BBB Preseletion Committee 2025

Stratis Alvanos, Director (Greece)

Stratis Alvanos was born in Kastoria in 2001 and is a final-year undergraduate student at the Department of Audio & Visual Arts of the Ionian University. His work focuses on cinema and photography, with a particular emphasis on documentary and experimental forms of storytelling. His films have been screened at international festivals such as OpenEyes Filmfest Marburg (Germany), RIFF – Rome Independent Film Festival (Italy), Laceno d’Oro (Italy), Zagoriwood, and DocFest Chalkida. His most recent work, Mikri Vrysi / Мала Чешма (2024), received the Audience Award at the Aigio International Film Festival “Theodoros Angelopoulos.” In parallel, he has worked as a cinematographer and technician in various documentary and film productions.

Kübra Balcan, Actress (Turkey)

Kübra Balcan was born on March 27, 1992 in Istanbul. After her graduation from the musical department of Istanbul University State Conservatory, she received full scholarship from Kadir Has University Theater Department and studied acting. During her school years, she exhibited traditional Turkish theater plays in villages for 4 years with the traveling theater she established with her friends. She also worked in refugee camps in collaboration with NGOs. Since 2013, she has been acting in TV series and independent theaters. She received the best actor award at the 2022 Kaş Film Festival for her part in the short film ‘The Great Istanbul Depression’.

Ana Jakimska, Writer and Director (North Macedonia)

Ana Jakimska is a film writer and director based in Skopje, where she runs Suteren, a production company working on narrative and commercial projects. Her short films The Children Will Come and Blue Hour are atmospheric and visually driven, exploring themes of identity, migration, and family. Her work has been strongly influenced by her time in London as a Macedonian expat, often reflecting a sense of dislocation and otherness. Ana holds an MA in Filmmaking from Goldsmiths, University of London and a BA in Comparative Literature from SS Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje.

Luka Karadžuleski, Producer (Serbia)

Luka Karadžuleski was born on October 18, 2001, in Belgrade, Serbia. He completed his secondary education in information technology and continued his studies at the Academy of Arts in Belgrade, majoring in Production in Arts and Media. He is a scholarship recipient at the Vancouver Film School in Canada, majoring in film production.

He has produced twelve short films, most notably Katarina Krstić’s film “Ševa / The Lark” which premiered in 2022 in the largest cinema hall in Serbia with more than 1200 attendees and had a rich international festival life. During studies in Vancouver, he produced short films “Lil Bumpkin”, “Do You Recognize?”, “After The Gavel Falls” and more. He is the producer of the TV series “Dert,” which is currently in development.”Dert” won the award for the best project in development at the 71st Pula Film Festival, and the largest TV broadcaster in Eastern Europe – United Media – is financing the development.

In 2022, he co-founded “Sparrow” film production. The short film “Ten Days” directed by Anastasia Savinova was made in co-production with the London Film School, with Luka as the executive producer. Sparrow film collaborated with the Subplot Media production on the series Popadija and the TV series “Reci 8,” on which Luka was line producer.

Sara Radusinovic, Director (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Sara Radusinovic after graduating from the Secondary School of Arts, she was enrolled at the Academy of Arts in 2015, in the class of Professor Predrag Velinović.

Her documentary film “The Lost City”, directed in 2017, was screened at numerous regional festivals (VIVA, STIFF, SFF). That same year, as the only student representative of film directing from Bosnia and Herzegovina, she participated in the renowned FAJR FILM Festival in Tehran, Iran. That year, the festival organized its first international Talent Campus, which brought together young professionals from the film world.

Her film “I’m Not Here” (2019) won the Special Jury Prize in the category of student films from BiH at the 25th Sarajevo Film Festival. It was also well received at many other festivals, both domestic and regional, as well as across Europe.

Also in 2019, she volunteered and worked on the project “KOSTI”/”BONES”, and later worked as an extras coordinator/second AD on the project “HOTEL BALKAN”. From May 2021 to August 2022, she worked as a broadcast director at a local television station, while simultaneously working on her graduation film “When You Forget July”. She graduated in July 2022.

