Alfredo Minea
lfredo Minea is a Romanian actor and director born in 1994 in Bucharest. He graduated from the National University of Theatre and Film in 2016. In the same year he made his film debut as an actor with the role of Alex in the short film "Prima noapte," directed by Andrei Tănase. The film was selected for the Orizzonti competition at the Venice Film Festival and won the Grand Prix at the Huesca International Short Film Festival, qualifying for the 2018 Academy Award nominations for Best Live Action Short Film. In 2022, Alfredo Minea directed the documentary "35A," for which he received the “Ion Bostan” Award for Best Romanian Documentary at the “CineMaIubit” Film Festival.
Andra MacMasters
Andra MacMasters is a Romanian audiovisual producer and archive researcher. In 2013 she founded Conset Film and since then worked with filmmakers from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Serbia, India. She also established the first archive dedicated to the cine-amateurism movement in the Socialist Republic of Romania, available on www.cineama.ro.
Andreea Udrea
Andreea Udrea is a Romanian documentary filmmaker and video journalist. She studied psychology before dedicating herself to documentary filmmaking through the DocNomads program. She debuted in 2017 with Like the Mountain, an intimate portrait of a Syrian refugee in Slovenia. Her latest project, The wind blows where it pleases, which explores the tension between faith and queerness, received funding from CNC Romania in 2023 and is currently in post-production.
Beyond her studies, Andreea has developed her documentary projects through industry programs such as the East Silver Market, Short Pitch Program, and Civil Society Pitch. Through her films, she focuses on themes of identity, belonging, and inner conflicts, looking out for stories and characters that add nuance to our perspectives on reality.
Anelise Sălan
Anelise Sălan is a Romanian filmmaker and PhD student in Communication Studies at the University of Bucharest. She worked in television for 12 years at PRO TV before transitioning to freelance cinematography. She also organizes educational workshops in rural areas.
Farah Kassem
Born in Tripoli, Lebanon, Farah Kassem graduated from ALBA University in Audiovisual Studies and completed an MFA in Documentary Filmmaking at DocNomads. Her films have been screened at festivals such as Visions du Réel, Warsaw Film Festival, DOK Leipzig, and many others.
Filmography: You Make a Better Window Than You Do a Door (2017) / Nettoyer Schaerbeek (2017) / My Father Looks Like Abdel Nasser (2012)
Georgia Kumari Bradburn
Georgia Kumari Bradburn is a filmmaker whose work focuses on metamorphosis and transformation
Ioana Grigore
Ioana Grigore is a Romanian film director, focused on documentary film and the boundary between what we call reality and fiction. She recently obtained her PhD in Cinema and Media Studies and teaches documentary film at the National University of Theatre and Film "I.L. Caragiale" Bucharest.
Kinshuk Surjan
Kinshuk Surjan is an Indian filmmaker, based in Brussels and Bhopal. A graduate of the DocNomads program, his short, “Divided Lines,” was screened at the 2015 Jihlava Film Festival. In 2017 his graduation film “The Flandrien” won the Flanders Audiovisual Fund’s VAF “Wildcard”.
Filmography: The Flandrien (2017), Divided Lines (2015)
Lesia Diak
Lesia Diak is a Ukrainian film director and producer. Her internationally-awarded short films explore themes of genuine human connections, inner conflict, trauma and healing. She established DramaFree, a film production company dedicated to creating author-driven movies.
Filmography:
Dad’s Lullaby, 78 min, 2024, Ukraine, Romania, Croatia
Wounds, short film, 24 min, 2024 Ukraine, Hungary, Belgium, Portugal
Under the Wing of A Night, short film, 19 min, 2023 Ukraine, Belgium, Belgium, Portugal
Joszef In Autumn, short film, 12 min, 2022 Hungary, Belgium, Portugal
Awards: Honorable mention for the best feature length debut at Doclisboa
Director, DOP, editor, producer
Awards: Best Documentary, Zlin Film Festival (Czech Republic)
Director, DOP, editor, producer
Co-director, Sound recordist
Marc Isaacs
Lift
All White in Barking
Calais: The Last Border
Outsiders
When Night Falls
Men of the City
The Filmmaker's House
Marc Isaacs Masterclass - Provocations and Interventions: How To Deal With The Limitations of The Real
All White in Barking
Calais: The Last Border
Outsiders
When Night Falls
Men of the City
The Filmmaker's House
Marc Isaacs Masterclass - Provocations and Interventions: How To Deal With The Limitations of The Real
Since 2001, Marc Isaacs has directed more than 10 creative documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4. His films have won Grierson, Royal Television Society and BAFTA awards, as well as numerous prizes at international festivals. In 2006, he had a retrospective at the États généraux du film documentaire de Lussas and his work has been included in numerous documentary books and acadeic studies.
In 2008, Marc Isaacs received an honorary doctorate from the University of East London for his documentary work. He is a visiting professor at the London Film School, the National Film and Television School and the Royal Holloway University.
FILMOGRAPHY
- The Road a story of life and death (2012)
- Outside the court (2010)
- Men of the city (2009)
- All white in Barking (2007)
- Philip et ses sept femmes (2005)
- Un jour, mon prince viendra (2005)
- Calais : the last border (2003)
- Travellers (2002)
- Lift (2001)
- The Filmmaker's house (2020)
Michał Bielawski
For nearly two decades, he has worked in documentary and television filmmaking. In 2013, he received the Polish Film Institute Award and debuted with his feature documentary Mundial. The Highest Stakes. His creative documentary The Wind: A Documentary Thriller, produced with HBO Europe, premiered at Visions du Réel and returned from a global tour with numerous awards from top documentary festivals, including Dok Leipzig. The film was also nominated by the Polish Film Academy for the Eagles – Polish Film Awards in the Best Documentary category.
