MWFF 2016: Jury

Montreal World Film Festival
40th Edition
August 25 - Septemeber 5, 2016

JURY

Members of two MWFFJury teams were revealed to the public today.

WORLD COMPETITION JURY

SERGEI BODROV

Born in Khabarovsk, Russia in 1948, Sergei Bodrov studied screenwriting before becoming a journalist. His work for the satirical magazine, Crocodile, won him numerous literary prizes. After a lengthy career as a screenwriter, he made his directorial debut in 1985 with Sweet Dreams in the Grass, which won a silver prize at the Moscow Festival. He has since directed I Hate You (1986), Non-Professionals (1987), Freedom is Paradise (Grand Prize of the Americas at the 1989 MWFF), The Gambler (1990), The Man in Red Square (1991), I Wanted to See Angels (1992), White King, Red Queen (1992), Prisoners of the Mountains (1996), which was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, Nomad (2004), Mongol (2007), also nominated for an Oscar. His last film, The Seventh Son, with Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore and Alicia Vikander,  was released in 2015. He is currently working on projects in Germany and China.

CLAUDE GAGNON

 Born in Sainte-Hyacinthe, Quebec, in 1949, Claude Gagnon spent a decade in Japan in the 1970s. With his first feature, Keiko (1978), he became the first and only foreigner to receive the Japanese Film Directors' Association best film award. Returning to Canada in the 1980s, Gagnon and his wife Yuri Yoshimura founded their own company, Aska Film. With The Kid Brother (1986), he won the MWFF's Grand Prize of the Americas as well as prizes at Berlin and other international festivals. Among his other films: Larose ,Pierrot et la Luce (1981), Pale Face (1985, winner of the FIPRESCI prize at the MWFF), The Pianist (1991), Pour l’amour de Thomas (1994), Revival Blues (2003),Kamataki (2005), winner of five prizes at the MWFF, and Karakara (2012), shown at the 36th MWFF and winner of the Prix de la Cinémathèque québécoise as  audience favourite and honoured for its window to the world.

 GORAN MARKOVIC

Belgrade-born Goran Marcovic studied film directing in Prague at FAMU and then started working for television, directing documentaries and over fifty TV movies. His first theatrical feature was the critically acclaimed and financially successful Special Education (1976). Most of his following features have been screened in various Yugoslavian and international festivals. One of the best known of the “Czech School” of Yugoslav directors, he has been teaching in the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade since 1979. Besides making movies, Markovic staged two plays and wrote three more and he also directs for the theatre. His films have screened in festivals around the world and won numerous prizes. Selected filmography: Special Education (1976), National Class (1978), Jack of All Trades (1980), Variola Vera(1981), Taiwan Canasta (1985), Déjà Vu (1987), Meeting Point (1989), Tito and Me (1992), Burlesque Tragedy (1995), Serbia Year Zero (2001), The Cordon (2003), winner of MWFF’s Grand Prize, andFalsifier (2013).

Donald Ranvaud

Anglo-Italian with a French name and a marked tendency toward the Brazilian, Donald Ranvaud taught at universities ofWarwickand East Anglia, where he became chairman of the film department. He founded the independent film magazine Frameworkin 1975, which he edited until 1988 and freelanced for MFB, Sight and Sound, The Guardian, La Repubblica, Les Cahiers du Cinéma,American Film as well published books on Italian cinema. During this period he directed documentary items for Channel Four and RAI Uno, including portraits of Paul Schrader, Raul Ruiz, Cui Jian, Laurie Anderson and David Mamet as well as co-directed a feature, Visioni Private. In 1989 he helped start the European SCRIPTFund. Since then he embarked on production full time, with directors and in countries before they become fashionable, particularly China: 1989-1993(especially Life on a Stringand including Farewell my Concubine); and Latin America, 1994 - today(Central do Brasil, Familia Rodante, Xango, Lavoura Arcaica, Babilonia 2000, Madame Sata, Cidade de Deus, nominated for four Oscars in 2004). Most recently he was executive producer on The Constant Gardener by Fernando Meirelles.

