International Competition

Jafar Panahi is a director, writer and  producer from Iran. His films are known for portraying realistic images of the Iranian society, causing them to be banned from the screen in Iran. Panahi was arrested twice. The second time for 86 days when finally the Iranian government, pressured by the solidarity of international film festivals and well known filmmakers, released him on bail. Panahi has won a number of human right prizes, such as the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and The Medal of Art for Freedom. His first feature, The White Balloon, premiered in 1977 in Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and won the Camera d’Or. The Circle premiered in 2003 in Venice and won the Golden Lion. Crimson Gold premiered in Un Certain Regard in Cannes and won The Jury Prize. Offside premiered in 2010 in Berlin and won the Silver Bear for Best Director. This Is Not a Film premiered in 2012 in Cannes Official Selection in Special Screening. Closed Curtain premiered in 2013 in Berlin and won the Silver Bear for Best Script. Taxi premiered in 2015 in Berlin and won the Golden Bear Award. 3 Faces premiered in Cannes in 2018 and won the Best Screenplay Award.

Laura Poitras is a filmmaker and journalist. Citizenfour, the third instalment of her post-9/11 trilogy, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Part one of the trilogy, My Country, My Country, about the U.S. occupation of Iraq, was nominated for an Academy Award. Part two, The Oath, focused on Guantanamo and the "war on terror", and was nominated for two Emmy awards. In 2006, the U.S. government placed her on a secret terrorist watchlist and for six years she was detained and interrogated at the U.S. border each time she travelled internationally.  In 2014, in the aftermath of the NSA/Snowden revelations, high-level CIA officials lobbied to designate Poitras as an "information broker" and "agent of a foreign power" to pave the way for her prosecution. The effort was not carried out. She is a co-founder of The Intercept, First Look Media, and Field of Vision where she funded and executive produced over 100 documentaries, including five Academy Award nominated films.

Anthony Chen is a writer, director and producer from Singapore. He was trained at film school in Singapore and then at the National Film and Television School in the UK. He is the first Singaporean to be awarded at Cannes with his 2007 short, Ah Ma. After a string of award-winning shorts, his debut feature Ilo Ilo (2013) premiered at the 66th Cannes Film Festival and was awarded the Camera d’Or, making history again as the first feature from Singapore to be awarded at Cannes. Ilo Ilo went on to win 40 awards internationally and sold to over 30 countries, becoming the most successful arthouse film in the history of Singapore cinema, both commercially and critically. His Wet Season (2019) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was once again critically lauded, garnering twelve awards. It was Singapore’s submission to the Academy Awards for Best International Film.

Malik Vitthal is a writer and director from USA. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he graduated from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. He co-wrote his feature directorial debut Imperial Dreams, which was developed at the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab and the Jerusalem International Film Lab. Imperial Dreams premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award: Best of NEXT. Vitthal's second film, Body Cam was released by Paramount Pictures.

Dominga Sotomayor, born in Chile, is a writer, director, co-founder of the production company CINESTACIóN and CCC, Centro de Cine y Creación, a new arthouse cinema and center in Santiago. Her first feature film Thursday Till Sunday was developed at the Cannes Cinéfondation Residence and won the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2012. In 2013, she co-directed the short film The Island that also won the Tiger Award at Rotterdam. In 2015, she premiered Mar at the Berlinale Forum and co-directed the collective film Here in Lisbon in Portugal. For her film Too Late To Die Young, (2018) she became the first woman to receive the Leopard for Best Direction at Locarno Film Festival. She has made videos and photographs for exhibitions like Little Sun (Olafur Eliasson) at Tate Modern 2012. Currently, she is Visitor Professor in the Department of Art, Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University.

David Lowery is an American writer, director, editor and producer. Apart from a series of short films, including the award-winning Lullaby, he directed the fantasy adventure Pete’s Dragon (2016), produced by Disney, and two films with Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck: Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013) and Ghost Story (2017). The film The Green Knight (2021), Lowery’s critically acclaimed recent title starring Dev Patel and Alicia Vikander is a 14th century knight poem adaptation. He is currently finishing the film that will feature a new screen interpretation of J. M. Barrie’s iconic children’s novel Peter Pan and Wendy. In 2011 he founded his own production company Sailor Bear.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a writer and director from Thailand. He began making film and video shorts in 1994, and completed his first feature in 2000. He has also mounted exhibitions and installations in many countries since 1998. Often non-linear, with a strong sense of dislocation, his works deal with memory, subtly addressed personal politics and social issues. His art projects and feature films have won him widespread recognition and numerous festival prizes, including two prizes (Special Jury Prize, and Palme d’Or) from the Cannes Film Festival. In 2012, he was invited to participate in dOCUMENTA (13), one of the most well-known art exhibitions in Kassel, Germany. In 2016, a retrospective of his films was presented at Tate Modern, London. In 2019, Apichatpong was awarded the Artes Mundi prize, the UK's largest prize for international contemporary art. His latest film from 2021, Memoria, sets in Colombia and features actress Tilda Swinton.