Young Jury

John Appel is a film director and producer born in 1958 in Wognum, Netherlands. He graduated from the Dutch Film and Television Academy in 1987. Author of more than 40 films for cinema and television, he is well known for his personal style in documentary filmmaking, coming close to his protagonists, based on what he calls "emotional research." In 1993. he made Johnny Meijer, his first feature documentary. Award winning André Hazes – She Believes in Me (1999) was a big cinema hit in the Netherlands. The Player (2009) was awarded best Dutch documentary at IDFA. Award winning Wrong Time Wrong Place screened at 2013 ZagrebDox, while The Magic of Editing (2015), a film about the artistic and ethical dilemmas in the documentaries editing room, screened at the 2016 festival edition and Appel held a masterclass on the same topic. He has collaborated as a mentor at many international workshops, gives masterclasses all over the world and was a jury member at major festivals.

Jelena Maksimović earned her master’s degree in film and TV editing from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. Since 2015, she teaches at the Department of Digital Art of the Faculty of Media and Communication in Belgrade. She has edited, co-directed and co-written films screened at festivals in Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Locarno, Rotterdam, Toronto (Hot Docs), Sarajevo, etc. She has taught at the regional film workshop ACTIVE in Kruševo (2015), KVV film workshop in Sarajevo (2016), Free Zone Junior in Belgrade (2016), Beldocs documentary projects workshop in Belgrade (2017), Dokufest workshop for high school students in Prizren, Kosovo (2017). Her recent accolades include the award for best editing for Moonless Summer at Martovski Festival of short and documentary film (Belgrade, 2014), best editing for Transition at Martovski and the Pančevo Film Festival (2016), best editing for Depth Two at Beldocs (Blegrade, 2016) and Martovski (Belgrade, 2017). 

Alen Munitić started the Mediterranean Film Festival Split in 2008, after 10 years of experience working on different Croatian festivals, such as Zagreb Film Festival, Motovun Film Festival, ZagrebDox and Animafest Zagreb. The Mediterranean Film Festival Split (FMFS) takes place annually in June. The festival focuses on feature and short, fiction and documentary films from Mediterranean countries. Apart from feature films, great attention is dedicated to short films and industry workshops for young filmmakers. In 2012, he started Kino Mediteran, a cinema revival project on Croatian islands and coastal towns where cinemas have been closed for a long time. In 2019, Kino Mediteran screened 157 films in 858 screenings with 59,070 visitors in 30 cities. Kino Mediteran is also a regional distributor focusing on European independent films. Since 2018, Alen is president of the Croatian Independent Cinemas Network ‘Kino Mreža’.