Festival jury

Titas Laucius (born in 1993) is screenwriter and a film director. He co-wrote films like “Pensive (We Might Hurt Each Other)” – the first Lithuanian slasher comedy which had VOD and theatrical releases in Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, U.S., an international award winning documentary “Animus Animalis (a story about People, Animals and Things)” and a dramedy called “Film Feature about Life”.
In 2018 his first directed short film “Snake” won CineEuropa an audience prize in “Fest – New Directors new films”.
In 2022 his debut feature film “Parade” won a prize for a best director in “GoEast” film destival. Also, Polish filmmaking company “Gigant films” bought the films script and did a remake. It’s called “Divorce” and it is on Netflix.
In his films Laucius usually searches humour in every day common situations. He mixes classic genre conventions with ironical point of view which makes an audience laugh where it doesn’t even expect.

Shih-Ching Tsou is a Taiwanese-American writer, director, and producer. 

She co-directed the Independent Spirit Award–nominated feature “Take Out” with Sean Baker, and went on to collaborate closely with Baker as a producer on internationally acclaimed films including Starlet, Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket, which premiered at major festivals.

Her solo directorial debut, Left-Handed Girl premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week in 2025 and was selected as Taiwan’s submission for the 98th Academy international feature Awards.

Carmen Thompson is a film programmer, distributor and cultural producer based in Edinburgh. For over ten years, she has worked across audiences, festivals, funding and distribution – both in the UK and internationally. She is currently Head Distribution & Special Projects for multi-award-winning distribution and exhibition company We Are Parable, an International Features Programmer for Hot Docs Festival and one third of the newly-formed Jali Collective in Scotland. She was previously programme consultant for Sheffield DocFest and programmer of Sub-Saharan African Film at Red Sea Film Festival, as well as a producer at sales & distribution company Aya Films. Across her career she has worked on UK release campaigns for titles such as Dreamers, Banel & Adama, The Gravedigger’s Wife, Rafiki and Sprinter. She is deputy chair of the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA), and is a BAFTA and EFA voter.

Iana Murray is a Scottish-Filipina writer and journalist based in London. Covering arts and culture, she has contributed features and film criticism to New York magazine, i-D, W Magazine and Empire. Her celebrity profiles have also been featured on the covers of GQ and Dazed. In 2020, she won the PPA Scotland Award for Young Journalist of the Year, and she served on the international press jury for MyFrenchFilmFestival in 2024.

Hélène Espeisse joined the international sales company Charades in 2022, after graduating in English literature and business.  She handles Eastern Europe, North America, the UK, Spain, Germany and ANZ amongst other territories as a sales agent and is involved in the acquisitions processes. Hélène Espeisse joined the international sales company Charades in 2022 as a sales agent following her internship there in acquisitions.

Antanas Skučas is a film director, data artist, lecturer at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, and founder of the film studio Tylus kinas.

His work is defined by bold technological experimentation, merging traditional animation with XR, VR, AR, and AI capabilities. The director’s unique style has been recognized with Lithuania’s highest cinematic honors: his debut film Childhood Diary (Vaikystės dienoraštis) and the poignant reflection on deportation Purga (co-created with G. Valevičiūtė-Brazauskienė) were both awarded the Silver Crane (Sidabrinė gervė).

Skučas’s films are regularly screened at international festivals, while his experimental work Planets and Robots (Planetos ir robotai) achieved prestigious recognition through its broadcast on ARTE.

Based in Berlin, Christina has worked across the film and art fields on a range of projects. In 2021, she founded Oyster Films, an agency representing and distributing artists’ films and innovative new forms of cinema. She has also worked in programming, communications, press, festival strategy, and film sales for organisations including Coproduction Office, m-appeal, transmediale, and Berwick Film & Media Art Festival, among others. She is interested in connecting daring and heartfelt moving-image work with audiences in new ways, and thinks about cinema as a physical, relational, and collective experience.

Massimo Iannetti is a film programmer and festival professional, currently programming for PÖFF – Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival and Lago Film Fest. In addition, he serves as Head of Industry at Pordenone Docs Fest as well as Industry Coordinator at Sheffield DocFest and When East Meets West.