Jury & Prix

International jury

Michel Leclerc

Michel Leclerc has written and directed 8 feature films: J’invente rien in 2006, The Names of Love in 2010 (César for Best Screenplay), Pirate TV in 2012, The Very Private Life of Mister Sim in 2015, La lutte des classes in 2019, Pingouin et Goéland et leurs 500 petits (documentary in 2021), Les goûts et les couleurs in 2022, and Doux in 2024, currently being edited. He co-wrote the screenplays for Je suis à vous tout de suite and Youssef Salem a du succès for Baya Kasmi, and La tête de maman and Otez moi d’un doute for Carine Tardieu. He has directed 9 short films (including Le poteau rose in 2001), a documentary on Jan Svankmajer. In 2023 he wrote and directed Le premier venu for France 2. He wrote and directed Fais pas çi, fais pas ça, season 7, and the last two episodes of the series in 2017, and in 2020 Y’aura-t-il Noël à Noël? a Christmas film from Fais pas ci, fais pas ça. He co-wrote the series Le grand bazar for M6 with Baya Kasmi. He writes and sings songs.

Anne Coesens

Belgian-born, Anne Coesens studied at the Brussels Conservatoire and then in Paris. She began her professional life in the theatre, notably with Philippe Adrien at La Tempête. She gradually abandoned the theatre for cinema and television. Most recently she has worked with Olivier Masset-Depasse, Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, Fred Cavayé, Dominique Deruddere and Audrey Estrougo. She co-created the series Pandore with directors Vania Leturcq and Savina Dellicour, the second season of which is due to be broadcast.

Fabrizio Rongione

Born in Brussels, Fabrizio Rongione was spotted by the Dardenne brothers in 1999 to play the male lead in Rosetta, winner of the 1999 Palme d’Or. This was enough to launch the young actor’s career, and he went on to make other films. He appeared in no fewer than 70 films, including 6 with the Dardennes, for whom he is undoubtedly the actor of choice: Le silence de Lorna, Deux jours, une nuit... He has also appeared in the cinema in numerous movies such as Les paroles de
mon père by Francesca Comencini, Ça rend heureux by Joachim Lafosse, and more recently in Azor by Andreas Fontana, selected at the Berlinale, L’évènement by Audrey Diwan, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Festival, and Amal: un esprit libre by Jawad Rhalib. On stage, he writes as much as he plays: C’était Bonaparte, Le Cid ou A genoux, for which he won the prize for best one-man show. He also managed to reconcile his two passions for cinema and theatre by writing and presenting no less than 3 Magritte awards. He won a Magritte for his role in Deux jours, Une nuit, alongside Marion Cotillard

Stéphan Castang

In the theatre, Stéphan Castang has performed with Marion Guerrero, Benoît Lambert and Thomas Poulard. He has also written for the theatre: Boule de gomme, Le Défilé de César, Une divine tragédie (co-written with Sacha Wolff) and playwright (Nam-Bok le hâbleur, Molière 2005 for children’s shows). He is a professor at the University of Burgundy and Paris VIII. As a filmmaker, he has written and directed several short and medium-length films, and in 2023 presented his first feature at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes: Vincent doit mourir. Nominated for a César and shown at a number of international festivals, the film won several awards, including the Magritte for Best Foreign Film in 2024.

Directors' Week jury

Babetida Sadjo

Babetida Sadjo is an accomplished actress, writer and director. Born in Guinea Bissau, Babetida spent part of her adolescence in Vietnam before settling in Belgium and graduating from the Royal Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Brussels. Her film career was launched in 2014 with Waste Land by Pieter Van Hees, for which she became the first black woman to win an Ensor for Best Supporting Actress. She received international recognition for her work in Paradise Suite (2015) by Joost Van Ginkel (preselected for the Academy Awards). For her leading role in Our Father, The Devil by Ellie Foumbi, she won best actress at the 2023 Harlem international film festival. As a writer and director, she wrote the stage play Les Murs Murmurent (2017), the documentary Bafata Blues (2007) and the short film Hematome (2022). She’s currently writing her next theatrical creation in Guinea Bissau and her first feature-length film.

