Juries 37th edition
Feature film competition
Rebecca De Pas
Rebecca De Pas was born in Milan, Italy. In 2009 joined the FID Marseille, working as a programmer and co-director of the FID Lab. She was part of the Berlinale Talents selection committee and she has been a mentor for the Feature Expanded Training Program. She has collaborated with Viennale, La Rochesur- Yon IFF and with the Venice FF, for the “Orizzonti” section. In 2022, together with Eva Sangiorgi, she curated the book On Festivals. She is a member of the selection committee of Visions du Réel and of the IFF Rotterdam. She developed, together with Paolo Moretti, the Fondazione Prada Film Fund, for which she currently serves as project manager.
Reta Guetg
Reta Guetg is the vice director and co-owner of the Zurich Film Festival (ZFF). Since 2016, she has shaped the festival in a leading role, particularly in the areas of programming and industry. She was the co-founder and, for ten years, the artistic director of the International Short FF shnit. In addition, Guetg is active in film policy, serving among other roles as President of Bern für den Film and as a board member of Cinéville, the association that operates a two-screen arthouse cinema in Bern. She is a member of both the Swiss and the European Film Academies. She also has experience in film production and she holds a Master’s degree in Film Studies with minors in Communication Science and Linguistics.
Mariëtte Rissenbeek
From 1986 to 1995, Mariëtte Rissenbeek worked as head of acquisitions at the German distribution company Tobis Film. She then worked in film production for Regina Ziegler Filmproduktion, Hoffmann & Voges Filmproduktion and Mariette Rissenbeek Filmproduktion. From 2003, she worked at German Films Service & Marketing, where she was deputy managing director until 2010 and then managing director. From 2019 to 2024, she served as managing director of the Berlinale. Since 2024, she has been working as a consultant and creative producer. In 2024, she curated the section “Wild Roses: Women Filmmakers in Europe - Focus on Germany” of the Trieste Film Festival.
Documentary competition
Davide Abbatescianni
A Rome-based film journalist and critic, he studied Theatre, Film, and Journalism in Italy, Estonia, and Ireland. A staff writer for Cineuropa since 2017, he has covered major festivals worldwide, with work also appearing in Variety, Documentary, Business Doc Europe, New Scientist, the Nordisk Film & TV Fond website, and The New Arab. Since 2022, he has been editor-in-chief of The European Animation Journal and works as a funding consultant for two European bodies.
Vanja Jambrović
Vanja Jambrović, a graduate in Comparative Literature and Philosophy from Zagreb, as well as in production from the Academy of Dramatic Arts—where she currently teaches—is a producer and co-producer of documentaries and hybrid films for the Croatian production company Restart. Her most recent film, Fiume o morte! (2025) by Igor Bezinović, premiered at the Rotterdam FF, where it won the Tiger Award and the FIPRESCI Prize. The film was also nominated for the EFA awards for Best Documentary and Best European Film. Among her notable productions are the award-winning Srbenka (2018) by Nebojša Slijepčević, Museum of the Revolution (2022) by Srđan Keča, and Valerija (2024) by Sara Jurinčić, all of which won the top prize at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
Marko Stojiljković
A film journalist, critic, and part-time festival programmer based in Slovenia, he regularly contributes as a freelancer to international outlets such as Cineuropa, Asian Movie Pulse, and Eye for Film, as well as to media in the former Yugoslavia, including the Montenegrin daily Pobjeda, the Croatian national radio, and the Slovenian cultural magazine Dialogi. He has also been published in Estonia and Slovakia in both magazines and websites. As a programmer, he has worked for the Grossmann Fantastic Film and Wine Festival in Ljutomer and the Festival of Slovenian Film in Portorož. Marko is also the co-founder of Ubiquarian, an English-language portal reviewing short films and documentaries.
