Juries

This year again, the festival’s signature ELBE DOCK AWARD is awarded in the category of short film. The festival is also closely associated with the 17th Annual Pavel Koutecký Award, which is reserved, as always, for the best Czech first or second documentary film in both feature and short film category.

 

ELBE DOCK AWARD Jury

 

The ELBE DOCK Award-winning film will be chosen by a jury of film professionals: film producer Karolína Davidová, the Artistic Director of KUKI Young Short Film Festival Monica Koshka-Stein, the Festival Director of the LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International Johanna Süß and executive producer and film programmer of Young Film Fest Kateřina Šafaříková.

 

Karolína Davidová
film producer

Karolína Davidová studied arts management at the University of Economics in Prague and production at FAMU in Prague. In 2018, she co-founded the company 13ka, where she focuses on the development and production of original films as a producer. At FAMU, she produced short films such as The Little One (2017) and Apart (2018) by director Diana Cam Van Nguyen and Hide N Seek by Bára Halířová (2019). Her debut as a producer is Diana Cam Van Nguyen's short film Love, Dad (2021, Czech Film Critics' Award and Czech Lion, European Film Award nomination). Karolína co-organizes international industry events, which she also regularly participates in (CEEA Forum, European Short Pitch, Short Film Corner Cannes, etc.) and has experience in dramaturgy of short films and podcasts. She is a member of the Czech Film and Television Academy and the European Film Academy.

 

Monica Koshka-Stein
Artistic Director of KUKI Young Short Film Festival

Monica Koshka-Stein started at interfilm Berlin in 1998 and became Artistic Director of KUKI Young Short Film Festival in 2011. Intersectional feminist and pop culture partisan from Melbourne, Australia, she celebrates the radical, empathetic and creative potential of the cinematic short form. Monica’s focus lies on finding out how young audiences perceive film, how they wish to be represented on screen and which kinds of stories and forms of visual storytelling they are missing.  She advises distributors and curates film programs for other festivals and international institutions.  KUKI’s film curation workshops for teenagers form the heart of her practise and empower youth to critically reflect upon and shake up the film industry with their bold selections. Monica joined the selection committee for shorts at Berlinale Generation in 2021. 

 

Johanna Süß
Festival Director of the LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International

Johanna Süß, born 1979 in Frankfurt, is festival director of the LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International. She studied politics, art history and theater, film and media studies in Mainz and Frankfurt. In addition to independent cultural projects such as the Freiluftkino Frankfurt, she is responsible for the Initiative Zukunft Deutscher Film and has been involved in the board of the Hessian Film and Cinema Office since 2014. She is also active in the Initiative Hessen Film and the Working Group of Film Festivals in Germany.

 

Kateřina Šafaříková
executive producer and film programmer of Young Film Fest

She studied management at the University of Economics and film science at Masaryk University and Stockholm University. As part of her studies, she did an internship at the production company Negativ. Since 2013 she has worked for several years for nutproduction as a production and financial coordinator on films such as Spoor, Deep in Moss, Nothing Like Before, Gottland, By a Sharp Knife, Overboard!, Wasteland and others. From 2019 to 2022 she was the executive producer of the Czech-Slovak-Hungarian feature puppet film Tony, Shelly and The Magical Light, awarded at Annecy International Animation Film Festival. She is currently working for the production company MasterFilm and as a film programmer of The International Film Festival For Children and Youth - Young Film Fest.

 

 

Pavel Koutecký Award Jury

 

This year's winners of the Pavel Koutecký Award for the best feature and short documentary will be chosen by renowned Czech-Slovak screenwriters Barbora Námerová, Benjamin Tuček and Klára Vlasáková.

 

Barbora Námerová

Born in 1985 in Bratislava. She graduated in screenwriting and dramaturgy from FAMU in Prague. Her first film, Filthy, premiered at IFF Rotterdam in 2017 and has participated in more than 35 international festivals and won more than 20 awards. Barbora was nominated for the Czech Lion and the Czech Film Critics Award for the best screenplay. Her next film, The Nightsiren, won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. She also collaborates on the TV series Convictions and is the creator of the historical series The Red Princess. She has also worked as a script editor - she has contributed to the documentary Goddess Thea and Tomáš Klein's debut film A Sensitive Person.

 

Benjamin Tuček

Film and television screenwriter and director. He studied journalism and photography at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University, and screenwriting and dramaturgy at FAMU. He has directed feature films Girlie (2002), Trash on Mars (2018) and a number of documentaries. His screenwriting credits include Marek Najbrt's Champions (2004), Polski film (2012) and Protector (2009), for which he was awarded the Czech Lion. In 2009 he published a collection of short stories, Very Short Waves. He is co-owner of the cargo ship Altenburg, converted into a centre of alternative culture in Prague-Holešovice.

 

Klára Vlasáková

Screenwriter, writer, script editor and publicist. In 2022, the film Ordinary Failures, based on her screenplay, premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and was nominated for the Czech Film Critics' Award. She also writes scripts for radio - plays (Valentine's First Day on Earth, My Sister Toyen) and feature podcasts (Restless, Ritual). Her novel Cracks was published in 2020 and her novella Bodies this year.