The Short Film Competition, which takes place for the first time this year, is featuring 13 short films from different countries. At the end of the festival, Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay awards will find their owners among the films in the program. Azza Chaabouni, Insa Wiese and Sidar Serdar Karakaş are on the jury of the competition.
Azza Chaabouni is a Tunisian researcher, editor and independent festival programmer. She studied cinema at Cinecittà-Rome. She holds a master's degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology. She works as an expert and consultant for film projects and cultural organizations. She teaches cinema and visual anthropology at Higher Institute of Applied Studies in Humanities-Kef in Tunisia. She is also responsible of TATWIR, a new development program for creative documentary initiated by Doc House-Tunisia.
Insa Wiese was born in the Netherlands. She studied art and German language and literature in Oldenburg. She made her own short films and organized the zwergWERK Short Film Festival in Oldenburg. After working at the Hamburg Short Film Festival for a while, she took over the direction of the Regensburg Short Film Week in 2009. She has been working as a short film program manager at the UNDERDOX festival since 2016. She teaches at the University of Regensburg and the University of Television and Film Munich. She curated various series and programs. Since 2016 she has been on the board of the Association of Bavarian Film Festivals and since 2019 she has been running the podcast SIMPLY SHORT!.
Sidar Serdar Karakaş was born in Diyarbakır. He studied history and cinema. He was the president of Antalya Cinema Association for six years. He is one of the creators and executives of the “Top 10 Short Films” and “Top 10 Animated Short Films” projects realized within the association. He is the director of the Top Shorts Short Film Festival, which has 110 juries. He has two books titled The Story of the Short Film - 1 and the Story of the Short Film - 2 telling the production stories of the short films and short film directors in which he compiled together with Yelda Başaran. He has been the founding chairman of the Short Film Directors Association since 2018.