MENU

BBB Jury Committee 2023

Blerta Basholli

Blerta Basholli

Blerta Basholli is a writer/director with an unique realistic visual style. Her stories touch upon social and gender issues from the country where she was born and raised, Kosova and beyond.

In 2008 she was awarded with the Deans Fellowship at the Film Graduate Program at Tisch School of the Arts – NYU,. She lived in New York City for four years where she had the opportunity to work on several film projects as a student.

Her short film – “Lena & Me”; Screened and awarded at: First Run Film Festival 2011; Dokufest 2011; Skena Up 2011; Tirana International FF 2011; Pogradec Food and Film Festival 2011; 9/11 Film Festival 2012- Best Actress Award.

Her short film “Gjakova 726”, 2008, took part in Rotterdam Film Festival 2009 in shorts program, Busho Film Festival 2009– official selection, Doku Fest 2009 – official selection 2009, Toffifest 2009- official selection, Filmmor Women’s Film Festival 2009 – official selection.

Her documentary “Mirror, mirror…”, 2006, was officially selected in Sarajevo Film Festival 2006, New York International Independent Film and Video Festival 2016, Tirana International Film Festival 2006; Balkan Black Box Film Festival 2006, Berlin.

In 2011, she returned to her birthplace, Prishtina, Kosova, where she wrote/directed and worked in many short and feature films.

In 2020 she finished her first feature film “HIVE”, which she has written and directed based on a true story. Hive screened at Sundance Film Festival 2021 as part of World Cinema Dramatic Competition and made history by winning three awards, Grand Jury Prize, Best Directing and Audience Award. First film to win all three awards in this competition at Sundance.

Ivan Bakrač

Ivan Bakrač

Ivan Bakrač (1987, Montenegro) has written and directed films that participated in many international festivals and won awards. He participated in various programs such as Berlinale Talents, Talents Sarajevo and Zurich FF Academy. His debut feature After the Winter was premiered at the Karlovy Vary IFF. Apart from filmmaking, he also works as a festival programmer. A member of European Film Academy. 

Films: Wars (2013, medium-length); Our skin is going to gray (2014, short); Malesh (2016, short); After the Winter (2021, feature), Let the Dewy Flowers Bloom (2023, short).

Ana Grgić

Ana Grgić

Ana Grgić (PhD, University of St Andrews) is a film practitioner and a film studies scholar, whose work focuses on Balkan and East European cinemas, women’s film heritage, visual culture and film history. She is Associate Professor at Babeș-Bolyai University in Romania, and Associate Editor of Studies in World Cinema: A Critical Journal (BRILL).

She is author of the monograph, Early Cinema, Modernity and Visual Culture: The Imaginary of the Balkans (Amsterdam University Press, 2022), and co-editor of Contemporary Balkan Cinema: Transnational Exchanges and Global Circuits (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). Her research has been published in Early Popular Visual Culture, Studies in Eastern European Cinema, Short Film Studies, Film Quarterly, The Film Festival Yearbook, and Cinemas of Paris, and she has co-edited two journal special issues “Albanian cinema” (KinoKultura, 2016) and “Women Cutting Movies: Editors from East and Central Europe” (Apparatus, 2018). 

Previously, she worked in the film industry for several years, starting with HBO’s hit television series Rome in Cinecittà, Italy, and later continued to work on several film projects in the visual effects department based in the UK (The Moving Picture Company, CBS production’s American Assassin, Fox production’s Bohemian Rhapsody).

As president of the Balkan Cultural Centre (Croatia), she co-organised a year-long film literacy travelling program, the 5C project (funded by Creative Europe Media programme, and Croatian Audiovisual Centre), and as a Board member of the Albanian Cinema Project she collaborated on the Archives in Motion film preservation and training workshops. She regularly follows Balkan documentary, fiction and experimental cinema on the festival circuit, and writes film reviews for the East European Film Bulletin, and she has been an ambassador of Balkans Beyond Borders since 2014.