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2025 Edition

Common Ground

Based on a set of values, knowledge, and aspirations shared throughout the fifteen years of BIEFF’s existence by the festival team and its audience, this year’s edition celebrates the importance of community and that of caring for others and the surrounding world.

Our festival aims to create a space for reflection on human and non-human connections, to nurture new shared experiences, and to help our guests find meeting points that transcend geographical, social, and cultural boundaries. An oasis that brings filmmakers and viewers together, where diverse voices can find a common language through cinema.

In a world where the individual self and our social, economic, and cultural differences are exploited to the fullest by platform driven capitalism through an accelerated process of atomization and algorithmic alienation, BIEFF aims to celebrate what unites us and to explore alternative and collective ways of creating and living, inviting the audience to look for connections where only divisions seem to exist, to listen and to look beyond borders and differences.

In the darkness of the cinema room, the stories and images on the screen meet the experiences and the imagination of the audience on a common ground where we hope to re-learn how to be together.

International Competition Jury

Savina Petkova

International Feature Film Competition Jury

Savina Petkova is a Bulgarian film critic, curator, and academic based in London. Her writing appears in Sight & Sound, Cineuropa, The Film Stage, Variety, among others. Savina is also a senior editor at Talking Shorts, a platform devoted to long-form short film criticism. Savina holds a PhD from King’s College London and is an alumna of Berlinale Talents Press, Sarajevo Talents, and Locarno Critics Academy.

Cătălin Cristuțiu

International Feature Film Competition Jury

Cătălin Cristuțiu has worked as an editor on over 100 feature films, shorts and TV series. He has edited the entire works of Radu Jude including the feature films Aferim!, which won the 2015 Berlinale Silver Bear for Best Director, and Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, winner of the 2021 Golden Bear. Other notable editing works include California Dreamin’ Endless (Cristian Nemescu, 2007 Prix Un Certain Regard), If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (Florin Şerban, 2010 Silver Bear) and Blue Boy by Manuel Abramovich, which won the 2019 Silver Bear Jury Prize (Short Film). In recent years, he has been focusing on films which use editing as a central means of artistic expression. Cristuțiu also works as an editing advisor.

Vanja Milena Munjin Paiva

International Feature Film Competition Jury

Vanja Milena Munjin Paiva is a Chilean film programmer and researcher. She has been a member of the central programming committee of the Valdivia International Film Festival since 2019. She is currently developing her doctoral thesis in the Artistic Studies - Art and Mediation programme at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa on Latin American experimental cinema and is studying for a Master's Degree in Archiving at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, where she specialises in film preservation.

Alina Manolache

International Short Film Competition Jury

Alina Manolache is a filmmaker, artist and lecturer, known for her work at the intersection of documentary and experimental cinema. She has directed numerous films, including Lost Kids on the Beach, End of Summer, I Am Here, and 3 Dialogues About the Future, which have premiered at renowned festivals such as IDFA, Visions du Réel, and CPH:DOX. Her work has also been showcased in galleries and museums worldwide. Since 2022, she has been guest lecturing in the MA Film program at Hochschule Design Film Kunst Luzern, Switzerland.

Paola Buontempo

International Short Film Competition Jury

Paola Buontempo is an Argentine filmmaker, teacher, and film programmer. Between 2013 and 2017, she programmed Festifreak - La Plata International Independent Film Festival (Argentina). Between 2018 and 2023, she was part of the programming team of Mar del Plata International Film Festival. She is currently a member of the selection committee of Documenta Madrid. Her short films Las instancias del vértigo (2010), Los animales (2012), and Las fuerzas (2018) were screened at Cinéma du Réel, Film at Lincoln Center, FICUNAM, BAFICI, MAMBA Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento, Ruhrtriennale, among others.

Lyse Ishimwe Nsengiyumva

International Short Film Competition Jury

Lyse Ishimwe Nsengiyumva is a film programmer and photographer. She is currently based in Belgium where she founded Recognition in 2016. Recognition is a Brussels based community film screening program that focuses on the work for and by people of African descent. Lyse currently works at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and Blackstar Film Festival in Philadelphia as programmer. Previously, she was a film consultant for the Berlinale Forum.

National Competition Jury

Emilia Mazik

National Short Film Competition Jury

Emilia Mazik is the head of industry at Go Short – International Short Film Festival in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She is also a member of the selection committee at Film Fest Gent (Belgium), curates the Industry Forum at Cinekid Festival (the Netherlands), and sits on the strategic board of Talking Shorts, an online magazine dedicated to the short film medium. Her previous roles include Programmer and Festival Director at Short Waves Festival (Poland), Head of Industry at Kaboom Animation Festival (the Netherlands), and member of the selection committee at Glasgow Short Film Festival (Scotland).

Laurence Rilly

National Short Film Competition Jury

Laurence Rilly has been a short film programme manager at ARTE in Strasbourg since 2016. She coordinates the weekly short film magazine programme Short Circuit, one of the channel’s last French-German magazines. Laurence also works with the short film series, Ludwigsburg-Paris Workshop. Before joining the fiction-film-series department at ARTE, Laurence worked in the culture department for the “ARTE creative” platform with its founder Alain Bieber.

Teresa Vieira

National Short Film Competition Jury

Teresa Vieira is the artistic director of BEAST International Film Festival in Porto, Portugal. She is a film critic and cultural journalist for Antena 3, and Portuguese correspondent for Cineuropa since 2018. She collaborates with several film festivals as a guest programmer, and also performs as a DJ under the alias 'soft'.

BIEFF.15 Awards

BIEFF Award for Best Feature Film

 

Awarded to the best feature film presented as part of BIEFF’s International Feature Film Competition, the award consists of post-production services in a total value of 20.000 euro, to be used for the production of the next project by the winning director.

The award is offered by Avanpost.

BIEFF Award for Best Short Film

 

Awarded to the best short film presented as part of BIEFF’s International Short Film Competition, this award is valued at 1000 euro.

 

Award for Best Filmmaker

 

Awarded to a short film presented as part of BIEFF’s International Short Film Competition that distinguishes itself through the quality of filmmaking, the  this award is valued at 1000 euro.

 

Award for Best Visual Concept

 

Awarded to a short film presented as part of BIEFF’s International Short Film Competition that distinguishes itself through it’s innovative visual concept,  this award is valued at 1000 euro.

 

Award for Best Romanian Film

 

Awarded to the best short film presented as part of BIEFF’s National Short Film Competition, this award is valued at 500 euro.

Special Mention for Best Visual Concept offered to a Romanian Film

 

Awarded to a Romanian Film presented as part of BIEFF’s National Short Film Competition, the award consists of post-production services valued at 1.000 euro, to be used for the production of the next project by the winning director.

The award is offered by Luno.

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