Ralph Thoms (Germany)

Social anthropologist and founding member of the Trickster Publishing Company which focuses on the life of foreign cultures, as well as art books and film book series. From 1993-1995 he headed a development aid project in Guinea-Bissau.

Hyechung Eun ( Korea)

Hyechung started her career as an academic and researcher after she finished a doctoral degree at Loughborough University, England. Soon she set up her first company, KBI (Korean Broadcasting Institute), a Korean governmental agency. She was the initiator and organiser of several international co-production projects including NGCI’s "Korea to the World", MDA project, and AETN networks. She has published more than 30 books and articles. She has been invited as a panellist at various international markets, including Banff Festival and Sunny Side of the Doc. She was on the Jury for Content 360 at MIPTV 2009.

Martin Novosad (Czech)

Martin works in Czech Television as chief script editor, screenwriter, director, producer, and dramatist of documentary and feature films. He is also a member of the creative team, which participates in the conception of interesting content and formal trends of documentary, and also of dramatic production, as commissioning editor for Czech Television in Ostrava´s TV studio. Many of the films in which he participated, were awarded at various international film festivals. He also specialises in independent film productions. He is also a programme director of two European film festivals.

Sheng Zhimin (China)

Sheng served as vice-director of Zhang Yang’s Spicy Love Soup as his entry to the film industry in 1997. He worked as producer of Jia Zhangke's Platform and Chen Guo’s films. In 2002 his maiden work Heart Heart was selected for the Berlin Film Festival Forum Section. Then he produced his first 35mm movie Bliss, which was awarded the NETPAC Award of Locarno International Film Festival and he has been invited to attend many international film festivals.

Geoffrey Smith (Australia)

Born in Melbourne, Australia, he went travelling to find himself at an early age and discovered en route a love of listening and story-telling. In 1987 he found himself in Haiti helping to make a documentary about the first election there in 31 years, but following the discovery of a massacre of twenty one voters in a schoolyard, he was shot and wounded. Struggling to put his life back together in London, Geoffrey decided to film his journey back to Haiti to find the man who had so nearly killed him. This acclaimed film was subsequently shown on the BBC. His work The English Surgeon was awarded many times. Other works include Presumed Guilty, The Children of Helen House, etc. won him world recognition. In 2009 he was nominated the Best Director of Documentary by the Directors Guild of America.