Born in Rome, Susanna Nicchiarelli began her film career working with Nanni Moretti, directing one of the documentaries that were part of the series Diari della Sacher (2001). She has written and directed many short films and documentaries, including The Third Eye (2003), an experimental documentary, shot with a cast and crew made up almost entirely of women, including diretor’s mother, her sister, and herself in principal roles, The Language of Love (2003), a futuristic drama starring Milena Vukotić and Giovanna Z – A Love Story (2005), a comic girl meets boy story in which she also played the title role herself. These early works firmly established the director’s cinematic gaze towards women. In her subsequent features, her characters are mothers, daughters, friends, activists, artists, wives, muses and saints, their personalities investigated vis-à-vis the roles that societies impose on them. Nicchiarellis’s debut feature, Cosmonauta (2009), is a coming-of-age film about a rebellious teenage girl, devoted communist interested in the Soviet space program. The film won the prize Controcampo Italiano at the Venice Film Festival. Her second film, The Discovery of Dawn (2012), is an adaptation of Walter Wetroni’s novel that alternates between history and fantasy, between the past and the present. Susanna Nicchiarelli also acted in her first two feature films. There came Nico, 1988 (2017) which won Best Film in Venice Horizons section and numerous other awards. It is a biopic about a woman whose voice became iconic in the sixties, focusing on the final stage of her life. Miss Marx (2020) focusing on Eleanor, the youngest and dearest daughter of Karl Marx and a revolutionary socialist, received various recognitions at the Venice Film Festival, including the nomination for Golden Lion, as well as three David di Donatello Awards. Chiara (2022), Susanna Nicchiarelli’s fifth feature film, also premiered at Venice, in the main competition program, winning five awards.

Slavko Štimac entered the film world as a child actor. He made his debut as a twelve-year-old,  with the lead role of the shepherd Ranko in the film The Lone Wolf (1972). With the roles of boys in the films The Battle of Sutjeska (1974), Wintering in Jakobsfeld (1975) and A Farm in Mali RIt (1976), he became a Yugoslav film poster child for growing up in the war. He began his international career with a role in Sam Peckinpah’s film Cross of Iron (1977). In the following period his roles were those of adolescents, his characters equally iconic. Coming-of-age on film, through characters such as Pera Trta in Special Education (1977), Mladoženja in Who’s Singin’ Over There? (1980) and Peter in The Elusive Summer of ’68 (1984), reached its artistic peak with the role of Dinо in Emir Kusturica’s film Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (1981), until the graduation trip in the film Mothernal Brothers (1988). He collaborated with Kusturica again on Underground (1995), which was awarded the Cannes Palme d’Or. Štimac then went to the United States, where he made two films. He returns home with the role of Luka Đukić in the film Life Is A Miracle(2004), his third collaboration with Kusturica. For his role in the emigrant film Buick Riviera (2008), he received the award for best actor at the festival in Sarajevo. He returned to the war film genre with the films The Tour (2008), The Enemy (2011) and So Hot Was The Cannon (2014), although the war in question was a completely different one. In January 2019, at the opening of the 12th Kustendorf International Film and Music Festival, he was awarded the Tree Of Life Award – An Award For Future Films. There came notable roles in the film Darkling (2022) and the television series My Father’s Murderers (2016-2022), Black Wedding (2021) and The Last Socialist Artefact (2021). Slavko Štimac received the Pavle Vuisić Actor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Film Encounters festival in Niš in 2022.

