Chris Belloni is a documentary filmmaker, producer and director of the International Queer & Migrant Film Festival Amsterdam, which he initiated in 2015. Chris initiated many activists, queer & arts-related projects - in Azerbaijan, Western Balkans and Surinam to name a few. His films were screened at festivals worldwide. He is also running Stichting art.1, an Amsterdam-based arts organisation as well as Supernova Cinema collective, an alternative cinema space in the center of Amsterdam. In 2020 Chris was nominated for Amsterdammer of the Year. 

Zdeněk Blaha is the Programme Director of the Institute of Documentary Film, where he also runs the East Doc Platform, a key networking event focused on upcoming documentary films from the CEE region. He has been working for the Institute of Documentary Film since 2009, specializing in festival strategies and distribution of documentaries from Central and Eastern Europe. As a freelance consultant, Zdenek works as script editor and UX consultant on various documentaries and interactive/XR works (most recently Darkening, which premiered at Venice Film Festival 2022).   

Heleen Gerritsen was born in the Netherlands but for many years now lives in Germany. Researcher, documentary film producer, curator and expert. Since October 2017, Heleen has been at the helm of a film festival organized by DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (the German film institute) - goEast, which focuses on cinema from the post-socialist space. From 2014 to 2016, she was the director of the dokumentART film festival in Neubrandenburg. Heleen is a member of the European Film Academy and a founding member of Documentary Association of Europe. 

Elwira Niewiera is a Polish director and screenwriter of the well-known documentary films Domino Effect, The Prince and the Dybbuk and The Hamlet Syndrome directed together with Piotr Rosolowski. She won many awards: the Lion for Best Documentary at 74th Venice Film Festival, the Polish Film Academy Award for Best Documentary, Grand Prix-Semaine de la Critique for Best Film at 75th Locarno Film Festival, Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig Film Festival. In her artistic work, she focuses primarily on political, social and cultural transformations in Eastern Europe and the war in Ukraine. 

Jeffrey Winter has been co-executive director at The Film Collaborative since 2010, an LA-based independent film distribution company with specialities in human rights, social justice, environmental issues, and LGBT cinema. Other career highlights include five years managing strategic investments and U.S. sales/acquisitions for the largest media conglomerate in Spain, several years handling grassroots marketing for L.A.’s two largest film festivals (the Los Angeles Film Festival and AFI FEST); a long tenure handling non-theatrical/festival/educational screenings for Wolfe Releasing (the world’s largest catalogue of LGBT films); and 11 years as a panel programmer/programming consultant for the Sundance Film Festival's New Frontier. 

Reporter, documentary filmmaker, and transmedia storyteller. She directs documentary films, cultural projects, performances, and podcasts. In her creative work, she combines documentary material with transmedia means of expression, addressing social, identity, and environmental themes. She graduated from the Łódź Film School and University of Warsaw's Institute of Journalism. She co-creates the artistic-documentary duo Dyba&Lach. She is a co-author of photographic books: "Stigma," selected as the publication of the year 2014 in the Beata Pawlak Competition organized by the Batory Foundation and "Rewizje," nominated for the Photobook of the Year 2020 award by the Aperture Foundation and Paris Photo.  

Research Associate at the University of Warsaw with PhD in Economy, activist. Co-creator of such initiatives as grocery cooperative Dobrze, Camp for Forest, Dzikie Karpaty Initiative, and coaching cooperative Pestka. He has significant experience in formal and informal education: lecturing at the University on a daily basis and organising for several years now interdisciplinary forest school trips. He is interested in natural forests, post-growth and practical anti-capitalism. 

photo by Katarzyna Kalinowska

Director at the Polish Society for the Protection of Birds, OTOP/BirdLife Poland. Before joining OTOP, she worked, among others, as head of the biodiversity team at Greenpeace and as head of the communication team and senior advocacy specialist at Polish Humanitarian Action. She graduated in Cultural Anthropology and Management. For more than 20 years, she has been actively involved in nature conservation, human rights, minorities and global development cooperation.