the jury for the categories in competition

Laceno d’oro 50 competition, gli occhi sulla città and spazio campania competition

laceno d’oro 50 competition – feature films

Andrei Ujică

Andrei Ujică (born 1951 in Timișoara, Romania) is a Romanian screenwriter and director. He studied literature in Timișoara, Bucharest, and Heidelberg. In 1990 he began making films. At the end of the Cold War, together with Harun Farocki, he shot Videograms of a Revolution, a film which has become a standard work when referring to relationships between political power and the media, and which was listed by the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma as one of the top 10 subversive films of all time. His next work, Out of the Present, told the story of the cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov who spent 10 months on board Mir, while back on Earth, the Soviet Union collapsed. The film has been compared to classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris and is considered one of the non-fiction cult films of the 1990s. His masterpiece, The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu (2010) concludes his trilogy dedicated to the end of communism and it’s invited at the Cannes Film Festival. His 2005 project, Unknown Quantity, creates a fictional conversation between Paul Virilio and Svetlana Alexievich, author of Voices from Chernobyl: Chronicle of the Future, exploring the consequences of the nuclear catastrophe. In 2001, Ujică became a film professor at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. He founded the ZKM Film Institute in 2002 and is its director. His last film, TWST / Things We Said Today was screened in the Orizzonti at the Venice Film Festival 2024.

Jani Pösö

the CEO of It’s Alive Films, is a producer and screenwriter. He wrote and produced his first theatre play in 1996, first short film in 2006 and feature in 2011 and first book in 2018. He co-founded It’s Alive Films with Teemu Nikki 13 years ago. He has produced eight feature films and four TV-series, all of them internationally acclaimed. He is also behind It’s Alive Films’ multi-remade TV-format Mental. He is best known for The Blind Man Who did not want to see Titanic (Audience award in Venice Film festival 2021), Mister 8 (Best series Cannes Series 2021), and short film All Inclusive (Cannes competition 2019). His latest published feature film 100 Litres of Gold is currently Finland’s official candidate for Academy Awards and his latest TV-series Dorm No 13 is currently premiering in Italy. His company, It’s Alive Films, is known for distinguished style, and strong ethics. All It’s Alive Films’ productions are comedies or entertaining takes on something deadly serious.

Donatella Palermo

has always alternated debut works with films by major masters throughout her career as a producer. Among the films she has produced are: Tano da morire, the first musical about the mafia, by Roberta Torre; Lettere dal Saharaby Vittorio De Seta; Le Ombre Rosse by Citto Maselli; Cesare deve morire, Maraviglioso Boccaccio, and Una questione privata by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani; Leonora addio by Paolo Taviani; and Liscio by Claudio Antonini. In 2014, she began collaborating with director Gianfranco Rosi, with whom she produced Fuocoammare, Notturno, In viaggio, and Sotto le nuvole, winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival. She has also produced Corleone by Mosco Levi Boucault; Faith by Valentina Pedicini; Last Words by Jonathan Nossiter; Il grande passo by Antonio Padovan; Le favolose and Mi fanno male i capelli by Roberta Torre; and L’Expérience Zola by Gianluca Matarrese. Her 2024 international co-productions include The Falling Sky by Erych Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro de Cunha, and Of Dogs and Men by Dani Rosenberg. Her films have been presented at major international festivals – Venice International Film Festival, Berlinale, Rome Film Fest, Locarno Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Tokyo International Film Festival, and many others – receiving several major awards. Fuocoammare won the Golden Bear at the 66th Berlinale and was shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards. Her most recent productions include: Luce by Silvia Luzi and Luca Bellino (77th Locarno Film Festival); Ho visto un re by Giorgia Farina (42nd Torino Film Festival); Gen_ by Gianluca Matarrese (2025 Sundance Film Festival); Sotto le nuvole by Gianfranco Rosi (82nd Venice International Film Festival); Il quieto vivere by Gianluca Matarrese (22nd Giornate degli Autori); Sergio e Mirta – un matrimonio in 8 mm by Fabrizio Laurenti (20th Rome Film Fest); and Vita mia by Edoardo Winspeare (43rd Torino Film Festival).

Joe Bini

is a film editor, writer and director best known for his long-time collaboration with Werner Herzog, on such notable documentaries as, “Little Dieter Needs to Fly,” “Grizzly Man,” “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” and “Into the Abyss,” and narrative films such as “Rescue Dawn,” and “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.” He has worked with Lynne Ramsay on “We Need To Talk About Kevin” and “You Were Never Really Here,” and Andrea Arnold on “American Honey” and “Bird.” He co-directed a live theater/film piece about the Kronos Quartet called “A Thousand Thoughts,” which has been staged internationally and has performed a second live film piece called “Little Ethiopia” with his partner, Maya Hawke.

gli occhi sulla città – short films

Giulio Sangiorgio

(Lecco, 1984) is a film critic, programmer, and lecturer. He is the editor of the weekly magazine Film Tv and of the historic quarterly journal of the CSC, Bianco e nero. In the festival world, he is the director of I milleocchi in Trieste and the BA Film Festival in Busto Arsizio. He is a programmer for the Filmmaker Festival in Milan. He teaches Forms and Models of Contemporary Cinema at IULM University in Milan and is a tutor in the In Progress development workshop of the Milano Film Network.

