Juries & Prizes
These are our juries and prizes for Sehsüchte 2024.
FEATURE FILM
In the feature film section, the prize for the Best Feature Film and the Outstanding Artistic Achievement in a Feature Film will be awarded. The prize money for the Best Feature Film in the amount of € 5,000 is generously provided by the Investitionsbank des Landes Brandenburg and for the Outstanding Artistic Achievement in a Feature Film in the amount of € 2,500 by Studio Zentral.
Afsun Moshiry
Afsun Moshiry is a German-Iranian producer and curator. She started at Seven Sisters Films in 2015 with Quintela and Hartnoll. Success with “LA OBRA DEL SIGLO” led to collaboration with Naomi Kawase for “THE WOLVES OF THE EAST”. In 2017, she returned to Iran to strengthen cultural ties through projects with Berlinale Shorts and Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen. She initiated film workshops (Film Focus) and founded a development fund for Iranian filmmakers. Since 2020 she has been living and working in Berlin, where she founded Road River Films. She is a member of the Kassel Dokfest and Berlinale Forum advisory boards.
Jerry Kwarteng
Jerry Kwarteng discovered his acting talent through youth theatre. Known from “DEUTSCHLAND 83” and “ZERO CHILL”, both Emmy-nominated or -awarded. His repertoire includes productions such as “TATORT”, “WaPo BERLIN”, “IN ALL FREUNDSCHAFT – DIE JUNGEN ÄRZTE”, as well as award-winning films such as “ICH WILL MEIN GLÜCK ZURÜCK”. He won an award at the Hollywood International Moving Pictures Film Festival in 2017. As a law graduate, he gives marketing seminars for actors. Kwarteng is part of the ensemble of the ARD telenovela “ROTE ROSEN” and produced “4 WÄNDE” by Anjorka Strechel for the first time.
Yunus Roy Imer
Yunus Roy Imer, award-winning cinematographer from Berlin, has created internationally recognised works. His film “THE OUTRUN” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2024 and at the Berlinale. “SYSTEMSPRENGER” received a Silver Bear at the Berlinale and was a German Oscar nominee. His documentary “SPACE DOGS” won the “Best Cinematography Award for Documentaries” at the Diagonale. Other works include “WITHOUT THIS WORLD” and “99MOONS”, for which he was nominated for the German Camera Award. His contribution to “BLACK NIGHT” won the award for Best Cinematography at the Turkish Film Festival.
Julia Fidel
Julia Fidel, producer, series curator and choreographer, studied film and media studies in Mainz, Berlin and at the Film University Babelsberg. She was head of the student film festival Sehsüchte 2005 and from 2019 to 2023 she was head of the Berlinale Series and introduced the Berlinale Series Award. From 2016 to 2022 she choreographed for “BABYLON BERLIN”. Other credits include “A CURE FOR WELLNESS” and “HUNGER GAMES: A STORY OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES”. She has been advising TeleVisionale on the German Series Award since 2022. She has been a producer at Intaglio Films GmbH since 2023.
Victoire Laly
Victoire Laly, a German-Beninese actress and singer, left Benin at the age of eight and moved to Berlin. She has appeared in productions such as the Tatort episode “KOLLAPS” (2015) and “DIE MISANDRISTINNEN” (2016). In 2022, she played a leading role for the first time in “FLÜGEL AUS BETON”, which won the Red Cross Award at the Festival de Télévision de Monte-Carlo. Her role in “BARCELONA-KRIMI” earned her a nomination for the German Acting Award 2023. From November 2023 to March 2024, she appeared in the ARD TV series “DIE TOTEN VON MARNOW”. In addition to acting, she is active as a singer in the duo Kai & Victoire.
DOCUMENTARY
The jury members will select the Best Documentary Film and the Outstanding Artistic Achievement in a Documentary Film from the films submitted. The prize money of €5,000 for the Best Documentary and €2,500 for the Outstanding Artistic Achievement in a Documentary Film is generously provided by RBB and Adobe.
Sue Meures
Meures is a director and producer. She made her feature film debut in 2016 with “RAVING IRAN”. The film screened at over 130 film festivals, won numerous awards and became a box-office success. “SAUDI RUNAWAY” followed in 2020, which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the Berlinale. It was nominated for the European Film Award. This was followed in 2022 by “GIRL GANG”, which has since screened at over 100 festivals. It won numerous awards, was nominated for the European Film Awards and was acquired by NETFLIX.
