producer and researcher based in Barcelona.
Since 2011 she works at Festival dei Popoli – International Documentary Film Festival. She is part of the selection committee and the curator of Doc at Work Future Campus, a professional and training initiative for young filmmakers. She is also part of Majordocs’ selection committee.
She works as producer and consultant for documentaries and fiction films for different production companies, in Italy and abroad. She is an alumna of Eurodoc and TFL. Her first film as a producer, Mother Lode by Matteo Tortone, premiered at SIC during the 2021 edition of Venice Film Festival.
Since 2019 she is a post-doctoral researcher in the Communication Department of Universitat Pompeu Fabra, in Barcelona.