Hungarian Competition
Benoit Berthe Siward is a film strategist and founder of The Animation Showcase, a strategy and consulting boutique dedicated to awards season campaigns in the motion picture industry. Specializing in animated shorts and features, he has led campaigns that have generated more than 40 Academy Award nominations over the past years including the awards strategies behind the Oscar-winning films The Windshield Wiper (2022), War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko (2024), and In the Shadow of the Cypress (2025) and Oscar-nominated Features Flee, Marcel The Shell With Shoes On, Memoir Of A Snail, Arco and Little Amélie. Benoit also created the first free, industry-only streaming platform designed to give film professionals worldwide access to the most notable animated shorts and feature films of the season.
Dave Taylor-Matthews is a film curator and festival director based in Bristol, UK, where he leads Encounters Film Festival — a BAFTA-qualifying international short film festival and the UK's nominating body for the European Film Awards. A member of the European Film Academy with a Masters in Curating, he also holds a senior position with Eventive, a festival technology platform serving over 700 film festivals worldwide.
Niels Putman is the artistic director and coordinator of yanco, a magazine and streaming library for short-form moving image. He is also a co-founder and co-editor of Talking Shorts. As a freelance film programmer, Niels is affiliated with De Cinema, Antwerp’s local rep house embedded in M HKA’s audiovisual strand. He is also a member of the selection committees for Film Fest Gent (BE) and the video-on-demand platform Avila (BE). Previously, he has served on (pre-)selection committees at film festivals in Dresden (DE), Baden (CH), and Busan (KR), and has contributed as a guest curator to events in Quebec City (CA) and Poznań (PO). His writing has appeared in outlets such as Sabzian, Etcetera, and Fantômas. He is also a member of VAF’s short film commission (2024-2026), the board of European Short Pitch, and the board of oKo, a sector federation for professional arts.
Anna Szijártó is a producer and founder of Mothership Films. After over a decade of experience in commercial and service production, she turned her focus to cinema and produced award-winning short films — including Diamond Beauty, Best Short Film Award winner at Friss Hús 2024.
She is currently producing her first feature film, directed by Sundance nominee László Csuja alongside her second feature-length documentary, in co-production with Germany. Her long-term goal as a producer is to create elevated genre films with artistic integrity and to amplify the voices of bold, innovative women filmmakers.
International Competition
Joanna Duncombe is a film and talent development specialist, based between London and Marseille. She is currently a senior consultant with the British Council's Film Department, leading their new talent initiatives. She also works regularly with film schools such as The National Film & TV School in London, and script development labs like Pustnik, helping early career filmmakers find their style and roots to audience. She has previously worked as a film programmer for the Independent Cinema Office in the UK, and was programme director at London Short Film Festival. She was the creative producer and programmer at Birds Eye View Films, where she helped to develop and launch their highly successful Reclaim the Frame audience development programme.
Orosz Anna Ida graduated in Film Studies and English from the Faculty of Humanities at Eötvös Loránd University. Since 2012, she has been the animation curator at the National Film Archive of Hungary. She has taught as a guest lecturer at the animation department of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, and was also co-founder and curator of the Primanima International First Animation Festival. She has served as a jury member at numerous international animation festivals and curated retrospective animation programmes.
Nagy Dénes is a Hungarian film director and screenwriter. In 2021, his debut feature film, Natural Light, won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival. His latest feature-length work, the documentary Kurtág Fragments, about the composer Kurtág György on the occasion of his 100th birthday, premiered in Hungarian cinemas this February.
