Gabrielé Cegialyté
Gabrielė Cegialytė is a short film industry professional from Vilnius, Lithuania. Since 2016, she’s been building a strong career at the Lithuanian short film agency Lithuanian Shorts, a prominent NGO fostering short film culture, both domestically and internationally. Gabrielė’s role within the Lithuanian Shorts agency encompasses a wide range of responsibilities, from project management to short film curation and strategic promotion, and representation of the Lithuanian short film industry. She has been an integral member of the Vilnius Short Film Festival team for almost a decade, transitioning through different roles and ascending to the position of Managing Director in 2022. She has been the manager of the Baltic Pitching Forum since 2017, leading short film industry events in the Baltic region, and in 2018 she joined the BPF selection committee.
Oskar Forstén
Oskar Forstén studied filmmaking in several schools in Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom in 1998–2009. In 2007, he co-founded the production company Polygraf with Arthur Franck, where he’s produced around thirty titles from short films to documentary series and feature-length documentaries.
His latest film, Hard to Break (dir. Heinonen & Moisio, 2024) won the Main Prize (National Competition) at Tampere Film Festival 2024 and premiered at IDFA.
After fifteen years of film producing, Oskar now works as film commissioner at the Center for Advancement of Audiovisual Culture (AVEK).
Fariba Haidari
Fariba Haidari is an Afghanistan-born Sweden-based filmmaker. She has studied film and photography and attended multiple workshops and additional courses. Between 2008 and 2012, Haidari taught film education courses for young girls in Afghanistan while also working on several films in the area. Her focus is in documentaries and short films. Her short documentary Leila won the Guldbagge Award in 2023, and multiple awards at various film festivals in 2024. Haidari works as a nurse and does filmmaking part-time.
Ivan Ramljak
Ivan Ramljak (born 1974) is a filmmaker and independent curator. In 2003 he founded the Human Rights Film Festival in Zagreb, Croatia. From 2013 to 2022 he curated the Short Tuesday film program at cinema Tuškanac in Zagreb. From 2016 to 2023 he was the artistic director of Tabor Film Festival, the oldest short film festival in Croatia. Since 2022 he has been a member of the short film committee at IFFR (International Film Festival Rotterdam), responsible for watching films from Eastern Europe and Nordic countries, and also a scout for features from ex-Yugoslavian territories.
So far Ramljak has directed eleven films, mostly documentaries. His films has been shown at more than 80 international festivals all over the world (IFFR, Cinéma du Réel, Dok Leipzig, Sarajevo FF, Dokufest, GoEast…), and won several awards.
Ariunaa Tserenpil
Ariunaa Tserenpil is the arts, film & media producer of the Guru Media, a Mongolian based production company with extensive experience in arts administration, advocacy, international co-productions, festival management and training opportunities for emerging young filmmakers for over 20 years. Her career in the arts & film started in 1996 as line-producer of the internationally acclaimed films State of Dogs (Brosens & Turmunkh) and Real Men Eat Meat (Maria von Heland). Later she was the coordinator and then director (1997–2002) of the Arts & Culture Programme of the Mongolian Foundation for Open Society (Soros Foundation) to promote contemporary arts in transition society. In 2002 she has founded the Arts Council of Mongolia, the flagship organization in supporting arts and served as Executive Director till 2015. During her tenure, she initiated and sustained number of international film festivals & training opportunities for local filmmakers including the Interdoc Int’l Documentary Film Festival (Interdoc 1997–1999), Mini Margaret Mead International Documentary Film Festival (2009), Easy Meets West – International Film Festival & Forum (2010) and three editions of the Ulaanbaatar International Film Festival (UBIFF), the biggest international film gathering in Mongolia.
In 2008 she founded with her husband an independent film & media production company called Guru Media and produced internationally acclaimed films like Passion & Remote Control by Byamba Sakhya, which were selected at more than 30 well known international film festivals and won multiple international & national awards including the New Current Award at Busan IFF 2013, which was the first prestigious award in the last 30 years of the Mongolian film history.
