Siavash Minoukadeh is a London-based creative producer and curator working across film and visual art. He has worked with a number of leading arts organisations including the British Film Institute, Barbican Centre and the Watershed to programme festivals, produce exhibitions and create original content.
Berlin Film Week 2024
Jury
Siavash Minoukadeh
BFI Film Academy Young Programmer
Raffaella Pontarelli
Director - Amarena Film
Raffaella’s first love ever was acting but after a while, she decided to change her life and moved abroad where a new spark was unleashed… she started to work as a film festival programmer. Afterwards, she decided to follow another love and moved back to Italy, again. She started to work in world sales and decided to set up a new company, Amarena Film, focusing on Production & Sales and here we go!
Jacques Henry-Bezy
Experiential Marketing and Creative Partnerships
Jacques has a passion for Film as an Art and an Industry in full evolution, stemming from his professional interest in Experiential Marketing and Creative Partnerships initially developed when in charge of the Sponsorship Strategy of Jameson Irish Whiskey back in the early 2000’ via the Jameson Short Film Awards.
Having spearheaded high-impact partnerships with the European Film Academy, the European Coordination of Film Festivals, the Irish Film and TV Awards and the Dublin International Film Festival, Jacques has more recently contributed to the partnership strategies of London Film Week, Shorts TV and Cirque du Soleil.
Alex Papachristou-Cox
Artist, Filmmaker
Alex is a Queer artist and filmmaker based in London. He trained at the Royal Academy of Music and The Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Working primarily with text, dance and clothes, Alex’s work explores surrealism and pseudo realities in a fairytale like setting to explore the human condition. In 2020 Alex launched The House of Papa, a Fashion Storytelling platform, and has since created three short films. The latest BINGO BITCH, has featured as part of the 2021 London Film Week as well as winning an award at the UK Fashion film festival for ‘Best Message’.
Nina Yndis
Actress, Producer
Nina Yndis is a Norwegian and Polish actress and producer based in London and has produced several short films and music videos. Her first short film NOBODY’S DARLING directed by Sophia Carr-Gomm, screened at London Film Week in 2019 and was chosen for the official selection at London Short Film Festival and London Independent Film Festival amongst other film festivals. MINE, her second short film was co-produced with Glen Kirby from West One Entertainment and premiered at Raindance Film Festival. #FROZEN which screened at Hollyshorts Film Festival and HESTIA! which she co-wrote and directed with Fayez Bakhsh, are both award winning short comedies made during lockdown. THE PAINTER & THE POET is her most recent short film which is about to start its festival journey. It was directed by Dan Thorburn and written by Lucy Heath and Tyler Conti. CORDELIA and LOVED ME BETTER are both music videos for Maz O’Connor’s album ‘Chosen Daughter’ and they premiered on Folk Radio and Americana UK.
Nina is currently producing THE CUT-GLASS BOWL written by Nathan Hardisty and directed by B Welby Delimere, and ELSA directed by Rebecca King and written by Lizzie Nunnery. Both shorts will be shot later this year.
Notable acting credits include PEAKY BLINDERS & CALL THE MIDWIFE. She recently shot THE BOX starring alongside Anna Friel, Peter Stormare & Alexander Karim. She also recently acted in the Polish feature film FUCKING BORNHOLM which is having its world premiere at Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Nina only just completed shooting THE FORTRESS, a Norwegian dystopian thriller series starring alongside Russel Tovey coming out next year.
Umut Egitimci
Producer
Umut has worked in different branches of media and entertainment industry in Turkey and USA. After producing TV programs in Turkey, Umut went to NYC where she took classes on Film&Video at The New School University. She developed movies for TV and produced off-off-Broadway shows. Graduated from the Istanbul University, School of Business, Umut also has bachelor’s degree in sociology. Currently, she’s writing her master’s thesis on comedy in the Cinema Department of Istanbul Commerce University. The Cemil Show movie that she co-produced, had its world premiere at the IFFR2021. She continues to develop films with her production company Umut Productions located in Istanbul.