Juries

 

INTERNATIONAL JURY

David Borenstein, Christian Frei, and Oliver Sertić

 

REGIONAL JURY

Dalija Dozet, Murtada Elfadl, and Clara Trischler 

 

SHORT & YOUNG JURY

Jamillah van der Hulst, Jozo Schmuch, and Oleksii Yeroshenko

 

MOVIES THAT MATTER JURY

Ondrej Kamenicky, Maja Prettner and Lidija Zelović

 

FIPRESCI JURY

Petra Belc Krnjaić, Isabel Jacobs and Ana Stanić

 

TEEN DOX JURY

Pupils of X. gymnasium „Ivan Supek”:
Marija Batur, Lana Katanić, Nika Kovač, Marta Krpan, Lena Ljubičić, Ana Novak, Lea Semenčić, Edo Tomaš and Lucija Vrljić.

 

David Borenstein

David Borenstein is a filmmaker based in Copenhagen. His award-winning films include Can’t Feel Nothing (CPH: DOX 2024), Love Factory (NYTimes 2021), and Dream Empire (IDFA 2016). In addition to his feature work, David has produced and directed television for countless international broadcasters, earning him the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His film Mr Nobody Against Putin (2025) won an Academy Award in 2026.

 

Christian Frei

Swiss director and producer Christian Frei is widely regarded as one of the most innovative and compelling voices in contemporary documentary filmmaking. He received an Academy Award nomination for War Photographer (2001) and won the World Cinema Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival for Space Tourists (2009). Four films he produced premiered in competition at Sundance, where Genesis 2.0 (2018) was awarded the Special Jury Award for Cinematography. 

 

Oliver Sertić

Oliver Sertić is a documentary producer and festival programmer from Croatia. Until now, he has produced and co-produced around 40 feature and short documentary and experimental films. For 18 years, he worked as a journalist and editor-in-chief in different media and as an organizer of cultural events. He is the founder of the organization Restart (2007), where he established Restart Laboratory, Dokukino, and the distribution department Restart Label. For the last 15 years, he has been tutoring at the School of Documentary Film in Zagreb. Sertić has cooperated with numerous film festivals as a PR, programmer, producer, and advisor (Zagreb FF, ZagrebDox, DokuFest, Vukovar FF, Makedox, DORF, RAF, Supetar Super FF, and Moldox, among others). Since 2007, he has worked as a selector and a programming director at the Liburnia Film Festival, a Croatian documentary film festival in Opatija.

 

Dalija Dozet

Dalija Dozet graduated in Fiction Film Directing from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. As a director and screenwriter, she is active in different creative and commercial projects of all lengths and in film education. President of Zagreb Film Club and the founder of Filmska RUNDA in Osijek. In her work she utilises differnet film genres to explore the issues of closeness, loss and impossibility of communication. Currently she is developing  one fiction and one animated project. My Dad's Lessons is her feature documentary debut.

 

Murtada Elfadl

Murtada Elfadl is a leading culture writer, critic, and film curator. Originally from Khartoum, Sudan, he is currently based in New York City. His writing has been published at Variety, The A.V. Club, and Backstage. He hosts the Izzy and Murtada Picture Show podcast. In addition to the DOC NYC Documentary Film Festival, Murtada works as a programmer at NewFest, New York’s LGBTQ Film Festival.

Clara Trischler 

After studying at the European Film College in Denmark, Clara Trischler lived in Israel for a year, where, in addition to her work at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Documentation Archive, she collaborated on films and film festivals and wrote articles about everyday life in Jerusalem. After several film and festival jobs in Berlin and New York, she completed screenwriting studies at the Vienna Film Academy and the Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte Buenos Aires, rediscovering her love for documentary film (which began with Hi8 camera experiments as a teenager). This led her to Berlin, where she studied documentary directing at the Konrad Wolf Film University in Babelsberg. She lives and works in Berlin and Vienna.

 

Jamillah van der Hulst

Jamillah van der Hulst graduates with a degree in marketing from the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. After working as a marketing and communications manager for international NGOs such as Right To Play, Free A Girl, and Stars in Their Eyes, she shifts her focus to filmmaking. In 2012, Jamillah founds JaJa Film Productions. As a producer on both feature and documentary films, Jamillah quickly develops a passion for directing. After creating several well-received 1-minute films and the documentary series Women with a Mission, she directs her first full-length documentary, Fighting for Life, in 2018. The film wins the Peace and Sport Documentary Prize at the prestigious SPORTEL Awards in Monaco.

