Meet Our Mentors
Ermin Bravo
Acting Studio
Ermin Bravo is multi-award-winning actor and one of the most prominent performers working in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Born in 1979 in Sarajevo, he graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo, where he is now a professor of acting. He has been praised for his on-screen work in Angelina Jolie’s IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY, Alen Drljević’s MEN DON’T CRY, Semih Kaplanoğlu’s GRAIN, and Jasmila Žbanić’s GRBAVICA, ON THE PATH and her Academy Award-nominated QUO VADIS, AIDA? Bravo made his directorial debut with the short film BREATH, for which he received the Heart of Sarajevo in 2018.
Gabrielle Brunnemeyer
Pack & Pitch
Gabriele Brunnemeyer is a script mentor, project consultant and pitching coach. She previously ran the MEDIA Antenna Berlin-Brandenburg and has developed events including Connecting Cottbus, the IDM Film Conference Incontri, and MDM’s Meet Your Neighbour in Leipzig. Alongside consulting on script development, packaging, and pitching for individual projects, she consults for the First Films First script development programme, HerArts Film Lab, the Midpoint Feature Launch, the Cutting Edge Talent Camp, the Bosphorus Film Lab, the Baltic Pitching Forum, Cannes Court Métrage, Euro Connection Clermont-Ferrand, Berlinale Talents, and Talents Sarajevo, among others.
Nicholas Davies
Pack & Pitch
Nicholas Davies obtained a BA in cinema studies and linguistics from the University of Toronto. Beginning in 1999, spent ten years overseeing the editorial and design teams at the Toronto International Film Festival as Director of Creative Services, and served for several years as the programmer of the festival’s Dialogues: Talking with Pictures section. He went on to be Director of Publications for the Abu Dhabi Film Festival (2010–2012), then Senior English Editor at the Doha Film Institute (2012–2018). Over the past dozen years, Davies has worked with numerous film, arts, and academic institutions, as well as individual academics, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Germany, Iceland, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Poland, Qatar, and Tunisia. He was the Talents Sarajevo Programme Manager in 2017 and 2018.
Jan Försstrom
Script Station
Jan Försstrom is a Finnish screenwriter, script editor, and author. His screenwriting credits include J-P Valkeapää’s THE VISITOR; THE PRINCESS OF EGYPT, which Forsström himself directed; and Zaida Bergroth’s LAST COWBOY STANDING, THE GOOD SON, MIAMI and MARIA’S PARADISE. As a script editor, Forsström has been involved in dozens of Finnish and international productions. He has also published three books of fiction.
Olivia Hetreed
Script Station
Olivia Hetreed is the multi-award-winning screenwriter of GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING and WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Recent international films include FINDING ALTAMIRA; Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first animated feature BIRDS LIKE US; and THE JOURNEY, Iraq’s Academy Award entry for 2018. Her directorial debut short film, HOME FROM HOME, showed at international film festivals. MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS, starring SFF visitor Lesley Manville, is on worldwide release in the summer and autumn of 2022.
Teresa Cavina
Script Station
Teresa Cavina is a festival programmer and curator. She worked on the programming team of the Venice International Film Festival from 1989 through 1997, then in 1998 moved to the Locarno Fillm Festival, which she co-directed from 2001 to 2005. In 2006, she launched the Rome Film Festival, where she was Co-Artistic Director until 2008. Currently, Cavina collaborates in programming Venice Days and the El Gouna Film Festival, and works closely with filmmakers, producers, script labs and international funds, among them Talents Sarajevo, Locarno Open Doors and the Doha Film Institute.
Gyula Gazdag
Directors Summit
Gyula Gazdag a writer and director, has worked in cinema, television, and theatre. Most of his films were banned for political reasons in his native Hungary for various periods of time. He has been Artistic Director of the Sundance Filmmakers Lab since 1997, and is a Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television. Daily Variety named Gazdag one of the ten best film teachers in the United States in 2010. He advises at script development and directors’ training programmes internationally, was a creative advisor at the Maurits Binger Film Institute in Amsterdam for over a decade, and has worked with new talent at the Script Station of Berlinale Talents since 2006, and at Talents Sarajevo since 2015. He is a member of the European Film Academy.
Miloš Jaćimović
Camera Studio
Miloš Jaćimović is a New York-based cinematographer. Hisecent work includes cinematography for David Kapac and Andrija Mardešić’s THE UNCLE, which received a Karlovy Vary Proxima Special Mention in 2022, Ivan Ikic’s OASIS, winner of the Europa Cinema Labels winner at the Venice International Film Festival and the Best Cinematography Award from the Serbian Association of Cinematographers. OASIS was the Serbian entry for the Academy Awards in 2021.Ikic’s critically acclaimed debut BARBARIANS screened at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2014, winning a special mention and subsequently touring more than thirty international festivals, and winning more than ten international awards. Nikola Ležaić’s TILVA ROŠ premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix, and subsequently toured major film festivals.. Over the years, Jačimović’s love for music has led him to work on many music videos by artists Interpol, J Cole, and YG, among others. He studied cinematography at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Belgrade.
Dana Linssen
Talent Press
Dana Linssen is a long-term film critic for the Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad. Currently, she is a quartermaster for Film Forward, a new talent and skills development organisation for film and audio-visual creators in the Netherlands. With Jan Pieter Ekker, she programs the Critics’ Choice section of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Linssen founded the Slow Criticism Project, a counterbalance against the commodification of film criticism, and teaches at ArtEZ Theatre Academy in Arnhem and the HKU University of the Arts in Utrecht.
Ana Šturm
Talent Press
A historian and sociologist with a master's degree in film and television studies and a special interest in the invisible affairs of everyday life. Film spectator, critic and curator. Lost in movies, addicted to coffee, ginger and first snow. Berlinale and Sarajevo Talent Campus alumna. Founding member and host of the first Slovene film and popular culture themed podcast FilmFlow. As a member of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) she participated in several international juries (Annecy, Karlovy Vary, Berlinale). She currently works as the editor-in-chief of Ekran, a magazine for film and television, and is enrolled in the PhD programme at the Ljubljana Film Academy (AGRFT).
Katriel Schory
Producers Summit
Katriel Schory is a producer and executive director of the Israel Film Fund. He studied at the New York University Film School and returned to Israel in 1973 to join as the Head of Productions of Kastel Films, Jerusalem, at that time the leading production company in Israel.
In 1984, he formed his own company BELFILMS LTD and produced over 130 films including award-winning feature films, documentaries, TV dramas, and international co-productions.
In 1999, he accepted the position of the Executive Director of the Israel Film Fund, the main film funding body in Israel, which supports, and promotes Israeli feature films. In this position, he authorized the support and the production of more than 250 new Israeli feature films.
Petra Meterc
Talent Press
Petra Meterc is a film critic and radio journalist based in Slovenia. In the past, she reported on film and literature for one of the oldest independent radio stations in region, Radio Študent. She now publishes in Ekran magazine for film and television and KINO! magazine, and works for the Third Programme of Slovene national radio – ARS. She is a programmer of Festival of migrant film, helps to programme Kino Otok – Cinema Isola and also works with festivals Animateka and Kurja polt. She often gives lectures on cinema or mentors film criticism workshops and is herself a Sarajevo Talent Press and Berlinale Talent Press alumna. She is also active in the Slovene film critics’ association.