An international expert jury will choose the best film from the competition program. The director of the winning film receives a prize amount of € 5000 to spend on a next film. All films from the competition programme compete for this prize!
This year's jury consists of:
Nafiss Nia. Earlier this year, the film Die middag premiered at IFFR. It is the first feature by Iranian-Dutch Nafiss Nia, who had previously made a number of short films. At Tehran University, she studied Cinema, a study that continued in the Netherlands with the Script Writing course at the Film Academy in Amsterdam. She is also a poet; her first collection, Esfahan, mijn hoopstee, was published in 2004, followed by three more. She is also a cultural entrepreneur and founder/director of the Granate Foundation, a foundation dedicated to promoting inclusivity in literature and film.
Dennis Overeem (Amsterdam, 1971) is a man of many talents: he is a writer, director, editor, film and stage actor, and casting director. His resume includes a long list of film and television productions to which he contributed in one of those capacities. As an actor he could be seen in Onderweg naar Morgen, Samen, Bitches, Unwanted, Aline and Onze straat. In 2010 he decided to focus more on working behind the camera. He wrote and directed several television series and shot three short films, of which BAM (2015) in particular was very well received in the festival circuit. In addition to all this, Overeem is co-founder of the Buddy Film Foundation, an organisation that supports refugee filmmakers in the Netherlands in pursuing and developing their creativity and helps them find paid work and training.
Jelani Isaacs (Amstelveen, 1974) has been working in the world of advertising, marketing and film production for more than 25 years. In this period he contributed to 2000 commercials, 10 feature films, 30 short films, and several music videos. In recent years, he and the New Amsterdam Film Company, which he co-founded, have produced several own productions, including Catacombe (2018) by Victor Ponten and De Oost (2020) by Jim Taihuttu, in addition to being involved in Bollywood hits and Disney series, while also spearheading campaigns for large (global) companies, among them KLM, Adidas, and the Van Gogh Museum.
Isaacs also loves sharing his knowledge and experience with a younger generation, teaching at various educational institutions, including PlusPlusOne and the Willem de Kooning Academy, always with an eye on the development of new trajectories and possibilities for society-related issues in communication and media.
