Jury for 2022 BRICS Film Festival

Jury President:Su Xiaowei

China,Screenwriter

Su Xiaowei, screenwriter, the Vice Chairman of the China Film Association.

Major Works: Postmen in the Mountains (1999), the 19th Golden Rooster Award for Best Film, the 23rd Montréal World Film Festival for People's Choice Award, the 31st International Film Festival of India for the Silver Peacock Award (Jury Grand Prix). Life Show (2002), the 22nd Golden Rooster Award for Best Screenplay and Best Actress, the 6th Shanghai International Film Festival for Best Actress and Best Cinematography, the 8th Huabiao Film Award for Outstanding Actress. Nuan (2003), the 23rd Golden Rooster Award for Best Screenplay and Best Film, the 16th Tokyo International Film Festival Awards for Best Film and Best Actor, the 10th Huabiao Film Award for Outstanding Film and Outstanding Director. Six Sisters in The War (2009), the 13th Huabiao Film Award for Outstanding Screenplay and Outstanding Film. Aftershock (2010), the 31st Hundred Flowers Award for Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay, the 14th Huabiao Film Award for Outstanding Film and Outstanding Actress, the 28th Golden Rooster Awards for Best Music and Best Art Direction. The Seal of Love (2011), the 14th Huabiao Film Award for Outstanding Film, the 28th Golden Rooster Awards for Best Cinematography. Falling Flowers (2013), the 15th Shanghai International Film Festival Award for Best Cinematography.

Jury Member:Thandi Davids

South Africa,Producer

Thandi Davids has spent over 25 years working in various sectors of the media industry. She began her career in public relations and was head-hunted to join the Independent Broadcasting Authority at its inception. She produced the Kora All Africa Music Awards for live TV broadcast, worked in the print media industry and collaborated with the United Nations to deliver various major events including the WSSD in Johannesburg and COP17 in Kenya.

She is an award-winning marketer and ran her own experiential marketing agency that included clients such as Ster Kinekor, FNB, Disney, Virgin, Anglo American, Amstel, Department of Environmental Affairs, Department of Water Affairs and Audi amongst many.

She has also served as Africa Regional Director of Broadcasting for Fox International Channels (now part of Disney). Here she oversaw 11 TV channels launching 6 bespoke African channels (Fox, Nat Geo Gold, Fox Retro, FX, National Geographic Channel, Fox Crime) and produced the first non-wildlife commissioned African programming for the company.

She was responsible for the creation and staffing of the African office for the global group. 

She is a founding partner and Executive Producer at Story Scope, a boutique independent production house that produces documentaries and feature films and whose clients include China Global Television Network, the European Union, British Broadcasting Corporation, Netflix, Kyknet, MNet and the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

Thandi is Co-Chair of the Independent Producers Organisation and serves on the boards of the Durban FilmMart Institute (DFMI) and the Lionel Ngakane Foundation.

She sits on the National Film & Video Foundation and DFMI industry panels to adjudicate film grants and has served as a jury member for a variety of film festivals and awards.

She is passionate about media and telling and selling the African story.

Jury Member:llda Santiago

Brazil,Film Curator and Film Programmer

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Ilda Santiago graduated in Journalism and Film. She is one of the founders and a partner at Estação Group – a 30-year-old company and main reference in art-house distribution and exhibition in Brazil where she acquired and released over 400 titles.

She has also organized innumerous retrospectives in Brazil as well as curated Brazilian series (Premiere Brazil) in New York (MoMA), Berlin (Haus der Kulturen der Welt) and also in Lisbon, Beijing and Washington DC.

For 15 years, she has been the Brazilian correspondent to the Cannes Film Festival and has been awarded – by the French government – with the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres medal. She is the programming and executive director for Festival do Rio / Rio de Janeiro Int’l Film Festival, one of the main cinema events in Latin America, this year in its 23rd edition.

Jury Member:Nina Kochelyaeva

Russia,Film Scholar and Producer

Born in Moscow, Nina Kochelyaeva is a Russian film scholar and producer.

Since 2014, Nina has been working as the Director at New Institute for Cultural Research. Besides, she serves at the Russian Film Institute (VGIK) as a Senior Researcher as well as a teacher in the Center for Continuing Education and Professional Development of Creative and Management Personnel in the Sphere of Culture. She also teaches at Nikita Mikhalkovs’ Academy for cinematographic and theatre arts.

In 2020 in Moscow, Nina organized the International BRICS Film Forum with the topic of "BRICS Cinemas as Alternatives to Hollywood". She also organized some other international activities such as round table conferences on "the History of National Cinematographies in the USSR and the Prospects for the Development of Cinema in the CIS countries, the Baltic countries and Georgia".

For her contributions, Nina was awarded as the laureate of the Russian Federation Governmental Award in the field of education in 2021.

Filmography：

The Mystery of a Buryat Lama, Russia, 2018, documentary, 93’, producer

Museology with Taste of Sea, Russia, 2020, documentary, 60’, producer

Kirill Razlogov 75’ Birthday Party,Russia,2021,documentary, 11’, producer

Jury Member:Nila Madhab Panda

India,Director and Producer

Nila Madhab Panda is a unique filmmaker who has managed to create, in the short span of his ongoing career, a narrative of dense and critical insight into contemporary India and the psyche of its people. He brings such experience to bear upon his exploration of contemporary, modern India, giving birth to unique visual poetry that is, at once, charming and thought provoking.

For his achievements, he received one of the highest civilian honor “Padma Shri” in 2016 and was conferred with D.Litt. Honoris Causa in 2018.

Recently, he has made Megha’s Divorce, an anthology of 11 films from 11 countries on environmental damage and climate change, supported by ART for the World in association with the United Nations Department of Public Information (UNDPI), which was premiered in the UN headquarters in Geneva, the film opened at the Rome International Film Festival in 2020.

Panda attained cult status with his maiden feature film, I am Kalam in the year 2010. Winning 34 international awards along with a national award, this has become a truly iconic film. His second feature film Jalpari (Desert Mermaid), received the MIP Junior Award at Cannes. After having directed Babloo Happy Hai (Babloo is Happy), Kaun Kitney Paani Mein (In Troubled Water), and a score of other films, documentaries, and TV-series, his film feature Kadvi Hawa (Dark Wind) received critical acclaim with a national award and wider international recognition from many parts of the world. His last released film for children, Halkaa (Relief), has traveled to 32 international film festivals and won two Grand Prix awards in the international film circuit. His feature-length documentary, God’s Own People (2016), narrated by Amitabh Bachchan.

His new feature film, Yesterday’s Past, was part of Indian panorama, in IFFI goa and got prestigious national award in 2020 and two Odisha state award Best director and Best feature film, now travelling to different festivals around the world. Shadows of Wind is his new documentary, an eye opener to the world on the issue of climate change and its impact on India.

Biswa – a children film based on a blind boy, is all set to release this year.

He founded the “International Screenwriters Lab” (2008) in India to create quality scripts for family and children audiences of Asian Cinema. He produced short films in London, funded by the Arts Council England.