Short film competition
Silvia Carobbio
Silvia Carobbio is a programmer and distributor based in Milan. After working in film production for several years, she was the head of programming at Cinema Troisi in Rome and co-artistic director of Lago Film Fest. She is currently the editorial coordinator of the documentaries streaming platform Zalab View and a programmer for Pordenone Docs Fest. She also works as a project manager for Boost IT Lab at TorinoFilmLab and alongside Luca Marinelli in programming U Cinemittu, the smallest cinema in Italy.
Oana Ghera
Since 2020, Oana Ghera has been the artistic director of the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival (BIEFF) and Industry coordinator of the European Short Pitch starting from the 2023-2024 edition. Oana is also a member of the pre-selection committees of Go Short and Vienna Shorts and contributes to the curation of the market catalogue of SFC | Rendez-vous Industry at the Cannes Film Festival. From 2016 to 2019, she worked as a programmer for the NexT International Film Festival and, from 2014 to 2024, she coordinated several cultural and film education projects in Romania.
Eléna Laquatra
Always fascinated by the world of cinema, especially its heroines – long stereotyped or even rendered invisible – Eléna Laquatra now takes a fresh look at the artworks around her, focusing on female, LGBTQIA+, and racialised artists and characters, among others, to promote more accurate and inclusive representations on screen. She joined the Lab Femmes de Cinéma team in 2025 after several internships and initial experience in the cultural sector. Passionate about intersectional feminism and issues of representation, she works as a coordinator for Lab Femmes de Cinéma.
Corso Salani Award 2026
Maurizio Di Rienzo
Born in Naples in 1958, Maurizio Di Rienzo has been working as a journalist since 1979. He has been a film critic since 1984 and has written for major newspapers, magazines and press agencies. He is the artistic director of ShorTS IFF in Trieste, a consultant for Giornate degli Autori in Venice and a collaborator for other festivals. For FICE (Italian Federation of Arthouse Cinemas), he works on the “Giornate del Cinema d’Essai” and the “Racconti Italiani - Documentari al Cinema” events, and he is a collaborator of the magazine Vivilcinema. He is a member of the SNGCI (National Union of Italian Film Journalists) board, for which he is responsible for pre-selecting Italian documentaries and short films for the Nastri d’Argento Awards.
Renata Santoro
Renata Santoro is a member of the European Film Academy. Since 2006, she has been working with Venice’s Giornate degli Autori, initially as head of communications, then moving to the cinema department in 2010 where, from 2020 to 2024, she was head of programming and became a member of the selection committee. She is now collaborating with Giornate degli Autori as a senior consultant for research and selection of the films. She has been jury member in many festivals and lecturer on various development and production programmes. In 2008 she was appointed by the Italian Ministry of Culture and by the Province of Rome as supervisor of the project “100+1. Cento film e un Paese, l’Italia”. In 2025, she has been named head of the film office at BIF&st in Bari.
Giuditta Tarantelli
Screenwriter and producer, in 2002 Giuditta Tarantelli founded the production company Officina Film with director Mirko Locatelli. In 2008, the film Il primo giorno d’inverno (The First Day of Winter), written with Locatelli, premiered in Venice in the “Orizzonti” section and was selected for many international festivals. With I corpi estranei (Foreign Bodies), in competition at the Rome FF, she was nominated for a Globo d’oro Award for Best Screenplay. She is also involved in training, holding workshops on screenwriting and production. In 2018, she wrote Isabelle, a film directed by Locatelli, and received the award for Best Screenplay at the Montreal World FF. In 2022, she co-wrote the screenplay for La memoria del mondo, presented at the Torino FF.
Cineuropa Award
Valerio Caruso
Valerio Caruso is director of the web site www.cineuropa.org, a portal about European cinema in four languages, offering news, data bases, services and promoting the European cinema in Europe and outside. As consultant, Valerio Caruso has been providing technical assistance to several national authorities, the European Commission and UNESCO in the field of cinema, culture and audiovisual. Since November 2018 he is Team Leader of the project to support Delegations of the European Union in the world in organising film festivals.
