Jury 2009

Matti Hagelberg

was born in Kirkkonummi, Finland in 1964. He started his professional career in 1992 with an 8-page self-published mini comic B.E.M. 2 The hero of Mars (Marsin Sankari). The B.E.M. series has now reached edition #13 with Kova Länsi, published by Kreegah Bundolo in Finland. In 2004 Mr. Hagelberg finished the 200-page B.E.M. #12 Kekkonen, the biography of the former Finnish president Urho Kekkonen.

Matti Hagelberg has been widely published in various anthologies all over Europe. Recently three books have been published by L'association publishing house in France: Holmenkollen in 2002, Le Sultan De Vénus et autres möelles d'invertébrés in 2003, and Kekkonen in 2007. Other books published in France are Universal Pictures, Mr Mokamat and Zombie Justice (all published by Le Dernier Cri) and The Sinful Ways of Simpli City (published by Chacal Puant). He is currently working on the third part of the trilogy, of which Holmenkollen and Kekkonen represent the first two parts. This 150-page book will come out in Finnish in the year 2010.

Apart from comics Matti Hagelberg has written an opera based on his comics in association with Karla Loppi, Mastersingers of Mars (Marsin mestarilaulajat, 2000), composed by Kimmo Hakola.
Since 1998 he has been teaching comics at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, where he lives and works.

Katariina Lillqvist

(born in 1963 in Tampere, Finland) has worked as film editor, scriptwriter, producer and director for about 20 years. She studied film in Finland and Czech Republic. In the latter her work involved mostly puppet animation, while in Finland it also included documentaries and features for TV and radio. A grant for further studies for documentary fieldwork in Oaxaca, Mexico in 1998 lead her towards her current topics: Short films about the minority problems and human rights issues.

Together with other Finnish professionals, she established her own production company, Film Co-operative Camera Cagliostro, in 1998. Katariina Lillqvist is probably the most internationally known Finnish animation artist. Her films have won several international awards, including a 1996 Silver Bear in Berlin for The Country Doctor (Maalaislääkäri). In November 2006 she got the highly acclaimed Finnish National Arts Award for her career as a filmmaker.

Over the years, she has been working together with legendary Czech artists like animators Vlasta Pospíšilová and Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, as well as within the famous studio of the late Jiří Trnka.
During the 90´s Lillqvist created her unique style together with scenographer Minna Soukka and main composer Arkadi Kopyt. The famous Kafka trilogy - Rider on the Bucket (Hiilisangolla ratsastaja, 1992); The Chamberstork (Kamarihaikara, 1993); and The Country Doctor (1996) - was an experimental, non-conformist and extraordinary project.

Most of Katariina´s films are truly pacifistic, like The Country Doctor, based on the stories and memories of the Sarajevo refugees and then dramatized into the storyline of the story by Kafka.

In Finland, her best known work is her last animation Far Away from Ural (Uralin perhonen), which created a nation-wide storm in the spring of 2008. The ghosts and secrets from the Finnish Civil War raised once more from their graves, and their stories were not loved by everyone.

photo: Jyrki Nisonen

Anna Solanas

has been working in the world of puppet animation for 8 years, shooting shoulder to shoulder with Marc Riba. They have made 4 short films which have been selected in more than 400 festivals around the world, winning 60 prizes and a nomination for a Goya, the prize awarded by the Spanish Film Academy. These are: Black is the Colour of the Gods (El negre és el color dels déus), Lupe & Bruno (La Lupe i en Bruno), Violeta (Violeta, la pescadora del mar negro), and Cabaret Kadne.

Through their production company, I+G Stop Motion, created in 2005, they are currently filming their 5th short film entitled The Twin Girls of Sunset Street (Les Bessones del Carrer de Ponent), as well as developing a new series entitled Triton, the Little Wizard (Tritón, el pequeño hechicero), the pilot episode of which is scheduled to be aired in autumn 2009. They are also developing a feature-length film Errònia.

They have found, and with each production developed, their own inimitable style, portraying a world full of misfits and rebels. They pay special attention to the complex and contradictory universe inhabited by children, where innocence, imagination and ingenuity remain inextricably entwined with cruelty, selfishness and petty obsessions. The powerful theme of sexuality also features in their work, ever present in our lives and certainly in that of children, from a very early age.

Ron Dyens

has received a Master's degree in Communication from the French communication and journalism school CELSA and a postgraduate certificate in Modern Literature. After that in 1999 he became the Director of I'Archipel Paris cinema. At the same time, he created Sacrebleu Productions, a production society dedicated to short films.

Since then, Sacrebleu Productions has produced about 30 short films which have been selected for more than 700 national and international festivals.

Since some years ago the activities of Sacrebleu have become diversified into the fields of animation and documentary. In animation, the films produced - Madagascar, Travel Diary (Madagascar, carnet de voyage), The White Wolf (Le loup blanc), The Memory of Dogs (La memoria dei cani), Imago..., etc. - have made use of all the various techniques: mixed 2D/3D computer animation, volume, paper cut-outs. They have been selected for the most prestigious festivals, among which are Cannes, Venice, Hiroshima, Stuttgart, and Annecy.

Sacrebleu is currently in the process of finishing the writing on a developed synopsis of a feature-length animation film, as well as a TV series project of 26 3-minute episodes entitled Kroak.
Ron Dyens is also a director of short films, which have been presented at festivals such as Cannes, Clermont-Ferrand, and Brest. His films have been bought by all the French television channels.

Raimund Krumme

was born in 1950 in Cologne, Germany. He is an independent animation filmmaker who also directs commercials for the American and Japanese markets. In 1996, he moved from his home in Berlin to Los Angeles.

His animated shorts Ropedancers (Seiltänzer), Spectators (Zuschauer), Crossroads (Die Kreuzung), Passage and The Message have won many international awards, including the Premier Prix du Jury in Annecy, the Bundesfilmpreis-Filmband in Gold (Bonn), Silver Dragon (Cracow) and Grand Prix for animation (Montreal).

For the film The Choir of the Prisoners (Der Gefangenenchor), based on a scene in Beethoven's opera Fidelio, he worked for the first time with actors and dancers. Backgrounds and light were computer generated.

He taught at the University of Minas Gerais, Brasil, CalArts (Califonia) and at the Filmakademie Halle. He also worked at the research department of the Institut National d'Audiovisuel in Paris. He currently resides in Berlin. In 2006 he became an instructor at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne.