International jury
Dorottya Zurbó
A Hungarian director born in Budapest in 1988, she graduated from the DocNomads Joint Masters in 2014 and has a degree in film theory and history from ELTE in Budapest. In 2021, she graduated from the University of Theater and Film Arts, where she currently teaches transmedia storytelling. Her first feature film, The Next Guardian, premiered at the IDFA in Amsterdam in 2017 and in Lessinia in 2018, where she won the best documentary award. Her second, Easy Lessons, was selected at the Locarno Film Festival 2018 and received the Hungarian Critics Award 2019 and the Movies That Matter Award at ZagrebDox. Agent of Happiness (2024) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and earned the Audience Award at both the San Francisco Film Festival and the Margaret Mead Film Festival in New York.
Fredo Valla
A documentarist, screenwriter, and director, he attended the Scuola Ipotesi Cinema, run by Ermanno Olmi. Winner of the 1998 Film Festival della Lessinia with Riposino in pace, he later wrote Il Vento fa Il suo giro (2005), Un giorno devi andare (2013), Volevo nascondermi (2020), and Lubo (2023) with Giorgio Diritti. From 2004 to 2012 he collaborated with Pupi Avati on television documentaries and is the founder of L'AURA (in Occitan, “the wind”), Film School in Ostana. He directed Più in alto delle nuvole (2015), Non ne parliamo di questa guerra (2018), BOGRE - La grande eresia europea (2021), and Ambin, la roccia e la piuma (2023). He taught screenwriting in the film course at the Fondazione Bellocchio in 2020 and, in the same year, won the Nastro d’Argento for the writing and screenplay of Volevo nascondermi.
Tamara Stepanyan
A film director born in Armenia, she moved to Lebanon with her parents in the early 1990s and continued her studies at the National Film School of Denmark. She now lives in France and is considered to be the new voice of contemporary Armenian film. Her documentaries have been shown at various festivals, including, among others, Locarno, DokLeipzig, Festival La Rochelle Cinéma, Boston Film Festival, and the Film Festival della Lessinia. Her feature film, Embers (2012), premiered at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea. She directed Those from the Shore (2016), winner of the prize for best documentary at the Boston Film Festival and the Amiens Film Festival. Village of Women (2019) won the Curatorium Cimbricum Veronense prize at the Film Festival della Lessinia in 2020. Today, Stepanyan teaches at the École Supérieure de Réalisation Audiovisuelle in Paris.
Frode Fimland
A Norwegian director and cinematographer, he made his debut behind the camera with the documentary Siblings are Forever (2013), winner of the Lessinia D’Oro, the Prize from the Public, and that of the MicroCosmo Jury of the Verona prison at the 2014 Film Festival della Lessinia and of the Best Feature award from the 2015 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Montana (USA). In 2015, he directed the follow-up film Siblings are Forever: The Great Journey. His third feature film is The Wild Man of the North, from 2018. The Last Norwegian Cowboy (2021) was recognized at the Amanda Norwegian Cinemas Awards 2022, the Duluth Superior Film Festival in Minnesota (USA), and once again in Lessinia with the MicroCosmo Jury prize in 2022.
Fulvio Mariani
Born in 1958 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, he began his career in 1981 as a cameraman for Swiss Television. In 1985, he made the documentary Cumbre, winner of the Genziana d’Argento at the 1987 Trento Film Festival. After this experience, he founded Iceberg Film, a production company specializing in documentaries. He has collaborated with such mountaineers as Messner, Kukuczka, Bonatti, Kammerlander, Cassin, Corona, Glowacs, and Dal Prà. In 1991, he directed the on-site climbing photography of the film Scream of Stone by Werner Herzog. He has worked for major European television networks such as ZDF, ORF, France 3, RAI, and Mediaset and has directed documentaries including L’uomo di legno (1994), L’ombra del tempo (2004), Grozny Dreaming (2008) and Vite tra i vulcani (2012), winners, respectively, of the 2008 Lessinia d’Oro and the 2012 MicroCosmo Jury prize at the Film Festival della Lessinia 2012, and Inverno afgano (2016).
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