Gabriel Bihina Arrahnio
Gabriel B. Arrahnio was born in Cameroon and emigrated to Germany with his family at the age of 13. After various internships at film production companies, he was hired by the renowned advertising agency Jung von Matt, for whom he worked as the first in-house director. Gabriel has been studying directing at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF since 2019. During his studies, he won prizes for his short films at the Film University and was nominated for the German Short Film Award in 2023, among others.
Daniel Abma
Daniel Abma was born in the Netherlands in 1978. His feature-length documentaries “NACH WRIEZEN” (2012), “TRANSIT HAVANNA” (2016) and “AUTOBAHN” (2019) screened at film festivals around the world and won several awards.
Daniel Abma has been working as a lecturer for documentary film directing at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF since 2017 and is also active as a tutor and trainer at pitch workshops at film festivals throughout Europe. He was also a member of the selection committee for the DOK Leipzig Film Festival 2018 – 2022. His new feature-length documentary is currently in post-production.
Bianca Gleissinger
Bianca Gleissingers’ cinema documentary “27 STOREYS” became one of the most successful Austrian documentaries of the year in 2023 with 20,000 moviegoers and marks her graduation from the DFFB film school. Before switching to directing, she studied production and film studies at the FU Berlin and University of Vienna.
Can Tanyol
Can Tanyol is a director who deals with the structures of European immigration societies in his works. His most recent film “VERRÜCKTES BLUT” won the prize for best short film at the Hofer Filmtage 2023. He is currently developing a feature film and a series.
ANIMATION
Whether stop-motion, animation or CGI – the industry experts are committed to inspiring works by young filmmakers and award the Best Animated Film prize. The prize money of €2,500 is donated by Adobe.
Raman Djafari
Raman Djafari is an illustrator, animator and director from Berlin. In poetically fragmentary narratives, they attempts to penetrate a space of honest emotionality and fragility. The surreal worlds and characters that Raman creates always oscillate between the familiar and the fantastic.
Raman has directed music videos for Elton John, Dua Lipa and Ashnikko and has worked with Universal, Warp Records and Downtown Records. He has also developed short films for Adult Swim and worked as an illustrator for The New Yorker and Medium. Raman is currently represented by London-based animation studio BlinkInk.
Juan Pablo Zaramella
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Zaramella graduated from the Avellaneda Film Institute as an Animated Film Director. He combined illustration with creating independent shorts, garnering global acclaim. Each project showcases Zaramella’s exploration of diverse techniques and aesthetics, grounded in an absurd narrative style. His renowned work “LUMINARIS” received 328 awards, setting a Guinness World Record in 2018. In 2016, he crafted the series “THE TINIEST MAN IN THE WORLD”, a 53-episode co-production between France and Argentina. Currently, he’s crafting his inaugural stop-motion feature film “CODA”.
Magdalena Pilecka
Magdalena Pilecka – She believes that if you really want something… you can draw it yourself. She studied animation under the guidance of prof. Daniel Szczechura. In 2016, she made her debut at Studio Munk with the film “PIÓRNIKT”. Creator of animated films, music videos, visualizations and the micro-series “DINO OR SOMETHING”. Since 2020, she has been an academic teacher of animation at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw. Her films are full of grotesque, absurdity and a character called her imaginary players.
Michelle Brand
Michelle Brand is a Berlin-based animation film director who loves to visualise abstract ideas in an abstract way across a broad spectrum of aesthetics. With a particular focus on discussing concepts around time, movement and change in her moving images, she continues to blur the lines between theory and practice. Together with Toby Auberg, she founded the 2Dx3D animation studio KINEMUS in Berlin, which specializes in hybrid and extended animation.
Ana Chubinidze
Ana Chubinidze is an animation film director and illustrator from Georgia. Her animated short films “FRANZY´S SOUP-KITCHEN” (2021), and THE POCKET MAN” (2016), have been selected by more than 250 festivals, including the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and have won more than 50 awards from festivals such as the New York International Children’s Film Festival, London International Animation Film Festival, Hiroshima International Animation Film Festival, etc. Collaborating closely with Studio Folimage (France), Ana founded The Pocket Studio, the first stop-motion animation studio in Georgia to support and grow the local animation community.
SCHREIBSÜCHTE
Schreibsüchte focuses on the screenplay as an artistic work. The winner of the Best Screenplay award will be decided by our high-caliber jury. The prize money of €2,500 for the Best Screenplay award is generously provided by RTL.