Leandro Picarella

is a Sicilian director and author. His first feature film, Triokala (CSC Production, 2015), received widespread acclaim in Italy and abroad. He subsequently wrote and directed Epicentro (Playmaker, 2018), which premiered at the 75thMostra del Cinema di Venezia – Settimana della Critica, and Divinazioni (Qoomoon with Rai Cinema, Les Films D’Ici), which had its world premiere at IDFA in 2020 and was released in theaters in 2021. Segnali di vita (Qoomoon with Rai Cinema) was presented at the Rome Film Fest in 2023 and released in theaters in 2024. Sciatunostroishisfourth feature film.

Urszula Śniegowska

Head of the annual American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland (16th edition was held from November 6 till 11. 2025), and U.S in Progress program, matchmaking US and Polish projects; collaborates with Watch Docs Human Rights in Film FF and New Horizons IFF (where she coordinates A Sunday in the Country workshop for young European film critics). Formerly curator of film and art at the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, where she organized multiple film-themed gallery shows and retrospectives (including Pier Paolo Pasolini). Juror at multiple US and European festivals (Cannes La Quinzaine Section, Berlinale Panorama and Forum, Sarajevo, Cluj), Cleveland, and Denver. Member of the European Film Academy and recipient of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Lithuania.

spazio campania competition

Alessandro Zoppo

Zoppohas been watching movies and listening to music since he was six. Proudly from Sannio but Roman by adoption, he is a programmer for the MedFilm Festival in Rome, co-creator and programmer of Karawan Fest, and collaborator for the Rendez-Vous – Festival of New French Cinema and the German Film Festival in Rome. He has worked for the Rome Film Fest and Capalbio Cinema and was editor-in-chief of Good Short Films, the first Italian web platform entirely dedicated to short films. In his second life, he writes for websites and magazines covering culture and entertainment, travel, economics, and finance.

Lucrezia Ercolani

was born in Rome in 1992. A professional journalist, she graduated in Philosophy from La Sapienza University with a predilection for experimental artistic expressions and the intersection of different disciplines. An editor at the daily newspaper Il Manifesto, she has collaborated with various periodicals (Extra! Music Magazine, The New Noise, Theatron 2.0, La Falena). Since 2021, she has been one of the editors of the Filmmaker Festival catalog.

Toni D’Angelo

(Naples, 1979) is a film director, screenwriter, and producer. After spending his childhood in Rome, he studied and trained at DAMS Bologna and Roma Tre University, where he graduated with a dissertation on Abel Ferrara. From 2002 to 2004, he worked as Ferrara’s assistant, collaborating on story development and co-directing the music video Move with Me. During this period, he directed his first short films, including Bukowski, Casoria, and L’uomocheamavagliascensori, marking a personal and visual debut that anticipated many traits of his future filmmaking. Una notte (2007) was his debut feature-length film, which earned him a nomination for the David di Donatello Award for Best New Director. In 2009, he directed Poeti, a documentary selected for the 66th Venice Film Festival, followed by L’innocenza di Clara (2011), in competition in Montréal, and the short movie Ore 12 (2014), presented at the Festa del Cinema in Rome, a brief and tense work about an underground, collective violence. In 2015, he directed Filmstudio Mon Amour, paying tribute to a legendary place in Italian cinema, which earned him a special Nastro d’Argento. This was followed by Falchi (2016), an urban noir produced by Rai Cinema and Minerva Pictures, and the short Nessuno è innocente (2018), selected for Venice Critics’ Week. With Calibro 9 (2019, presented at Torino Film Festival), a contemporary reimagining of Italian crime drama, D’Angelo signed his most ambitious project, confirming a filmmaking course rooted in reality, visually sharp and narratively restless, and innervated by a constant civil and existential tension. In 2023, he founded the production company Isola Produzioni Srl, through which he personally oversees the development and production of several projects, including his latest film: the documentary Nino. 18 Giorni, dedicated to his father and presented at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival.

spazio campania competition

Pasquale Anzalone, Martina Cardinale, Fiamma Mastrapasqua, Kristian Xipolias, Giovanni Vanni, Christian Balictan, Paolo Pagnotta, Mario Oliva, Elisabetta Panico.