Panel Members

An award-winning producer, director, journalist and founder of Fine Point Films, Trevor Birney has a long track record in making high-end documentaries for international distribution. In 2017, he produced No Stone Unturned, directed by Alex Gibney, ELIAN, a CNN Films production directed by Ross McDonnell and Tim Golden, Bobby Sands: 66 Days, directed by Brendan J. Byrne and George Best All By Himself, for ESPN directed by Daniel Gordon. In 2015, along with colleague Brendan J. Byrne, Trevor won the best pitch prize at Hot Docs for a project subsequently commissioned by Netflix Originals, which will be released in 2018.

Vladimir Brnardić is a screenwriter, editor and director, born in 1973. After graduating with a degree in history from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in 1997, he has been working for the Documentary Department of Croatian National Television (HRT) as a journalist and editor. Vladimir is an author of contributions for TV Kalendar and associate on the documentary serial Prošlost u sadašnjosti. He wrote and directed 15 documentaries. Since 2016 he is has been the Editor-in-Chief of the Documentary Department at Croatian Television.

Manuela Buono was born and live in Trieste, Italy. In 2013 she founded production and distribution company Slinghsot Films, specialized in creative documentaries and art-house fiction films with a focus on debuts. She has been involved in film and tv production, and festivals organization for more than 10 years. She was member of the selection committee of Festival dei Popoli, Firenze (2013-15), and she is consultant for several international film markets. Mega Plus 2010 (Media Business School Master in European Audiovisual Management) graduated, she received a Nipkow fellowship in 2011 and was selected for Berlinale Talent in 2014.

Carine holds a double Master Degree in Business and Administration from Laval University in Quebec and from the Grenoble Business School and a Master Degree in Documentary Cinema from Paris 7 University. After a career in sales and marketing in Canada, she decided to follow her passion and work with cinema and documentary films. She was a production manager for several companies producing short movies and documentaries for ten years. Together with Guillaume Morel, in 2010 she founded Survivance, an independent production and distribution company.

Born in Konjic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1972. Lejla Dedić lived, studied and worked in London for 20 years. In 1997 she graduated in Media and Society at South Bank University in London. She has over 20 years of experience working in the media sector: production, post-production and broadcasting. She worked in BBC World Service Trust/Media Action that uses media and communications to help reduce poverty and promote human rights in developing countries. Since 2011, Lejla has been given a role of Producer at Al Jazeera Balkans.

Hanka Kastelicová is the Executive Producer of Documentaries for HBO Europe. Based at the Prague office, she works closely with HBO Europe’s production centres in Warsaw, Budapest and Bucharest, and is responsible for the development and production of HBO Europe’s documentary films. She earned a Master of Arts degree from the Faculty of Film and TV Documentary Department at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. She continued her professional career in Slovenia, where she worked for more than 25 years as a documentary director and producer, and later as a Commissioning Editor and Head of Development of Documentary Programming. As an experienced and dedicated documentary filmmaker, she has been lecturing on documentary filmmaking and served as a moderator and participant on numerous industry panels and other documentary events.

Elizabeth McIntyre is the CEO and Director of Sheffield Doc/Fest, one of the world’s leading documentary festivals. She began her documentary career as a documentary filmmaker, with credits such as the Ed Murrow award-winning The Lost Children of Berlin (Steven Spielberg, Shoah Foundation), No Place Like Home (BBC), Dangerous Love (BBC) and Five Steps to Tyranny (BBC). McIntyre moved to commissioning for the Discovery Channel, with titles such as Ed Stafford Marooned; The Great White Silence and Shackleton in association with the British Film Institute, and The Battle of Ancre and Advance of the Tanks in association with the Imperial War Museum. McIntyre ran Documentary Campus Masterschool 2015 in Berlin, a development and mentoring programme for emerging filmmakers. She is a board member for Women in Film and Television and sits on the BAFTA TV and BAFTA Learning & New Talent Committees.

Marko Njegić is the most active young Croatian film critic, a member of the Croatian Film Critics’ Association and FIPRESCI. A film critic and journalist for the Croatian daily newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija, writing reviews, theme articles, essays and interviews related to film, in addition to his regular film review column. A former associate of Split Film Festival and Mediterranean Film Festival, magazine for film and criticism Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, monthly magazine Hollywood, and he also sat in the jury of many festivals in Croatia and the region. A former member of the Council for Film and Media, City of Split. Late in 2014 his first book FILMoteka was published, a hard-cover best-of summary of his systematic ten-year activity as a film critic. Since April 2017 he is active as an artistic consultant of the Croatian Audiovisual Centre for minority co-productions.