Her graduation film premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival and was screened at numerous festivals in Bosnia and Herzegovina (SFF, Prvi Kadar, Trebinje Film Festival), Serbia (Filmski Front, Graduate Film Festival, Ravno Selo Film Festival, Kameo, Karlovci Film Festival), Croatia (Star Film Fest, Cherry Pop Film Festival), Montenegro (Seanema), Russia (Taiga Film Festival, Short Shot Film Festival), Bulgaria (Early Bird Film Festival, On the Beach Film Festival), Spain (Seville Indie Film Festival), Turkey (Halicarnassus Film Festival, Nartugan Film Festival), Italy ((Yo)U – International Film Festival), and Sweden (Stockholm City Film Festival). So far, the film has received seven awards.

She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Film Directing at ELTE University in Budapest. Last year, She was part of the Talent Campus held during the 30th edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Nejc Trampuž, Director (Slovenia)

Nejc Trampuž (1993) is a multi-award-winning new media artist from Slovenia who has presented his work in around 100 solo and group exhibitions, festivals and public events. Operating somewhere between multimedia and research art, technology and environmentalism, he is known for his audiovisual, often interactive and speculative experiments in a saturated, collage-like aesthetic. Through these, he addresses environmental issues using a variety of media, approaches and technologies such as artificial intelligence, animation, automation, interactivity, internet, film, video, sound, glitch, projection and light, etc. He studied photography at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (Ljubljana, Slovenia) where he graduated summa cum laude in 2016 and received the Award for Outstanding Master’s Thesis in 2019. Trampuž’s recent work explores the social and ecological implications of AI. His major projects include Another Future Entirely (2022–2023, konS ≡ Platform), a research-based multimedia project exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana (SI), Cukrarna Gallery (SI), the International Festival of Computer Arts (SI) etc. The short experimental animated film Rooted in Code (2023), considered Slovenia’s first AI-generated film, was screened at 18 film festivals including Trieste Science+Fiction (IT) and Suncine (ES), and won the Best Film Award at the Balkans Beyond Borders festival 2024 (GR). Recently, he launched Solandium 2063 (2024, Ministry of Culture of RS), a solarpunk AI-integrated game, premiered at Miklova Hiša Gallery (SI) and later exhibited at Kulturni Inkubator (SI) and Ptuj City Gallery (SI).

Dimitris Argyriou (Head of Preselection Committee - Creative AI)

Dimitris Argyriou is a filmmaker and festival curator holding a Master of Arts from the Ionian University and the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin). He has directed 11 award-winning short films that have screened at over 1,000 international film festivals, as well as two feature documentaries: Lights Out, Berlin! (limited theatrical release in Germany) and Memories of Occupation & Dialogue for the Future, which is officially used as educational material in German schools. His latest work is an innovative 3D animated short, created for the V-Museum Corfu, and presented daily as part of the museum’s permanent program. Dimitris is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents, Sarajevo Talents, and the Cork Film Festival Campus.

In 2012, he founded the NewBorn Short Film Agency, where he serves as CEO, specializing in festival strategy, distribution, and international sales for short films. That same year, he launched the NewBorn Short Film Festival in Berlin, where he continues to act as festival director. In 2020, he expanded the agency’s scope by establishing its production arm, NewBorn Filmproduktion, focusing on the development and production of innovative short and feature-length films. Previously, he co-founded and directed the Greek Film Festival in Berlin, and has programmed for festivals such as Interfilm Berlin, Aegean Film Festival, and Shortcutz Berlin. He has worked with Berlinale and has served on juries across Europe, the US, and beyond.

Kyriaki Kyriakidou

Kyriaki Kyriakidou is in the final year of studies in the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering at the University of the Aegean. Throughout her time at university and during her internship at Novamon, she have developed skills in market research, creative visualization, and website design. One of the topics that particularly interests her is the use of artificial intelligence tools in film pre-production. She have organized workshops on AI in film production and have created three short animated films. Her experience as a pre-production assistant in films, combined with her research for her thesis on “The Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools in Film Production,” drives her to participate as a judge at the Balkans Beyond Borders Short Film Festival. She find the exploration of AI’s potential in a continuously evolving field to be highly fascinating, especially as it presents new professional opportunities.

Phaedra Damianou

Phaedra Damianou is on her 6th year of studies at the Department of Product and System Design in the University of Aegean, located in Syros. She loves the art of animation, from the techniques to the ways it can narrate a story. She also creates amateur short animations. She really enjoys watching animated short films in her free time, she finds very charming  how effectively they can explore intresting topics in a short amount of time, with depictions that often surpass the rules of physics and logic. That’s what makes her appreciate them so much and makes her want to be in the qualifying committee for this year’s festival.