Linda König
Linda König writes screenplays and prose. In 2019, she was awarded the Hattinger Förderpreis für junge Literatur for the latter. In 2021, the radio play series “WELCOME TO FAKELAND” was published, which she co-wrote with Saskia Benter for the MESH Collective. She co-authored and co-produced the feature film “DER LETZTE SCHWUR”, which was shot in 2023 in co-production with the DFFB and Jost Hering Filme under the direction of Oliver Moser. The screenplay of the same name was nominated for the Emden Screenplay Award in 2023. She is studying screenwriting at the Film University Babelsberg.
Lukas Wesslowski
Lukas Wesslowski, born in Hanover, studied Film Studies and Journalism/Communication Studies at the FU Berlin and completed his screenwriting studies at the DFFB Berlin in 2023. As an author and partial actor of award-winning short films, he has taken part in numerous screenwriting workshops, sat on festival juries and worked as a screenplay editor for nordmedia. His co-authorial debut “GENERATION TOCHTER” premiered in 2022. “IKARUS”, his directorial and screenplay debut, is planned for 2024. He is currently involved in the writers’ room for the series “623kg” for Tellux-Film and ZDF and is writing a series for Odeon-Fiction with Jonas Zimmermann.
Hassan Akkouch
My name is Hassan Akkouch. I was born in South Lebanon, grew up in Neukölln, was at home on stage from an early age and have never been anything other than a storyteller. Back then I danced my way around the world, today I’m an actor and now I even write and work on films and series. You can google my whole CV and biography, but: I am and was everything I am not because of the circumstances I had to live with, but in spite of them. Just for your information!
Farah Bouamar
Farah Bouamar is a filmmaker, author and doctoral candidate in literary studies. She lectures in gender and queer studies and researches the relationship between religion and gender in literature. Since 2013, she has been offering workshops and seminars on creative and academic writing in Germany and abroad as a trained writing consultant in the cultural and academic context. Farah Bouamar is co-founder of the non-profit production company Lost Film, which specializes in the horror genre.
Clara My-Linh von Arnim
Clara Zoë My-Linh von Arnim is a writer and director who was born in Munich in 1994 and graduated from the DFFB in 2021. The cultural influences of Clara’s German and Vietnamese parents are often visible in her film work. Her short films have been shown internationally, including “IN DEN BINSEN”, nominated for the German Short Film Award 2020. She directed “ECHT” and was a writer for “DRUCK”. In 2022 she led the writing team for “FEELINGS”. In 2023 she directed “DIE ZWEIFLERS” and in 2024 she will film “MARZAHN MON AMOUR”.
PITCH
The pitch is where the films of tomorrow are created – at our festival, authors can present their screenplay ideas even before they are completed, laying the foundation for the films that will shape the future of cinema. In order to win the prize for the Best Pitch, the students must convince the jury. The prize in the form of a dramaturgical consultation worth €1,500 is donated by Script House.
Silke Schröckert
Silke Schröckert is an author and presenter. Together with her husband Daniel Schröckert, presenter Steven Gätjen and presenter Anne Wernicke, she hosted the weekly ZDF format “FILMGORILLAS” from 2020 to 2023 and then the YouTube channel “KINO ODER COUCH”. She is currently writing her third book, runs her own portal for grandparents and regularly publishes articles in parenting magazines. She was already responsible for editing film pages over 15 years ago: As editor-in-chief of a children’s magazine publisher, she filled the famous Fix&Foxi magazine with film tips, among other things.
Sebastian Storm
Sebastian Storm graduated from HFF Babelsberg in 2000 with a degree in production and spent 20 years as a producer, production manager and production manager for feature films, documentaries, short films and commercials. Since 2020, Sebastian Storm has been Head of the Media Department at the Investitionsbank des Landes Brandenburg, where he is responsible for film funding and financing.
Tom Lass
Tom Lass, born in Munich in 1983, began working as an actor in 1999 and has also worked behind the camera since 2005, initially as a production assistant and driver, and later as a production manager, set manager and assistant director. He later became a director, writer, editor and lead actor in films such as “PAPA GOLD” and “KAPTN OSKAR”. He has directed TV programmes such as “DRUCK” and “@ichbinsophiescholl”. His first TATORT “LENAS TANTE” was created in 2020 for SWR. He returned to independent production with the project “TOD DEN LEBENDEN”. Together with his impro ensemble, he created a concept film that won ARD as a production partner. Lass lives and works in Berlin.