ELISEO SUBIELA

Born in Buenos Aires in 1944, Eliseo Subiela graduated in philosophy and literature and studied film at La Plata. He made his first short in 1963, Un largo silencio, apprenticed with several established Argentinian directors and worked for many years in commercials before making his debut in features with La conquista del Paradiso (1981). His 1986 feature, Man Facing Southeast brought him to international attention and he followed that with Last Images of the Shipwreck (1989), which won best script at the MWFF,  and The Dark Side of the Heart  (1992, Grand Prize of the Americas at the MWFF). Among his other films: Don’t Die Without Telling Me Where You’re Going (1995, People’s Choice at the MWFF), Wake Up Love (1996), Little Miracles (1997), The Adventures of God (2000),The Dark Side of the Heart 2 (2001), Lifting de corazon (2005), El Resultado del amor (2007). He is was named Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 1990.

LEE TAMAHORI

Born to a Maori father and a European mother, Lee Tamahori began his career as a commercial artist and photographer, then joined the New Zealand film industry in the late 1970s as a boom operator. Tamahori had directed a number of shorter dramas for television before he made his feature film debut in 1994 with Once Were Warriors, a gritty depiction of a violent Maori family. The film had had problems finding funding, but it won the Grand Prize of the Americas at the Montreal World Film Festival, went on to break box office records in New Zealand. Overseas it sold to many countries and won rave reviews. Tamahori moved to Hollywood and directed the period thriller Mulholland Falls(1996), followed by the successful wilderness film The Edge (1997), Along Came a Spider (2001) and the Bond thriller Die Another Day (2002). Among his subsequent films:  XXX: State of the Union  (2005) starring Ice Cube and Willem Dafoe, Next (2007) and The Devil's Double (2011). In 2015 Tamahori directed Mahana, his first feature made in New Zealand since Once Were Warriors.

JURY OF THE FIRST FEATURE PRIZE

MARIANGIOLA CASTROVILLI

 Mariangiola Castrovilli was born in Rome where she attended the International University of Journalism Pro Deo, now Luiss. She worked for RAI as a journalist and programmer- director, and for the newspaper Il Giornale, then contributed to leading European newspapers. A member of FIPRESCI, she served on numerous juries including  those at Karlovy Vary and San Sebastian. She is a member of the National Union of Italian Film Journalists, which each year awards the Nastri D'Argento, the Italian equivalent of the Oscar. In the 1980s she was the first woman in the world to fly at twice the speed of sound for direct radio and television on the Aermacchi MB-339PAN and she did all the stunts of the Frecce Tricolori, the Italian Air Force aerobatic team. Auto legend Enzo Ferrari invited her to ride in his new Ferrari 40 and she reached 324 km/hr on the track in Maranello, always live on air. These exploits earned her the title: “The butterfly with iron wings”.

MAURIE ALIOFF

Montreal film critic Maurie Alioff writes about movies for publications off and online. He is also a screenwriter collaborating on a documentary featuring Bob Marley’s granddaughter that is now filming.  A longtime faculty member of the English Department at Vanier College, Alioff is researching and developing other Jamaica-related projects, including a magical-realist crime film drawing on stories he hears on the island. He has written for radio and television, programmed films for the Just for Laughs comedy festival, taught screenwriting, and been a contributing editor for various magazines. Alioff’s articles have appeared in POV Magazine, Canadian Cinematographer, Take One, Salon l.l,CTVM.Info, northernstars.ca, The New York Times, and many other publications.

Pierre-Henri Deleau

Pierre-Henri Deleau began his career as an assistant director to Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Pierre Kast and then as a director in educational television. He directed a short, Virginie ou la double rupture, in 1969.  He is the co-founder of the FILMOBLIC production house which produced or co-produced films by Hugo Santiago, Jean-Louis Comolli, Jean-François Dion, Claude Miller, Edouardo de Gregorio and Jean-Pierre Lefebvre. In 1969, he co-founded the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival and was its director for three decades. In 1996, he co-founded the Forum of European Cinema in Strasbourg, and in 1987 co-founded FIPA  and directed the event in Cannes, Nice and Biarritz until 2009. That year he became member of the selection committee for first works at the European Film Academy. As director of the Cinéma and Littérature collection of Les Éditions Jean-Claude Lattès, he has published books on Michelangelo Antonioni, Groucho Marx, Andrezj Zulawski and Yilmäz Güney, among others.

Visit the Montreal World Film Festival's website for more information, program and film scheduling.

Festival information courtesy of  MWFF.