Meet the Juries of Nordisk Panorama Film Festival 2020

Best Nordic Documentary

Pierre-Alexis Chevit
Head of Cannes Docs at the Marché du Film (France)

Pierre-Alexis Chevit runs Cannes Docs, the documentary-focused industry program at the Marché du Film – Festival de Cannes. Over the years he has also freelanced for a variety of festivals, markets, and organizations, both on the organizing and programming sides, including Cinéma du Réel, Fipadoc, Short Film Corner, Agence du court métrage, Cinéma du Québec à Paris, Festival Silhouette and others. He has also worked in the VOD/DVD field, dealing mainly with docs and short films. Pierre-Alexis regularly serves as jury and consultant/expert on various international events.

Benjamin Langeland
Director & Winner of Best Nordic Documentary 2019 (Norway)

Benjamin Langeland received his education at the Christiania College in Bergen. Over the last couple of years, Benjamin has directed, shot and edited a number of commercials and music videos. He was also the cinematographer and editor on the multi award winning series Children Deported (2015), and have since worked on several documentary projects for Norwegian television. Once Aurora was his first feature documentary, and it won Best Nordic Documentary at Nordisk Panorama Film Festival 2019.

Madeline Robert
Head of Industry at Visions du Réel (Switzerland)

Madeline Robert is the Head of Industry of Visions du Réel (International Film Festival – Nyon, Switzerland). She has worked for the festival since 2014, as a member of the selection committee and a special advisor of the artistic director. Based in France, in the Documentary Village of Lussas, she is also a producer. Her production company Les Films de la caravane mainly produces first documentary films. In 2012, she took part in setting up the Doc Corner, a space dedicated to documentary films within the Cannes Festival Film Market. She has been  involved in the SVOD Platform, Tënk since its creation.

Best Nordic Short Film

Wouter Jansen
Sales Agent & Distributor at Square Eyes (Austria)

Wouter Jansen is the owner of the sales and festival distribution company Square Eyes. He worked as the head of programming at the Go Short – International Film Festival during the first 10 editions. In 2013 he started Some Shorts, which changed to Square Eyes in 2019, which specializes in having outstanding non-mainstream films find the audience and recognition they deserve. With Square Eyes, Wouter represents bold, author-driven features and shorts, and collaborates closely with the filmmakers to devise bespoke festival distribution and sales strategies. This has resulted in a small catalogue of films premiering at prestigious festivals and winning multiple awards over the last few years like main prizes at Cannes, TIFF, Berlin, Locarno and Clermont-Ferrand. 

Wouter has been giving lectures at schools like Le Fresnoy, HEAD Geneva and Netherlands Film Academy as well as moderating and leading workshops at festivals like IDFA, Warsaw FF, True/False, Winterthur, VIS Vienna Shorts and others. He is a Berlinale Talents alumni.

Julia Thelin
Director & Winner of Best Nordic Short 2019 (Sweden)

Julia Thelin is a script writer and director from Stockholm, Sweden. She has directed dance films, music videos and short films. Her latest film, Sorry not sorry (2019), won the award for Best Nordic Short at Nordisk Panorama Film Festival 2019 as well as the audience award Startsladden at Göteborg Film Festival 2019.

Alexandra Gramatke
Managing Director of the Kurzfilm Agentur Hamburg (Germany)

After finishing her studies of Slavonic and German literature Alexandra Gramatke worked as a free-lance interpreter for literature and documentary films. In 1994 she joined the “thede”, a Hamburg based group of documentary filmmakers. Here she made several films, for example “Dynamo Kiev. Good Old Boys” (2000). Besides she worked as production manager and publisher. Since 2008 she has been the managing director of the Kurzfilm Agentur Hamburg, a short film distributor and host of the annual Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg.

New Nordic Voice

Ida Persson Lännerberg
Director & Winner of New Nordic Voice Award 2019 (Sweden)

Ida Persson Lännerberg, director and journalist from Malmö, Sweden, studied journalism twenty years ago and has worked as a storyteller since then, mostly for SVT (The Swedish public service television company). The director of the documentary Lindy the Return of Little Light – winner of Best New Nordic Voice at Nordisk Panorama Film Festival 2019 – a story about identity, shame and finding the courage to stand up for oneself. (And also about superheroes).