Naomi Bechert
After studying psychology, Naomi Bechert made her screenwriting debut with the youth series “DRUCK” and has since worked for various public service formats and streamers. In 2023, she was selected for the Netflix Writing Academy. She is part of the selection committee of the Berlinale section “Generation” and the “POV” screenwriting collective. She is passionate about provocative young adult dramas and subversive genres such as romantic comedy and horror, but always with a socio-critical twist. She tells her stories from a naturally post-migrant perspective and incorporates psychology, subculture and pop culture into her work.
360°
The future of film is immersive. That’s why an entire 360° room awaits you at the Sehsüchte Festival, where all the VR films in the competition will be shown. The non-cash prize of €5,000 for the Best VR Film is generously provided by INVR.Space and awarded by our international jury of industry experts.
Naima Karim
Naima studied fashion design and fine arts. She won several awards with her VR film “THE ANTICIPATION OF RAIN”, in which she deals with the changing monsoon rains caused by climate change. She now lives in Saudi Arabia.
Christian Zipfel
Christian studied directing at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. He has already produced several VR films, including “ROOM”, for which he received a nomination for the Black Lion at the 75th Venice Film Festival, and “IN ECHT?”, a project about contemporary witnesses of the Holocaust.
Pedro Harres
Pedro studied Animation at the Film University. His graduation VR film “FROM THE MAIN SQUARE” screened at Sehsüchte Exhibition in 2023 and won numerous prizes, including the Venice Immersive Grand Jury Prize.
Koji Yamamura
Koji and his wife have an animation studio in Japan. They have already produced a few VR films. They received an Oscar nomination for their film “MT. HEADS” in 2003.
Julia Leeb
Julia Leeb is a journalist and primarily shoots documentary films in war zones where no one else dares to go. Now she is also making VR films there. The Süddeutsche Zeitung writes about her: “What she has already experienced could well be enough for a few more lives.”
FOCUS SOUND
The Focus on Sound category explores the art of acoustic design in film. Our jury consisting of Kirsten Kunhardt and Klaus-Peter Schmitt will decide on the award for Best Sound and Music. The non-cash prize of €5,000 for the Best Interplay of Sound and Music is generously provided by the Erich Pommer Institute and CBBB & Workshops.
Kirsten Kunhardt
Kisten Kunhardt is a very experienced sound designer, who has the right ear for just the right sound.
Kirsten did sound design for “DAS LEHRERZIMMER” and many other projects and was also in the jury for best sound at “Deutsche Fehrnseh-Akademie”
Klaus-Peter Schmitt
Klaus-Peter Schmitt is a sound recordist, who has many years of experience, working in the film business. Klaus-Peter has worked on projects such as “BABYLON BERLIN” and “GERMAN GENIUS” and is not stopping to capture beautiful sounds.
FUTURE
The Future section is dedicated to the young audience and presents the best children’s films. The special thing about it is that the winning film is determined solely by the children’s jury! The prize money of €2,500 for the Best Kids Film is generously provided by Mike Schubert, Mayor of the City of Potsdam.
Lotta Schwericke
Lotta is 11 years old, plays guitar and drums and often looks after a border collie. She is very fond of astrology and has a YouTube channel where she talks about it. She has been writing her own stories, books and scripts for a few years now, which she realizes with her friends. Later she would like to become a writer, scriptwriter and director.
Ahmed Abdel Mahmoud
Ahmed is 12 years old, comes from Frankfurt and is very interested in animation and technology. He can speak English, German and Turkish. Ahmed likes cooking and has a lot of fun with computers.
Anton Pulina
Anton is 11 years old, plays football at the club and enjoys making music. He is a big Toni Kroos fan and has even played football with his son. His favourite films are “KROOS” and “TITANIC”.
Cosima Brandner
Cosima is 10 years old and plays the violin. She loves drawing manga and listening to K-pop. In her free time, she rides a unicycle and socialises with her friends. Her favourite films are “SPIRITED AWAY” and “NOFACE”. Cosima knows all the classic silent films and can play the violin. Cosima loves maths, is outgoing and full of energy.
Willy Löffler
Willy is 10 years old, plays the guitar and goes kickboxing in his spare time. His favourite film character is Chihiro from the film “SPIRITED AWAY”. He also enjoys drawing and painting.
