Juries

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION JURY

Karolina
Specht

Karolina Specht was born in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Director of animated shorts and motion designer. Graduated from National Film School in Lodz in feature animation and special effects. Author of animated shorts which were awarded on national and multinational film festivals: An Incredibly Elastic Man (2013), Don't Lose Your Head (2015), Beside Oneself (2016) and Squaring the Circle (2018). Currently lives and works in Warsaw.

Jonathan Hodgson

Jonathan Hodgson is an independent animator based in London. He studied at Liverpool Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. His short films have won many international awards including two BAFTAs in 2000 and 2019. Since 2008 he has been course leader of the Animation degree at Middlesex University. He recently completed Roughhouse, a short animation about teenage bullying, co-produced in France with Papy3D Productions and Arte.

Sébastien Laudenbach

This filmmaker and illustrator has already made eight short films, including Journal, Des câlins dans les cuisines, Vasco and Daphné ou la belle plante. His first feature, The Girl Without Hands, was presented at the Cannes Festival and also nominated for a César for the best animated feature in 2017. As well as creating music videos and posters, Sébastien Laudenbach has been teaching at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs since 2001.

NATIONAL COMPETITION JURY

Sarah
Van Den Boom

After studies at the ESAG Penninghen and the animation workshop of the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Sarah Van Den Boom started out as an animator, assistant animator and character designer. In 2006, she co-created the production company Papy3D. Raymonde or the Verticle Escape is her fourth film and her first venture into puppet animation.

Juan
Antin

Juan Antin has produced and directed over 70 shorts, series and music videos, exploring a variety of techniques like traditional drawing, stop motion, 2D, 3D as well as experimental techniques. His first feature, Mercano, the Martian (2002) won the Special Jury Award at Annecy. His second one, Pachamama, has been nominated for a Lumière.

Alex
Dudok De Wit

Raised in London on a diet of weird and wonderful animated films, Alex started writing about cinema early on. He is now Associate Editor at Cartoon Brew, where he covers the global animation industry. He is also a curator at Short of the Week, and his writing on animation has appeared in publications including Sight and Sound, Time Out and Blink Blank.

VIRTUAL REALITY COMPETITION JURY

Victor Lecomte

Working in innovation, Victor Lecomte specializes in strategic development and project development. After a stay in the Brussels-based immersive sound studio Demute, he joined the teams at mk2 in the innovation department. He is now with the MK2+ agency, working on innovating and immersive projects for events.

Elisabeth Meur-Poniris

Elisabeth Meur-Poniris lives and works in Brussels designing and making interactive and educational projects. She is also a journalist and media trainer. Topics she takes a particularly interest in are emotions, identity and technology and the way these three dimensions feed off each other.

Leen Segers

This entrepreneur and WebXR expert from Brussels worked for ten years in different technological start-ups in Ghent, London and Brussels. Since 2011, she has been working on the democratization of media and founded LucidWeb in 2016. She is also the co-founder of Women in Immersive Tech EUrope (Wiit).

PRESS JURY

Yves Calbert

Yves Calbert was the director of a weekly radio programme in Louisiana and hosted youth groups in America, Asia and Europe, before becoming the cultural journalist for the Lille-based magazine Tausend Augen, in 1999. He currently writes for Confluent, Travel News, Ardenneweb, Brussels-Star and Brussels Diplomatic.

Charles Declercq

Charles Declercq was born in 1952 and lives in Brussels, where he produces the radio programme Cinécure, broadcast on RCF Bruxelles. As a film critic, he presents the week's releases and regularly receives guests. He is also a film buff and looks after the www.cinecure.be website, which is full of film analyzes.

Luk Menten

After spending the major part of his career working for the Belga agency, where he covered a number of subjects, Luk Menten also specialized in cinema. He particularly appreciates animation, and has been a regular at the Annecy Festival for many years. He also contributes to the monthly magazine Filmmagie as a freelance journalist.