Mihai Gavril Dragolea
Mihai Gavril Dragolea (Romania, 1989) specialises in documentary and hybrid fiction filmmaking. His films focus on alternative and peripheral humans or other types of sentient beings, on which subject he is also doing a Ph.D. Mihai’s documentaries have been shown in festivals in Europe and distributed in more than 15 countries. He lectures on Documentary Practice at the Faculty of Theater and Film of Babeș-Bolyai University. Mihai is also working in the ecological and animal protection domain.
Aurica, a dog's life / Director / 2022 / 12 min. / Fiction
Everything for Riana / Director / 2020 / 28 min. / Documentary
PhoeniXXX / Director / 2017 / 53 min. / Documentary
O lunã din viața lor / Director / 2015 / 47 min. / Documentary
The Golden Robot / Director / 2015 / 73 min. / Documentary
Nikola Ilić
Originally from Belgrade (Serbia), Nikola Ilić is an independent filmmaker and cinematographer interested in creative and observational documentary filmmaking. Since 2007, Nikola Ilić has resided in Switzerland and Serbia. Co-founder of Pro Short Association. Member of the Swiss and European Film Academy.
Filmography: Rakijada - Distilled Village Tales (2016) / Kod Ćoška (Down On The Corner) (2013)
co-directed with Corina Schwingruber Ilić: Dida (2021) / Just Another Day In Egypt (2015) / Kanton Jugoslawien (2013)
Radu Ciorniciuc
RADU CIORNICIUC co-founded in 2012 the first independent media organization in Romania - Casa Jurnalistului casajurnalistului.ro; a community of reporters specializing in in-depth, long-form, and multimedia reporting. Since then, Radu has worked as a long-form writer and undercover investigative reporter. His research is focused on human rights, animal welfare, and environmental issues across the globe. The articles and films he has worked on have appeared in some of the biggest publications around the globe. Ciorniciuc’s debut feature documentary film, "Acasa, My Home", produced by Manifest Film, tells the story of a family that lived for two decades in the wilderness, in perfect harmony with nature, until they are chased out and forced to adapt to life in the big city. "Acasă, My Home" premiered at Sundance (2020) where it won the Special Jury Award for Cinematography. The film had an exceptional festival run, and has been selected for a nomination at the European Film Academy Awards.
Radu Constantin Mocanu
Radu Constantin Mocanu graduated in journalism at Lucian Blaga University in 2005. He got a job working at a TV station and later moved to Paris in order to study cinema at Ecole Superieure de Realisation Audiovisuelle, where he got a degree in 2009. Returning to Romania, he began working on his feature debut documentary: The Golden Robot (2015). Radu currently works as an independent documentary filmmaker.
PhoeniXXX / Producer / 2017 / 53 min. / Documentary
The Golden Robot / Director / 2015 / 73 min. / Documentary
Rami El Sabbagh
Rami Sabbagh was born in Beirut in July 1979 and is a video artist, film editor, and musician. In 2000, he discovered the disappeared work of Lebanese avant-garde filmmaker Christian Ghazi and worked with him on his last documentary Coffin of the Memory in 2001.
Sabbagh’s videos 2mg of rotten blood on pure white snow (2006), the last hero (2011) and imperfect unless performed in blood (2018) oscillate between fiction and video art and in 2020 he co-directed topology of an absence with experimental musician Sharif Sehnaoui , an experimental documentary that offers a response and a poetico-fictional interpretation of archival images from Pathé Gaumont filmed in Beirut during the French mandate of Lebanon.
Between 2013 and 2018, Sabbagh participated in the foundation and artistic direction of Dawawine a multi-purpose space in Beirut.
Răzvan Dima
Răzvan Dima discovered his passion for imagery since childhood, in his grandmother's darkroom. He worked as a cameraman in the press but chose to leave the journalistic environment to focus on photography and film. Currently, he is studying film directing at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca.
Simona Constantin
Simona Constantin (she/her) is a Bucharest-based documentary filmmaker exploring music as immaterial heritage. Her work is shaped by her background in designing and producing cultural and educational projects for youth.
Tudor Platon
Tudor Platon is a Romanian documentary director and cinematographer. He made his directing debut with ”House of Dolls”, which premiered in 2020 in the Documentary Competition of Sarajevo Film Festival. As a cinematographer he worked on over 20 films, like “The Christmas Gift” (dir. Bogdan Mureșanu), ”4:15 P.M. The End of the World” (dir. Gabi Șarga & Cătălin Rotaru), or “Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife” (dir. Alexandru Solomon).
Ștefan Marcu
Ștefan Marcu is a graduate of the Film Directing Department at the Film Faculty of UNATC "I.L.Caragiale" in Bucharest. During his four years of studies, Ștefan directed seven short films, including the documentary "The Union Train", which premiered at the Ji.hlava IDFF. In addition to his directing experience, he has also worked as an assistant director, script supervisor, or camera assistant on numerous productions, ranging from student films and commercials to music videos. Currently, he is pursuing a master's degree in Documentary Film at UNATC and developing his debut feature documentary.
