Mstyslav Chernov is a Ukrainian filmmaker, videographer, photographer, photojournalist, war correspondent, and writer, known for his coverage of the Revolution of Dignity, the war in the east of Ukraine, the consequences of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flight, the Syrian Civil War, the Mosul battle in Iraq, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, including the blockade of Mariupol. Chernov is an Associated Press journalist and President of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers. He has won the Ukrainian National Taras Shevchenko Prize (2024) and an Oscar (2024).
He won several awards for his work on the blockade of Mariupol, including the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, together with Yevhen Maloletka and Vasylysa Stepanenko, the Deutsche Welle Freedom of Speech Award, the Heorhiy Gongadze Prize, the Knight International Journalism Awards, the Overseas Press Club of America, Biagio Agnes Award, Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award, Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award, Free Media Awards, CJFE International Press Freedom Award, and Royal Television Society Television Journalism Awards.
His previous film, 20 Days in Mariupol, won an Oscar in 2024 in the Best Documentary Feature Film category and became the first Academy Award winner from Ukraine.
Andrii Kotliar is a Ukrainian cinematographer and producer, a member of the Babylon’13 film collective. He was born on 18 April 1994 in Kremenchuk, Poltava Oblast. He graduated from the Ivan Karpenko-Kary National University of Theatre, Cinema and Television in Kyiv (the workshop of Bohdan Verzhbytskyi). Since 2014, he has been a member of the Babylon’13 creative collective, which emerged during the Maidan. He also serves as the Executive Director of the KINOKO Ukrainian Festival of Cinematography Art. Selected filmography: Iron Butterflies, Ukrainian Independence, Summertime in Ukraine. Member of the Ukrainian and European Film Academies.
Auberi Edler is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and cinematographer based in Paris. Following a career with France’s largest public television network, France 2, as a war reporter, New York bureau chief, and co-director of the news department, she dedicated herself entirely to documentary filmmaking.
For the past seventeen years, she has written and directed many documentaries, which have been distributed worldwide. Her films focus on social fractures, world politics, cinema, and photography.
Her most recent filmography includes 1968, Photographic Acts, exploring the enduring symbolism and politics captured in iconic images from that pivotal year; Clean Torture: An American Fabrication, awarded an Etoile de la SCAM in 2020, which reframes the atrocities committed during the War on Terror within a seventy-year history of state-sanctioned experimentation; American Laundry, awarded an Etoile de la SCAM in 2024, set in a predominantly Latino, working-class suburb of Chicago explores the themes of immigrant life, labour, and the pursuit of the American Dream. Her latest film, An American Pastoral, chronicles the struggle within a rural central Pennsylvanian community over the future of their public schools, where a vitriolic debate over books cloaks a more fundamental question: the future of American secular democracy.
Alina Gorlova is a director, co-founder of the creative collective TABOR, and a member of the Ukrainian and European Film Academies. Her documentary film This Rain Will Never Stop won Best Debut at IDFA and the Best Feature Film award at Festival dei Popoli, GoEast, Beldocs, One World, and others.
Tamara Uribe is a documentary filmmaker and film programmer. Member of the MAFI Collective since 2013, she participated in the transmedia project MAFI.TV premiered at IDFA DocLab and in the film Dios, which was awarded at Vision du Réel. The documentary Oasis (2024) is Uribe's directorial debut.
Darya Levchenko is a festival programmer, film researcher, cultural manager, and translator. Since 2023, she has been curating the New Talents program for the PÖFF Shorts section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. She was also the programme coordinator of Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Kyiv, Ukraine, from 2022 to 2024. Darya's previous film curatorial experience includes programming for the AFI Theatre and Cultural Centre and screening duties for FilmFestDC.