Leena Pasanen started her career as a journalist in 1988 at the Finnish News Agency, first as a reporter and later on as a political commentator from the Parliament house. In 1993 she joined YLE, Finnish Broadcasting Company, where she worked as a reporter, political commentator, subeditor and TV presenter for the current affairs magazine programme on YLE TV1.

After that she was the Head of Documentaries for YLE TV1 in 1999-2000. When YLE launched new digital channels, she was chosen as the Head of Programmes responsible for cultural, factual and fiction programmes in YLE Teema, a channel focusing on culture, science and education. She stayed with the channel until November 2005, when she started working as the Director of EDN, European Documentary Network in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2008 she returned to YLE in Finland as Coordinator of Programmes and at YLE Fact and Culture and later as Coordinator and Senior Advisor at YLE Media and Customer Relations. In 2011 – 2014 she worked in Budapest, Hungary leading the Finnish Institute and also serving as cultural attaché at the Finnish Embassy in Budapest. Years 2015-2019 she was based in Leipzig, Germany directing DOK Leipzig, one of the world leading film festivals for documentaries and animations.

In January 2020 she took over the direction of Biografilm festival in Bologna, Italy. Biografilm festival focuses on current European creative, character driven fiction and documentary films and biopics. She has been a regular expert, tutor and lecturer at several training programmes, for example EDN, Discovery Campus, EURODOC and Television Business School. She was a EURODOC 1999 graduate and a member of the international advisory committee at Hot Docs. She has also been a board member of IDFA Forum, INPUT and the Bonnier’s Journalistic Award in Finland and served as a jury member at several international festivals, among others Sundance and IDFA. 

Andraž Pöschl is the Editor of Documentary Programme, Department of Culture and Arts Programme, TV Slovenia. He began to work for the Slovenian national TV station 20 years ago and spent most of the years working as an author of doc- umentaries. Later he became the editor in charge of Documentary Programme. Between the years 2011 and 2015 he was Editor-in-Chief of Culture and Arts Programme. He is also a member of different commissions and juries both inside and outside TV Slovenia.

Daniel Rafaelić was born in Bitola, Macedonia. He graduated with a degree in history from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, where he later took up a post-graduate course in Croatian history, followed by a PhD in modern and contemporary Croatian history. He worked at the Croatian Cinematheque – Croatian State Archives from 2002 to 2010 as a film scholar/ archivist. From 2007 to 2009 he was Head of Department for Protection and Restoration of Film Heritage. He focused on research of Croatian and world film history, as well as research of film archives with the aim of discovering forgotten and lost film records from Croatia. In 2017 Daniel Rafaelić was appointed CEO of Croatian Audiovisual Centre. He is also an associate at the Academy of Dramatic Art and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb.

lOliver Sertić is a documentary producer and festival programmer from Zagreb, currently living in Berlin. So far he has produced around 30 feature and short documentary and experimental films. For 18 years he worked as a journalist and editor-in-chief in different media and organiser of different cultural events. He is the founder of Restart (2007) where he established Restart Laboratory, Dokukino and Restart Label. 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, Moldox…). Since 2007 he has been the programmer and since 2012 the director of Liburnia Film Festival, a Croatian documentary film festival, in Opatija.

Harry Vaughn is a Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, specialising in US and world documentary features. At the festival, he also leads a Talent Forum initiative that introduces world documentary filmmakers to American film industry representatives. He is a Consulting Programmer for Sundance Institute’s Catalyst Forum and he began his career at the institute in 2011 as an intern and reader for the Feature Film Program, International. Aside from his work at Sundance, Harry is on the board of Dirty Looks, a platform for queer film, video and performance, and he is also a Consulting Programmer for Frameline: San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival. His previous work includes: Senior Programmer for Outfest Los Angeles, Programmer and Coordinator for NewFest in New York and Outfest Fusion. He holds a Master’s degree in Arts Journalism from the University of Southern California and is a Los Angeles native.