Ann Sirot

Ann Sirot works with her fellow filmmaker Raphaël Balboni as screenwriters & directors of narrative films. From the very beginning, they have been crafting hybrid, unusual films that root in a very instinctive acting style, fast pace using jump cuts, and an organic narrative structure built with frequent rehearsals during the writing process. Madly in Life, their first feature film, won seven Magritte awards and many other awards in various festivals. The (Ex)perience of Love, selected in 2023 at the Cannes International Critic’s week and in the National Competition of the BRIFF, is their second feature film.

Teona Strugar Mitevska

Teona Strugar Mitevska is a Macedonian director and writer. After graduating from the NYU Grad-Tisch School of Arts, she directed her first short film VETA in 2001, which won the Special Jury Mention at the Berlin Film Festival. After this success, she went on to direct many other films that encountered true successes and many selections at various festivals such as Cannes and Berlin. In 2018, France’s Ministry of Culture awarded her the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2019, she released God exists, her name is Petrunya, a world-wild success, that won more than 40 awards, including the European Parliament’s LUX Prize. Her sixth feature, The Happiest Man in the World won the Grand Jury Prize and the Young Jury Prize at the 2022 Les Arcs Film Festival. Her next project, Mother, is her eighth feature and her first English-spoken film, featuring Noomi Rapace in the title role. She currently lives in Brussels.

Vincent Lannoo

Born in 1970, Vincent Lannoo is a Belgian director and writer. He has worked in many different areas, including cinema, television and advertising. After graduating from the Institut des Arts de Diffusion (IAD), he became well-known for himself with Strass (2001) and Vampires (2010). Mixing black humour with social criticism, Vincent Lannoo does not hesitate to question social conventions and inequalities. His science fiction series Trepalium (2016) shows his interest in new technologies and artificial intelligence, as well as the start of his research into how these technologies can influence narrative and artistic creation. An influential and versatile figure in the audiovisual world, he seems ready to push back the boundaries of his art to touch and challenge his audience.

National jury

Fabien Hagege

Fabien Hagège is a programmer for the Premiers Plans Festival in Angers devoted to early European cinema. Previously, he collaborated on the programming of the Silhouette Festival and Arte’s Court-Circuit program, as well as working with the Quinzaine des Cinéastes and Series Mania. In 2017, he co-wrote a documentary on Jean Douchet presented at the Cannes Film Festival and many other festivals. He also works in the Quinzaine des Cinéastes and Series Mania. In 2017, he co-wrote a documentary on Jean Douchet presented at the Cannes Film Festival and many other festivals.

Johanna Nahon

Johanna Nahon began in production alongside Charles Gillibert in 2015 at CG Cinéma (Mustang, Personal Shopper, L’Avenir... ), then in international sales for Wild Bunch and Celluloid Dreams, where she managed the Acquisitions department from 2016 to 2018. In 2019, she joined the audiovisual production company When we were kids, with which she joined forces to create a film production company: After Hours Production. At the same time, Johanna Nahon is a member of various selective committees in Paris (ARTE - CNC). In 2020, she joined the Cannes Festival selection committee (Official Section) under the direction of Thierry Frémaux.

Arnaud Godart

Loco Films is an international sales and co-production company based
in Paris. Arnaud Godart has been director of sales and acquisitions of it since 2018.

Jury FIPRESCI

Josef Nagel

Born in Erlangen, Germany (1956). Study: Theatre, Film, TV, German
Literature and Sociology. Doctoral Thesis: „Early development trends on a specific film language“ (1988). Editor/Head of Feature film department at Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF, Mainz): 1985 to 2019. Member of the German Association for film critics (VDFK); former member of the advisory board at Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (DFF, Frankfurt). Member of the catholic advisory commission (Katholische Filmkommission, Bonn). Serving on numerous juries at film festivals. Freelance journalist since 1978 (f. i. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, filmdienst).

Shiva Fouladi

Shiva Fouladi has been a film critic and journalist for Le Mag Cinéma since 2019. She has a Master’s degree in Film Aesthetics from the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès. Since 2009, she has also worked as a translator and journalist specialized in cinema with the magazine Film today, published in Tehran, her home town. It was in Tehran that she worked for several literary and film magazines before leaving Iran. Since 2022, she has been a member of the French Union of Film and Television Critics, and in 2023 she was the Jury member for the SFCC’s best French-language singular film award.