David Noy is an Israeli filmmaker. Born in Toronto, he lives in Israel, where he graduated in Film Studies with honors from Tel-Aviv Art School. He is an award winning producer, director and writer of drama and documentary films and TV series. More than fifteen years ago he founded production house Cinemax Productions Ltd. His directorial feature debut, What now? (1999), received Jury Special Mention at the Jerusalem Film Festival. Peach (2003) won him Makor Fund Albin Foundation Best Script Award at the Haifa Internationa Film Festival. Family Matters (2004) won many awards at the international festival circuit, while Breaking the Ice! (2010) went on to win Best Film Award at Barcelona IFF, as well as Best Screenplay at Palermo IFF. Besides writing the scripts for the films he directed, David Noy also penned Yael Sherer’s documentary Dirty Laundry (2012), as well as The Zilber & Me (2011) by Roy Zilber. As a producer, he has worked on films such as Shadows (2017), directed by Noah Aharoni, winner of Best Israeli Doc Award at Israeli Doc Forum and a number of other awards at home and abroad, including the nomination for Israeli Academy Award. There came The King of Borek (2018) by Orik Ronel, Leaving Paradise (2020) by Ofer Freiman, Back in Berlin (2021) by Bobby Lax, Believing in The Muse – Zeruya Shalev (2022) by Ayelet Bargur, Noa Aharoni’s documentary film and series Dr. Rudy – the Naked Truth + Not a word of Truth (2021-2022), with a number of awards at international film festivals around the world. David Ofek’s The Seven Years of Absalon (2022), the most recent film he produced, won a Special Jury Award at Docaviv and received a nomination for Israli Academy Award. David Noy also serves as the Head of Film Dept. at the Minshar For Art college in Tel-Aviv.

Vladan Radović is a cinematographer based in Rome, Italy. He was born in Sarajevo, where he graduated from classic secondary school. In 1996 he moved to Rome, to continue his education at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, prestigious Italian national film school, where he attended three-year-long cinematography course led by Giuseppe Rotunno. In 1999, he started working as a second and first camera assistant, as well as a camera operator with various Italian and international filmmakers, working on feature films and commercials. During the same period he filmed numerous short films, documentaries, commercials and music videos. He debuted as a director of photography on feature film with Salmir (2004), Francesco Munzi’s directorial debut that premiered in Venice. Vladan Radović went on to work as a cinematographer on many films awarded in prestigious international film festivals. For his work on Red Like the Sky (2006), directed by Cristiano Bortone, Vladan Radović received the award for Best Cinematographer at Palm Beach IFF. The Rest of the Night (2008), his second collaboration with Munzi, premiered within Cannes Directors’ Fortnight program. Radović went on to win the Best Cinematographer award at Newport Beach IFF, with Apartment in Athens (2011). That same year The Last Man on Earth, a graphic novel adaptation by Gian Alfonso Pacinotti, competed for the Golden Lion in Venice. With the film director Paolo Virzi, he collaborated on Every Blessed Day (2012), Like Crazy (2016), and Magical Nights (2018), films that went on to win many awards, including six David di Donatello awards. Radović returned to Venice with his third collaboration with Francesco Munzi, award winning crime drama Black Souls (2014). For his work on this film, he also won the David di Donatello Award for Best Cinematography. His collaboration with Marco Bellochio on The Traitor (2019) was awarded with Golden Ciak Award for Best Cinematography, among other awards. Vladan is member of Italian Association of Cinematographers (AIC) and European Federation of Cinematographers (IMAGO).

Ivan Šijak, born in 1969 in Belgrade, is a Serbian director, cinematographer, photographer and visual artist. He graduated from the Camera Department at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in his hometown. He returned to his alma mater to teach in 2004 and became a professor in 2019. During the nineties he began intensive exploration of different visual forms and developed his own visual style of expression through amalgamation of techniques  and technological processes. He was a part of the editorial staff and director of photography at the New Moment magazine devoted to visual culture between 1994 and 1997. From 1994 until 2004 he was a co-owner and author for production company Mechanical Duck Creative Production. Recipient of multiple awards for his music videos, commercials, posters and other forms of photography and videography. In 2000 he started working in film productions as a visual effect supervisor. His credits in this field include Blue Gypsy (2005) and Promise Me This (2007) by Emir Kusturica, Tears for Sale (2008) by Uroš Stojanović, and 12 (2007), The Exodus: Burnt by the Sun 2 (2010), Burnt by the Sun 3: Citadel (2011) and Sunstroke (2014) by Nikita Mikhalkov. He is a co-founder of the Serbian Association of Cinematographers S.A.S.