Meet the Selection Committee of ESP 2018!
Emanuele Milasi (Italy)
Uncle of twelve nephews, Emanuele is a screenwriter and the artistic manager of the Pentedattilo Film Festival since 2006. In 2013 he worked on a project for cinema and new media in US coordinated by UCLA. In 2016 he wrote the music documentary Made in Italy that introduced the Fox Life Channel in Italy. Emanuele wrote several advertisements and short films. The last short movie written, The Angry Men, was selected in more than 30 festivals and won many awards. In 2017 E.Milasi was selected to participate at European Short Pitch with the script Lazarus. At the moment Emanuele is working on a script for animation feature length.
Eoin Maher (Ireland, UK)
Originally from Dublin, Eoin studied English and Film studies at Trinity before moving to the UK to go to London Film School. His previous work has played at over a dozen festivals and won him Filmmaker of the Future at Rhode Island International Film Festival. In the past Eoin Maher has worked as a script reader, festival programmer and collaborated with numerous filmmakers on their scripts. He is currently writing his first feature while still making shorts with an interest in LGBT issues. His latest award winning short film Thirst is playing at film festivals.
Jan Vejnar (Czech Republic)
Jan Vejnar was born and raised in Prague, Czech Republic. He studied directing and screenwriting at Film Academy of Miroslav Ondřícek in Písek (FAMO), where he made several shorts that were screened and awarded at festivals home and abroad. During his studies he directed one episode for Czech Television period drama mini series Čapek’s Pockets and followed with period docudrama Tale of the Stone about the baroque sculptors of East Bohemia. Before graduating he had started working with director/producer David Ondříček and his production company Lucky Man Films as a commercial director. His first spot Godzilla for Aero Cinema won Zlatý Louskáček Commercial Award. Jan also wrote a story for Ondříček‘s upcoming historical sports drama Zátopek. Because he likes to explore various mediums and narrative forms, he recently extended his experience by writing and directing two radio plays for Czech Radio. Along with Entangled in War he is developing The Figurant, a short war mystery drama, developed and presented at European Short Pitch 2017.
Jerome Nunes (France)
Jérôme Nunes works and lives in Marseille. Together with three associates, he created the company Films de Force Majeure (France Televisions Emerging Producer award), focusing on international co-productions. He has been working as a script consultant: Pitch Please! (Luxembourg City Film Festival), Disobedient Pitch (Summer Scriptwriting Camp, Bulgaria), Aflam workshop (Rencontres Int. des Cinémas Arabes – CNC, Talents en courts). He co-organises European Short Pitch and its co-production forum. He directed the short film RELAPSE in 2013 (Cinébanlieue, Clermont-Ferrand…).
Kostas Tagalakis (Greece)
Kostas Tagalakis graduated with a European Master in Audio Visual Management (EMAM) by MEDIA (Rome, Italy) where he specialized in Feature Film Funding. Since then he has been a film professional in various key production positions. As a producer his work includes the short film PRAY 2012, the Feature Documentary Me and the Others 2015 and the short film Helga Är I Lund 2016. He is a co-founder/producer of Top Spot (topspot.gr) and he is currently developing the short film Bella and his first narrative feature film Brazil.
Lizete Upite (Latvia)
Born in 1987, Lizete is an animation film director from Latvia. She began her studies in Audiovisul Media in Baltic Film and Media school (Estonia). During her Erasmus exchange studies in Portugal, she made her first animation films and in 2013 graduated from school of directing animation La Poudriere (France). In 2014 she returned to Latvia and graduated with MA degree in Visual Communication in Art Academy of Latvia. Lizete works on tragi-comic stories about emotional overwhelm – our natural awkwardness while finding ourselves.
Marija Fridinovaite (Lithuania, France)
Currently based in Paris, Marija Fridinovaite graduated from Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre (Cinema management BA) in 2015. For the past seven years Marija has been working in film production, positioning as a production manager and producer, in this way having taken part in the production of such feature length and short film projects as Summer Survivors (2018), The Saint (2016), L’echapee amoureuse (2016), Watchkeeping (2017) etc. In addition, Marija has been working for various film festivals such as Vilnius Documentary Film Festival (Vilnius, Lithuania) and FEST (Espinho, Portugal). At the moment Marija is working for NISI MASA (Paris, France) as an office manager/European finances and a coordinator of European Short Pitch, and developing two shorts, both about to be produced in 2018. The last short, The Mother’s Day (dir. Kamile Milasiute), produced by M.Fridinovaite has won a national film academy award Silver Crane 2017 for the best short of a year.
Mitja Mlakar (Slovenia)
Mitja Mlakar (1988) is a young Slovenian director and screenwriter, co-founder and one of the leading team members of the film production Film Factory (SI). His films have been screened and received awards at many film festivals all around the world. In 2013 he received the Award for important cultural achievements of University of Maribor and the award for a perspective young filmmaker from the Association of Slovenian Filmmakers. In 2014 he was an Artist in Residence Slovenian Ministry of Culture Artist Residency in London (UK). His new short film I’ll probably never see you again already gained international exposure during pre-production and among other things won the Best Short Film Pitch at the Fest Pitching Forum 2015 (PT) and the post-production award at the European Short Pitch Works in progress section (PL).
Rand Beiruty (Jordan, Germany)
Rand Beiruty is a Jordanian filmmaker with an experimental storytelling style that blurs the line between fiction and documentary. She is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents, Beirut Talents and Film Leader Incubator Asia and was nominated for Robert Bosch co-production Film Prize in 2016 and again for the next round in 2018. She has recently won the Tribeca Film Institute If/Then Competition with her upcoming documentary Nudar.
Wim Vanacker (Belgium, France)
After studying psychology in Belgium, Wim Vanacker moved to Dublin to work as a psychologist in the field of drug addiction. Three years later,he picked up studying again at EICAR where he made two shorts : Endgame and The Naked leading the Blind. After graduating, he discovered NISI MASA – European Network of Young Cinema where he became the Head of the Script Department and the Project manager of the MEDIA funded project, European Short Pitch. On the side, he also works as a script consultant, tutor and guest speaker for festivals such as Cannes, Clermont-Ferrand, Encounters and Interfilm. Recently, he founded Sireal Films, a Brussels based production company where he produced the VAF funded short film empire. As a writer/director, he’s currently developing the short film [ˈsɪə.ri.əl ].