Feature Competition

Serge Avedikian is a French-Armenian actor and director. He was born in Soviet Armenia, 1955. His grandparents were born in Anatolia and after the Armenian Genocide they move to France where his parents were born. In 1947, his family went to Armenia in hope of rebuilding the country as other patriots did and in 1970 they return to France. Avedikian studied at the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Meudon, France and afterwards created a theater company and produced many films. From 1979 on he began pursuing a career of theater, movie and as a television actor. In 1982, he began making documentary films and since 1990, he has been making short and medium-length films. His own production company produced most of his films until 2000. He is the director of many animated, documentary and fiction films produced by others. He acted in a number of French and Armenian films.

Tiina Lokk is a film producer and script doctor. After graduating from Moscow All-Union Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) as a master of film theory and criticism in 1981, worked for a decade in the Estonian film studio Tallinnfilm as a scriptwriter, story editor and member of its art council. In 1993, she co-founded a film distribution company Filmimax. In 1997, she founded Tallinn Black Nights FF (currently the festival director), Marvofilm Film Production and Consalting Company, Baltic Event (co-founded), and Black Market On-line. Since 1975, she has published numerous articles and film criticism while working as a film correspondent for TV and radio programmes. Lokk has given lectures on film history, film theory, script writing and cultural management in Tallinn Pedagogical University, Concordia International University and Estonian Academy of Music. Since 2011 she has been the Head of Film Studies at the Baltic Film and Media School and is a professor of Film Arts. Since 1991, Lokk has been invited as an expert for several round-tables, reform groups and selection committees for Estonian Cultural Endowment, Ministery of Culture and Media Programme of European Commission. She was elected a member of the European Film Academy in 2000. In 2004, she was appointed as a member of the Executive Board of the European Coordination of FFs. In 2009, Lokk was appointed as the member of the Advicers’ Board of the Summit IFF.

New York-born Jay Weissberg lives in Rome and has been a film critic for the industry paper Variety since 2003, travelling to film festivals throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. His work has appeared in international publications including The London Review of Books, Sight & Sound, EPD Film and Rushprint. Recent essays include an examination of Cristian Mungiu’s work for the Thessaloniki Film Festival’s retrospective. In addition to covering contemporary cinema, he writes about aspects of silent film: his essay on Albert Capellani’s American career has just been published in the monograph issued by the Association française de recherche sur l’histoire du cinéma, and he’s contributed catalogue notes to the Pordenone Silent Film Festival and Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato. A frequent guest on festival juries, he has taken part in numerous panel discussions on the state of contemporary cinema and film criticism, as well as acted as mentor in programs for young film critics in Rotterdam, Berlin, Locarno and Abu Dhabi.

Born in 1938, in Budapest. Hungarian director István Szabó has won worldwide acclaim not only for the extraordinary beauty of his impressive slate of films, but also for the historic and contemporary importance of the messages that they carry within their social and political themes. After graduating as a film director from Hungary’s Academy of the Art of Theatre and Film he went on to direct his first feature film, aged 26. The Age of Daydreaming, which won Szabó the Silver Sail at Locarno and a Special Jury Prize for Best Director at the Hungarian FF, made him a leading figure in a new generation of Hungarian filmmakers in the ‘60’s and 40 years on he retains his position as one of the principal forces within the country’s film industry. His outstanding award winning films include Father (1966), Confidence (1980), Mephisto (1981), Colonel Redl (1985), Hanussen (1988), Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe (1992), Sunshine (1999), Taking Parts (2001), and Being Julia (2004). He is also an accomplished stage director and has directed several operas. Besides his directing, Szabó is also a Guest Professor at various film schools.

Plakhov is a Russian film critic, historian of cinema and columnist for Kommersant daily. From 2005-2010 he was the president of the International Federation of Film Critics, now the Honorable President. After graduating in mechanics and mathematics from Lviv University (Ukraine), he studied history of cinema at the Moscow Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). His Ph.D. thesis is about Luchino Visconti and Italian cinema. Plakhov wrote articles and reviews for daily and professional press, both Russian and international (Iskusstvo kino, Seans, Sight and Sound, Guardian, Cahiers du Cinema). During Perestroika, Plakhov was a secretary of the USSR Union of Cinematographers and a head of the Conflict Committee that released more than 200 films banned by Soviet censorship. He was and still is advisor, programmer and jury member of many festivals including Berlin, Venice, Tokyo, San Sebastian, Shanghai, Petersburg, Moscow, Hanty-Mansiysk and Plios. Plakhov is a member of the European Film Academy.