BPF 2013 - Panelists & Trainers

Sirkka Möller (Germany)

Sirkka Möller holds an MA in Social Anthropology and Dutch and Nordic Philology. She has worked in festival programming, international film sales, project development and subtitling and is a regularmoderator and panellist at film events. Some of the festivals Sirkka has programmed for are DOK Leipzig, the Sheffield International Documentary Festival, FID Marseille, the Fribourg International Film Festival, Kassel Dokfest and the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival. She has represented world sales agent Deckert Distribution at international festivals and markets from 2007-2011. She is currently living in Berlin, working as a freelance film curator and project consultant for film productions. Since 2008, Sirkka has been coordinating the Berlinale Talent Campus project development lab Doc Station.

Selina Ukwuoma (UK)

Selina Ukwuoma is a freelance script consultant and trainer with experience as a development executive for EON Screenwriters’ Workshop and for Cuba Pictures, the production arm of literary agency Curtis Brown. She enjoys working with filmmakers at all stages of their careers and has worked on a number of projects including the BAFTA-winning film, BOY A. Selina regularly leads workshops in screenwriting at the National Film and Television School in the UK and mentors at the Talent Campuses of the Berlin and Sarajevo Film Festivals, working each year with exciting new filmmakers from around the world. She has alsotutored and lectured at the London Film School and the University of Westminster.

Tristan Priimägi (Estonia)

Tristan Priimägi is working as the head of international relations in the Estonian Film Institute. He graduated from the Semiotics department in Tartu University, and has since then been involved in films, writing in press and giving lectures. He is also one of the founders of the Docpoint Tallinn Documentary Film Festival.

Domenico La Porta (Belgium)

In the day time, 36 years old Domenico La Porta is a film journalist based in Belgium. He works as an industry reporter and Chief Editor at one of the leading European film promotion press platforms cineuropa. org. In the evening, Domenico is co-hosting the movie related talk show ‘Cine station’ on Belgium’s national TV channel RTBF where he also works as a film critic. At night, he’s the founder and director of KWEB, a company dealing with transmedia storytelling, cross-platform movie promotion, crowd strategies, media and a/v production. This new experimenting ground fuels him with all the excitement he needs to kick start the next day.

Thom Palmen (Sweden)

Thom Palmen is one of the founders of the Umeå International Film Festival in Sweden. He has been invited as a jury member to numerous film Festivals, notably in Berlin, Sofia, Regensburg, Dresden, Cottbus,Aix-en-Provence, Poznan, Bratislava, Hamburg, Tampere and Puchon (Korea). In order to help talented young filmmakers from the North of Sweden he started his own distribution company: Botnia Film. Currently he’s working as a curator for a number of festivals and parallell to that as a producer and developing projects within the field of the cinema and gaming industry. His first co-production, In the Theme (director Olga Popova, Russia) was selected and awarded at the Berlinale Shorts 2008.

Laurent Crouzeix (France)

Laurent Crouzeix is Co-Executive Director in the association ‘Sauve qui peut lecourt métrage’, where he is in charge of the international development of the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival and the Short Film Market. After Modern Languages and Civilisation studies at the Université Blaise Pascal (Clermont- Ferrand) and Goldsmiths’ College (University of London) he started working on the production of the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in 1995, and joined the International Selection Committee in 1997. In 2001 he joined the permanent staff at ‘Sauve qui peut le court métrage’ and today he is a film programmer for the Festival and also manages a network of over 30 international festivals using the www.shortfilmdepot.com online platform. Since 2009, he’s coordinator of Euro Connection as part of the Short Film Market industry events.

Sari Volanen (Finland)

Sari Volanen is a commissioning editor at YLE Finnish Broadcasting company. She works at YLE’s Co-production department producing short and documentary films mainly with Finnish independent film makers and producers. She is in charge of a strand called New Cinema on YLE/Teema channel. New Cinema is an open-end strand on Mondays at 23.00. The main focus of New Cinema is on cinematographic films with human interest topics both in documentary and fiction films. The films in the strand are acquired through co-productions (main producer Finnish), prebuys and acquisitions.

Natalie Gravenor (Germany)

Natalie Gravenor was born in Oakland (USA),. Dipl. Degree in Mass Communication at Berlin University of the Arts. Co-director (with Gloriana Selvanathan), screenwriter, editor of the cultural documentaries “A Thirst for Life” and “Stefan Norby”. Freelance author for Moving Pictures Berlinale, Screen International, The Wire, Time Out Guide Berlin. Curator of Klipzona – Music Videos from Eastern Europe archival programs at b.film*digital vision festival Berlin (travelled to Club Transmediale Berlin, Astigmatic Kino Plock/Poland, Grezlandfilmtage Selb/Germany, Exground Filmfestival Wiesbaden, VideoEX Zurich and other festivals). 2004 to date project coordinator One World Berlin Edition Human Rights Media Festival, curator/programmer for EYZ Media; acquisitions, project development, operation of the streaming platform realeyz.tv and educational rights online platform realeyz.tv E-Learning.

Anneli Ahven (Estonia)

Studied German studies in Estonian University of Humanities and film production at Film Studies of University of Hamburg, Germany. Since 1995 works for Estonian production company Exitfilm, since 2002 producer for both feature and documentary films. 2006 found together with Kaspar Kaljas the production company Kopli Kinokompanii. Member of the board of the Association of Estonian Film Producers. Associate professor and the head of production studies at Baltic Film and Media School. Producer On The Move 2010 / European Film promotion initiative during Cannes Film Festival. Member of European Film Academy.

Jean-Yves Roubin (Belgium)

Jean-Yves Roubin is a manager and producer at FraKas Productions which was established in 2007 in Belgium. In 2009, Jean-Yves together wth Joseph Rouschop & Sylvie Rasquinet established Cinéfinance, a company that is an intermediate for tax shelter financing for Tarantula and Frakas films. In November 2012, Cinéfinance SPRL became Cinéfinance SA, a join venture with « Pôle Image de Liège » and started to finance movies like Ari Folman and Jacques Audiard’s last movie.