Meet the Juries of Nordisk Panorama Film Festival 2022

Best Nordic Documentary Award

The Best Nordic Documentary Award is presented to one of the 15 films selected for the competition. The award goes to the director(s) of the winning film. The cash award of 11.000 € is sponsored by the Nordic public broadcasters DR, NRK, RÚV, SVT and YLE.

Raul Niño Zambrano

Head of Film Programmes at Sheffield DocFest. 

Raul Niño Zambrano is the Head of Film Programmes at Sheffield DocFest. He was previously a Senior Programmer at IDFA where he started as a programmer in 2008. During his tenure at IDFA, Raul conducted a ground-breaking study on the position of women within the documentary world (The Female Gaze, 2014) and initiated the IDFA Queer Day. In addition to being a lead programmer on the overall selection, he curated such programmes as Emerging Voices from Southeast Asia and Cinema do Brasil. He has participated in many international festivals as a juror (Hot Docs, DocPoint, Guanajuato International Film Festival) and as an expert/tutor (DocMontevideo, FESPACO, If/Then Shorts Global Pitch, DocNet Southeast Asia, Guadalajara Doculab).

Yasaman Sharifmanesh

Director and Winner of Best Nordic Documentary 2021 for Aboli’s Journey.

Yasaman Sharifmanesh is originally from Iran but moved to Sweden in 2015. She studied directing of cinema at Tehran Sooreh University and is currently completing a master’s program in Media & Communication at Lund University. Yasaman is a photographer and documentary filmmaker focused on human crises in the Middle East. Her recent documentary Aboli’s Journey took place in Afghanistan and the current project that she is working on, I am an olive tree, unfolds in Syria. 

Filipp Kruusvall 

Documentary Film Commissioner at the Estonian Film Institute.

Filipp Kruusvall has been Documentary Film Commissioner at the Estonian Film Institute since 2018. He has been an organiser and programmer for DocPoint Tallinn documentary film festival for many years and initiator of Documentary Workshop ICE&FIRE DOCS in cooperation with Estonian and Finnish Documentary Guilds. He has organised different cultural events like Tallinn 2011 European Capital of Culture.

Filipp is also a freelance film critic and a member of the Estonian Association of Film Journalists and the board Estonian Filmmakers Association. 

Filipp has studied political science, psychology and Slavonic Languages and Cultures. 

Susanne Guggenberger

Artistic Director at Bildrausch Filmfest Basel.

Susanne Guggenberger has been producing documentaries for Mira Film since 2012, recent titles of Mira Film are Taming the Garden (2021, Salomé Jashi), Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes (2018, Sophie Huber). Susanne is passionate about aesthetic diversity and film as a medium for exploring realities. As an analogue counterpart she has been creating mail art for decades that has been gifted to her pen friends.

Since October 2021 she is the artistic director of Bildrausch Film Festival Basel which presents an exquisite selection of outstanding films. She is a Member of Motion Picture and Science (AMPAS), European Women’s Audiovisual Network (EWA), Swiss Women’s Audiovisual Network (SWAN), International Documentary Association (IDA).

Born in the Austrian Alps, Susanne studied communication science and history at the University of Salzburg. Since 1998 Susanne worked with a focus on documentary film with various production companies in Vienna. She gained experience in distribution at Autlook Filmsales as well as through her roles at DOK Leipzig and Visions du Réel. 

Best Nordic Short Film

The Best Nordic Short Film Award is presented to one of the 19 films selected for the competition. The award goes to the director(s) of the winning film. The prize-winning film will qualify for consideration in the Short Film Category of The Academy Awards. The cash award of 5.000 € is sponsored by the Danish Film Directors and the Swedish Film Directors.

Jana Bringlöv

Director, received the Honourable Mention Best Nordic Short Film 2021 for Nights and Days in July. 

Based in Umeå, Västerbotten, Sweden. Started with make up and mask in the theatre, then for some years doing continuity and costume for short films and make upon TV. She wrote the script and acted in Victor Lindgrens short films Undress me and I turn to you. She has directed four short films since 2016, @janabringlove, Sunny girl, Nights and days in July, The Lonely Cougar and The Heartbroken Stud.

Hilke Doering

Head of the International Competition, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

Born in 1966, raised in Germany and Switzerland. She studied sociology in Bielefeld and Paris and did research on visual sociology and ethnography. She has been with the Festival since 1995 in the capacity of Head of the International Competition and international festival relations. In this context she has been a member of the board of the European Coordination of Film Festivals from 1996 to 2000 and has been president of the International Short Film Conference from 1998 to 2003 and founding member of the Eureopean Short Film Network (ESFN) in 2018. She has been jury member at numerous international film festivals and has curated film programmes world wide. 

Opal H. Bennett

Co-Producer and Shorts Producer POV.

Opal is an Emmy-winning Co-Producer and Shorts Producer at POV. Her first season curating POV Shorts won the 2020 IDA Award for Best Short Form Series and the series broadcast the 2021 NewsDoc Emmy Winner for Short Documentary, The Love Bugs. Previously Opal was Shorts Programmer and Director of Artist Development at DOC NYC and Senior Programmer at Athena Film Festival. Prior to that, Opal also worked with Nantucket Film Festival, Aspen ShortsFest, Tribeca Film Festival and Gotham (formerly IFP). She is a Programming Consultant for the March on Washington Film Festival. Opal has served on juries for SxSW, HotDocs, Cleveland, Milwaukee and Seattle International Film Festivals and IndieMemphis Film Festival among others. She has also served on the shorts selection committees for Cinema Eye Honors and the IDA. Opal has participated on various selection committees for film programming and grants. A Columbia Law grad, Opal holds a Masters in Media Studies from the LSE, and received her B.A. from New York University.

New Nordic Voice

The New Nordic Voice competition introduces promising Nordic filmmakers. Their work has not previously been screened in the Nordisk Panorama Film Festival competition programme, and the selected films are among the first releases by the filmmaker. The cash award of 5.000 € is sponsored by AVEK and Film i Skåne.

Cecilie Debell

Director and winner of New Nordic Voice 2021 with the film Skál.

Graduated with a degree in journalism from Roskilde University in 2015. Her long form documentary debut Min mor er pink (2017) was selected for more than 10 international film festivals, including CPH:DOX and Sheffield DocFest.

Barbara Orlicz

Head of Programme Department at Krakow Film Festival.

Head of programme department at the Krakow Film Festival, one of the most important festivals for documentary and short films in Poland. She graduated from the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, worked in a film distribution company, and, since 2003, she has been working for the Krakow Film Foundation. She runs the KFF Sales&Promotion agency, established in 2005 to strengthen the international promotion of Polish documentary, animated, and short films. She is a member of the Polish Film Academy, has served as a juror at many festivals, coordinated many projects connected to the film, and is also a lecturer in the film department at Krakow University.

Hallur Örn Árnason

Producer and Co-founder of IceDocs Film Festival. 

Hallur Örn Árnason is co-founder of IceDocs (Iceland Documentary Film Festival) and works as a producer and programmer for the festival. Concurrently he works as an independent film producer and director for his company Noumena Films, which is mainly focused on documentary productions and also works as a teacher in filmmaking. Hallur studied philosophy at the University of Iceland, filmmaking at the Icelandic Film School and did a MA in arts education in the Icelandic University of the Arts.