Kathy Vanhout

Kathy Vanhout graduated as a film scholar. She is a regular contributor to the critical film magazine Fantômas and is part of the Antwerp female film collective Ursula. Occasionally, she also provides reviews for Kortfilm.be and Photogénie, or does Q&As at Film Fest Gent. She combines her love of cinema with teaching and making music.

Jury technique

Luc Plantier

Ever since he started working in an editing room at Radio France Lyon in 1987, Luc Plantier has never stopped editing films. First during his studies in Avignon, Lyon and Louvain-La-Neuve. Then he worked as a sound editor with the Dardenne brothers and Thierry Knauff, among others. He then specialised in documentary editing: From the social films of Dominique Henry and Vincent Detours to the cinematic adventures of Yaël André, from the journalistic investigations of David Leloup to the portrait of Manu Bonmariage by his daughter, including a series on Dutroux and Imax 3D documentaries. He also co-directed a documentary in co-production with the Cinémathèque, Marquis de Wavrin, du Manoir à la Jungle.

Olivier Imfeld

With his baccalaureate in hand, his native Switzerland already seemed too small for him. He set off to conquer the «grosse weite Welt» (the wide world) and landed at the National School of Photography in Arles. After graduating in photography, he went on to study contemporary art at the Villa Arson in Nice. He became DP and DoP on Jerome Vandewattyne’s docu-drama Spit n Split, nominated for a 2018 Magritte award for first feature film. He is currently working on Liberty by Brussels-based Phil de Witte and the Netflix docu-series Turning Point

Marina Lerchs

Originally from Brussels, Marina Lerchs studied sound at the Institut des Arts de Diffusion (IAD). After graduating in 1995, she joined Cineberti, a sound post-production studio, as an intern. This internship soon turned into a full-time job at the studio for 10 years. She started out as a technical assistant and then moved on to sound effects and post-synchro recording, as well as film mixing. At Cineberti or on a freelance basis, Marina Lerchs works on a multitude of audio-visual projects. Fiction, animation or documentary films, series or TV movies; whatever the genre, Marina will always find pleasure in lending her ear to post-production.

Jury jeune

Daria Karygina Karygina

James Mulvilhill

Jordi Boekholt

Malwina Cronin

Noah Rodriguez le Péru

AWARDS

INTERNATIONAL
COMPETITION

GRAND PRIX : €6000

2.500 € from CirclesGroup for the person holding the rights for the film’s distribution
1.500 € from CirclesGroup for the film
2.000 € from LalibreBelgique for the promotion

JURY PRIZE: 3500€

1.500€ from CirclesGroup
2.000€ from La Libre belgique for the promotion

AUDIENCE AWARD : 3500€

1.500€ for the film distribution company
2.000€ from La Libre Belgique for the promotion

DIRECTORS' WEEK
COMPETITION

GRAND PRIX: 4000€

2.000€ from Brussels Capital Region for the director
2.000€ from la Libre belgique for the promotion

JURY PRIZE: 1500€ from CinéFemme for the director

AUDIENCE AWARD: 3500€

1.000€ from the cultural department of the city of Brussels for the distribution company
2.000€ from La Libre Belgique for the promotion

EURPEAN YOUNG JURY AWARD
Honorary Award

NATIONAL
COMPETITION

GRAND PRIX : 5000€

1.500€ from BCOH for the person holding the rights for the film’s distribution
1.500€ from BCOH for the director
2.000€ from la Libre Belgique for the promotion

AUDIENCE AWARD: 3500€

1.500€ for the person holding the rights for the film’s distribution
2.000€ from La Libre Belgique for the promotion

BEST ACTRESS & BEST ACTOR AWARD : 1500€ each offered by Playright

JURY PRIZE: 1500€ offered by the Cultural Department of the City of brussels

BEST EDITING AWARD (in collaboration with Bemontage):

One-year licence for Media Composer (Avid) + one audio interface MBOX Studio offered by Diginet

BEST SOUND AWARD : 500€ to the sound department

BEST PHOTOGRAPHY AWARD (in collaboration with the Belgian Society of Cinematographers) : 3000€

Services for an amount of €3.000 offered by Eye-Lite