Tapio Riihimäki
Executive Director of DocPoint – Helsinki Documentary Film Festival (Finland)

Tapio Riihimäki has a long history with film and especially with documentary film. Before DocPoint he has worked as executive director for Finnish Documentary Guild and the association that publishes Filmihullu film magazine. Tapio has written film critics and articles about cultural topics. He has also worked in the National Audiovisual Archive of Finland and its predecessor Finnish Film Archive. Tapio has a master’s degree in cultural studies.

Tina í Dali Wagner
Head of the Faroese Film Institute (Faroe Islands)

Tina í Dali Wagner was from 1994 – 2019 head of post graduate training at The National Film school of Denmark. She established more than 800 workshops, seminars, conferences for the professional industry, both in Denmark as well as the rest of the Nordic countries. Today she is head of the Faroese Film Institute, based in Tórshavn and runs her own company FILMGREB which develops courses and other activities to develop competencies for the audiovisual industry.

Nordisk Panorama 2020 Festival Programming Team

We are thrilled about this year’s programming team. Martijn te Pas, previous Senior Programmer at IDFA and Cecilia Lidin, Documentary Consultant at the Danish Film Institute will serve as this year’s guest documentary programmers. The short film section will be programmed by Sam Groves and Lucile Bourliaud, both from Flatpack Festival.

Martijn te Pas will bring his international perspective to the selection of documentary films for Nordisk Panorama while Cecilia Lidin knows the Nordic countries like her back pocket. We are also excited that Sam Groves will again be programming our short film section since he has a proven record of finding short films that push the boundaries of storytelling. This year he will be accompanied by his colleague at Flackpack Festival, Lucile Bourliaud.

Martijn te Pas

Martijn te Passtudied Psychology, English and completed Film & Television Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He was part of the program department of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) from 2000 to 2019. As senior programmer he was responsible for doing research activities for regular and focus programs, maintaining an extensive network of film professionals and the selection and programming of films.

He is an advisor for the IDFA Bertha Fund and reads projects for the IDFA Forum. Between 2000 and 2019 he traveled to many film festivals – often as a juror. Before IDFA he was a producer for Waterland Film & TV. Martijn also was a documentary advisor of the Dutch Mediafund between 2007 and 2013 – providing grants to encourage the development and production of cultural radio and television programs.

Martijn is currently based in Stockholm.

Cecilia Lidin

With a background in film studies at the University of Copenhagen and UC Berkeley, finalized with a thesis on the ethical dilemmas of documentary filmmaking, Cecilia Lidin has for the past 20+ years worked with the development and financing of documentaries in different capacities. As loans officer in the first MEDIA programmes office DOCUMENTARY, followed by promoting Nordic shorts and documentaries at Filmkontakt Nord – and at the European Documentary Network responsible for the development of numerous international co-production workshops, and working as tutor as well as moderator for both internal and external pitching events.

Between 2006 and 2009 Cecilia Lidin was the Artistic Director of Odense International film Festival, and in 2009 she took over as Head of EDN together with Hanne Skjødt, a position she held until she left to become Film Commissioner for Documentaries at the Swedish Film Institute in 2011. After finalizing this position, she was in 2015 appointed as Film Commissioner for Documentaries at the Danish Film Institute, a position she holds at present.

Sam Groves

Sam Groves is the Head of Programme for one of the UK’s key cultural happenings, the Flatpack Festival in Birmingham, where he has been programming since 2011. Prior to that Sam founded KINO 10, a peripatetic short film exhibition company, and was the film programmer for the UK’s largest free arts festival Artsfest. Specialising in programming shorts, animation, experimental, live cinema, and AV performances, Sam has curated work all over the world including Germany, Estonia, Hong Kong, and Thailand. He has also recently become an Artist Adviser for Jerwood Arts in the UK.

Lucile Bourliaud

Lucile Bourliaud has been programming films for the past 7 years, collaborating with festivals in France, Quebec and the UK (including Lille International Short Film Festival and Regard Festival). In 2015 she joined the Flatpack Festival in Birmingham, where she now coordinates the short film competition. A short film enthusiast, she has written reviews and covered events for several websites and blogs. She also organises regular screenings in Tours, her hometown in France, showing shorts in bars, bookshops, and vans.