Feature Competition

Born in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, USA in 1939. San Francisco-based director. Nilsson and co-director John Hanson won the Camera d’Or at Cannes for Northern Lights and Nilsson won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance FF for Heat and Sunlight. He is the first American film director to have won both awards. He is also the creator of the Direct Action style of digital filmmaking taught in the Tenderloin yGroup Actor’s Ensemble, San Francisco, and hás been featured in workshops around the world. Nilsson is a pioneer in the techniques of video to film transfer, which led to today’s digital revolution. Recent awards include the Ted M. Larson Award for “outstanding contributions to the film industry” from the Fargo IFF, the Indie Pioneer Award from the Kansas City Filmmaker’s Jubilee, a Filmmaker of the Year award from the Silver Lake FF, Los Angeles, and the Milley Award from the city of Mill Valley for achievement in the Arts. His book of poetry, From a Refugee of Tristan Da Cunha was released in 2007.

Semih Kaplanoglu is one of the most acclaimed writer-director- producers of contemporary filmmaking in Turkey. He received BS in Cinema-Television from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir in 1984. He was the scriptwriter and director of the 52 Episode TV serial Şehnaz Tango which was a prestigious work broadcast on Show TV and Inter Star TV Channels at the time. With his third feature film Egg, he received Best Director awards in Fajr IFF, Valdivia IFF and Bangkok World FF. The film received 30 awards in total including important national awards such as the Golden Orange Award (Antalya IFF) and the Golden Tulip Award (Istanbul IFF). His feature film Milk premired at the 2008 Venice IFF, and was also screened at festivals around the world, earning him international awards, such as FIPRESCI Prize at the Istanbul IFF. His recent feature Honey, the third part of the Yusuf Trilogy, winner of Golden Bear Award in Berlinale IFF, traces the origins of a soul. Semih Kaplanoglu, has also written many articles based on plastic arts and cinema, which were translated into foreign languages and published in such magazines and journals as Gergedan, Gösteri, Cumhuriyet, and Sanat Dünyamız between 1987 and 2003. He designed the Icon Exhibit Catalog for Iconoclasts, an exhibition of Erol Akyavaş held in St. Petersburg Hermitage Museum in 1990. He had a column entitled Karşılaşmalar (Encounters) between 1996- 2000 in Radikal, a national daily newspaper.

Brazilian of Armenian origin, critic, writer and filmmaker. His real name is Leon Chadarevian. He created the São Paulo IFF in 1977, making its 34th in 2010. He also set up a chain of theathers in Brasil, mixing audiences in the same spaces for art and major films. Directed the short film (with Renata de Almeida) Come back always, Abbas (selected for the 56th Venice IFF, 1999). Published books dedicated to such masters as Gabriel Figueroa (1995), Aleksandr Sokurov, Pier Paolo Pasolini (2002), Yasujiro Ozu (2003), Abbas Kiarostami and Amos Gitai (2004), and Manoel de Oliveira (2005) and his own books Cinema with No End and We Still Have Time (2006). He is the producer of the 2004 feature film Bem-vindo a São Paulo/ Welcome to São Paulo, shot with the participation of various international directors. In 2005 he started the feature film project Invisible World, part of which is the Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira’s film From Visible to Invisible. This short was the opening night film in the 65th Venice IFF in 2008. The new Manoel de Oliveira’s film, The Strange Case of Angelica (2010), was also co-produced by the São Paulo IFF and presented in the 63th Cannes FF in the Un Certain Regard category.

Born in the city of Oryol in 1954. Lavrentiev began his career as a theater actor in the mid-1970s. In 1982, after graduating from the Department of Scriptwriting and Film Criticism of Moscow All-Russian State University of Cinematography, named after S. Gerasimov (VGIK), he joined “Illusion” movie theater of Gosfilmofond. In the years of “perestroika” he became one of the leading film critics, known as one of the founders of the "new wave" of Soviet film criticism. He has written many articles for numerous publications including Sovietsky Ekran, Iskusstwo kino, Sovietskaya Kultura. After the publication of his article Infinite Story (April 1987) the Soviet censorship stopped cutting the foreign films that were purchased for the distribution among the various Soviet audiences. Lavrentiev played the part of Sergei Eisenstein in Valery Ogorodnikov’s film The Paper Eyes of Prishvin (1989), and appeared in Oleg Kovalov’s avant-garde film Concert for a Rat (1995). In the 1990s Lavrentiev was a scientific associate of the Institute of Film Art History and the host of Parad Festivaley and Kinomarathon TV programs. Since 1999 he is the Program Director of Sochi IFF, Faces of Love IFF, and Kinotavrik International Children FF. At the present he is the Program Director of Ivanovo Zerkalo IFF named after Andrey Tarkovsky, and since 2002 is the member of the Oscar’s Russian Committee. He is an academician of Nika Russian Academy, and Russian National Film Academy. In 2001 he wrote the book Clint Eastwoo:. Furious and Violent, and in 2009 his book Red Western was published.

Born in 1953 in Reykjavik, film director, producer Fridriksson started his filmmaking career with experimental films and documentaries in the early 1980s. He founded The Icelandic Film Corporation in 1990, which has since become Iceland's most important production company. The company produces his films and works with other Icelandic directors and producers. His international reputation led the company to build a network of internationally well-established co-production partner companies, including Lars von Trier's Zentropa and most recently, Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope. He has worked with two of Iceland's most acclaimed novelists and script-writers: Einar Már Guðmundsson (Children of Nature, Angels of the Universe, Movie Days) and Einar Kárason (White Whales, Devils Island, Falcons).