 

Jozo Schmuch

Jozo Schmuch is a director of documentary and short fiction films. His documentary works include A New Mustang Is Born Every Day (2018) and Hotel Mama (2021), the latter of which was screened in the regional competition at ZagrebDox. He has also directed the short fiction films Women of My Age (2019) and Severina's Dog (2024), which was featured in the Kockica program of the Zagreb Film Festival.

 

Oleksii Yeroshenko

Oleksii Yeroshenko is a documentary film director, producer, and co-founder of Spoluka Films, an independent production company. He began his career as a multimedia journalist and producer in Kharkiv, documenting the Russian-Ukrainian war for two years. Covering frontline stories and deoccupied territories, he developed a cinematic approach that captures both resilience and fragility. Oleksii has worked on films for ARTE, ITV, Suspilne, and Takflix. He contributed as a cameraman and assistant producer to The Grave (2023), a British-Ukrainian feature documentary nominated for the Royal Television Society Award.

 

Ondřej Kamenický

Ondřej Kamenický is the Director of the One World International Human Rights Film Festival. Ondřej studied cinema studies at the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University in Prague, curator studies at Faculty of Art and Design at the University of J. E. Purkyně, and has been part of the festival since 2009. One World is held in Prague and other sixty cities and towns in the Czech Republic, shows documentaries and fiction films on human rights, social, political, environmental and media issues and includes disscusions with authors, panel debates, social impact projects, screenings for schools, and the East Doc Platform for the film industry. One World distributes films, assists new festivals, is an active member of the Human Rights Film Network, the Green Film Network, and the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk, and organizes the One World Festival in Brussels. 

 

Maja Prettner

Maja Prettner holds an MA in Film Directing from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She has been working as a screenwriter and director on an awarded documentary and fiction television series with different television broadcasters. Her films have been shown at film festivals in Slovenia and abroad. Home Sweet Home (2017) was her first awarded documentary feature. Her latest documentary feature Woman of God was awarded the Al Jazeera Balkan Star Award, as well as the Audience Award, Fipresci Award and Best Editing Award at Slovenian Film Festival. The film had its premiere at Hot Docs Canadian Documentary Film Festival in Toronto. Currently she is developing her first fiction feature.

 

Lidija Zelović

Lidija Zelović was born 1970 in Yugoslavia. She studied Yugoslav literature and Serbo-Croatian language at the University of Sarajevo and had worked on Bosnian Television. Lidija moved to The Netherlands and has been living there ever since 1993. She graduated with a Masters of Arts degree from the Film & Television Science Department at the University of Amsterdam. Starting in 1997, Lidija has worked as a researcher and subsequently as a director, script writer and producer at various television channels, including several Dutch television broadcasters, in the United Kingdom for Channel 4 and BBC, as well as at the German/French ARTE channel. From 2007 until 2019, Lidija was a lecturer of the Screenplay Writing and Research for Documentary Film to students enrolled in Political Science majors at University of Amsterdam.

 

Petra Belc Krnjaić

Petra Belc Krnjaić is a researcher, writer, and curator specializing in avant-garde art and film culture, with a focus on amateur cinema, experimental film, and feminist perspectives. She holds a PhD from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb and teaches at the University of Klagenfurt and the VERN University in Zagreb. Her interdisciplinary approach is grounded in philosophy, comparative religion, and women's studies, combining aesthetic, political, and historical inquiry. She has published widely in scholarly and cultural journals and curated film programs, exhibitions, and educational events across the region, with lectures at institutions including the Sorbonne, NYU, Columbia University, and Paris College of Art. At Kinoklub Zagreb she coordinates the heritage department and the preservation of analogue film and related materials. She is a member of the Croatian Freelance Artists' Association and serves as vice-president of the Croatian Society of Film Critics.

 

Isabel Jacobs

Isabel Jacobs is a film critic and philosopher based in London and Prague. Her writing has appeared in Senses of Cinema, Little White Lies, e-flux Notes, and the East European Film Bulletin. She regularly reports from major international festivals, with a focus on experimental and documentary cinema from Central, Eastern and South-East Europe.

 

Ana Stanić

Ana Stanić is a Berlin-based video journalist, filmmaker and critic. Working across film and art she moves between documentary journalism and visual exploration. Leading Cineuropa’s video output, she is producing interviews and festival coverage as a one-woman production unit. She teaches video journalism in the film festival context, engaging with emerging critics and the shifting forms of film criticism.