With the Message to Man International Film Festival opening in less than 10 days, viewers are eagerly counting down to the start, and the Festival is excited to introduce the jury for this year’s event.
Carefully selected by the Festival team, this year’s five jury panels are made up of cinema and art professionals from around the world. Esteemed participants and winners of awards from world-class festivals will gather to judge the competition programme.
The Festival is held with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, and the Committee for Culture of St. Petersburg.
The International Competition jury panel includes Venice Film Festival award-winner, Nepalese director Min Bahadur Bham; IDFA and San Sebastián prize-winner, Argentine director Martín Benchimol; Serbian director, producer, and Locarno Film Festival curator, participant in Cannes and Venice screenings Stefan Ivančić; young world-renowned experimentalist, participant of Berlinale, Toronto, and New York international film festivals, Turkish director Burak Çevik. Representing Russia on the International Competition jury is renowned costume designer, Nika Award laureate Nadezhda Vasilyeva.
The National Competition jury panel includes Locarno and Cannes prize-winner, director Darezhan Omirbayev; programmer at major international film festivals Alena Shumakova; and Russian filmmaker, Kinotavr winner Nikolay Khomeriki.
Judging the In Silico Experimental Film Competition will be artist Kerim Ragimov, philosopher Mikhail Kurtov, and director Zhenya Korchagina.
The Press Jury features author and screenwriter of the series The Boy’s Word: Blood on the Asphalt Robert Garayev; editor-in-chief of Sobaka.ru Yana Miloradovskaya; and editor-in-chief of KinoPoisk Filipp Mironov.
“All of our colleagues in the profession know how challenging it is to assemble a jury for an international festival today. Yet the Message to Man Festival, both in the past and now, remains firmly committed to the idea that world culture is indivisible: it is a single organism, with each part essential to the whole. We are grateful to colleagues from around the globe who agreed to serve on the jury of the 34th Message to Man, as they share this conviction with us,” says Mikhail Ratgauz, the Festival’s programme director.
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION JURY
Awards the Golden Centaur Grand Prix and three special Centaur prizes
- Min Bahadur Bham (Nepal) — director, and a key figure in the Nepalese New Wave. His works have been showcased at international film festivals in Rotterdam and Busan. Bham’s short film The Flute (2012) became the first Nepalese film in the history of the Venice Film Festival. His debut feature, The Black Hen (2015), won the Fedeora Award in Venice and was submitted for the Academy Awards. His latest film, Shambhala, featured in the Twin Peaks special programme at the 34th Message to Man Film Festival, became the first Nepalese film to be presented at the Berlinale and was also shown as part of Locarno’s Piazza Grande section.
- Martin Benchimol (Argentina) — director, cinematographer, and creator of a distinctive cinematic style that blurs the line between documentary and fiction. Benchimol’s film The River People (2012), co-directed with Pablo Aparo, debuted at DOK Leipzig, while their second collaboration, The Dread (2017), won awards at IDFA, Docs Barcelona, and film festivals in Krakow and Guadalajara. The Castle (2023), Benchimol’s solo feature debut, was presented in the Panorama section at the Berlinale and won the main prize in the Horizontes section at the San Sebastián Film Festival. The Russian premiere took place in Message to Man’s 2023 competition programme.
- Nadezhda Vasilyeva (Russia) — costume designer, curator. Worked as a costume designer on most of Alexei Balabanov’s films and collaborated with directors Semyon Aranovich, Alexei Uchitel, Rustam Khamdamov, Vladimir Bortko, Vasily Sigarev, and Renata Litvinova. In 2024, she presented her solo exhibition at the L’aléatoire gallery in Paris. Winner of the Nika Award for Best Costume Design on The Castle (1994) and Matilda (2017).
- Stefan Ivančić (Serbia) — director, producer, and programmer. Member of the selection committee for Locarno and curator for the Belgrade Auteur Film Festival. His short films have been showcased at prestigious international festivals, including Cannes, Rotterdam, San Sebastián, Turin, and Visions du Réel. Producer of Ognjen Glavonić’s The Load (2018), which premiered at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, and co-producer of Ivan Salatić’s You Have the Night (2018) and Dušan Zorić and Matija Gluščević’s Have You Seen This Woman? (2022), both presented at Venice Critics’ Week. Co-producer of The Elegy of Laurel (2021) by Dušan Kasalica, Montenegro’s submission for the Academy Awards.
- Burak Çevik (Türkiye) — director, founder of the Fol Cinema Society. His films The Pillar of Salt (2018), Belonging (2019), and Forms of Forgetting (2023) premiered at the Berlinale Forum. His latest film, Nothing in Its Place (2024), was selected for the Proxima section at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. His video works have been showcased at festivals such as the Locarno Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, FID Marseille, and the New York Film Festival.
NATIONAL COMPETITION JURY
Awards the Silver Centaur for Best Film in the National Competition and a Special Prize
- Darezhan Omirbayev (Kazakhstan) — director, film scholar. A recipient of the Order of Kurmet (Kazakhstan) and the Order of Arts and Letters (France), His feature debut, Kairat (1992), won the Silver Leopard and the FIPRESCI Prize in Locarno, and received awards in Strasbourg and Nantes. His next film, Cardiogram (1995), earned recognition in Venice and won the Grand Prix in Singapore. Killer (1998) received the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes and won accolades in Karlovy Vary, Nantes, and Tehran. His film Chouga (2007) was ranked among the top ten films of the year by Cahiers du Cinéma. Other notable works include Student (2012, Un Certain Regard) and Poet (2022, Best Director award in Tokyo).
- Nikolay Khomeriki (Russia) — director, screenwriter. He participated in the Cannes Film Festival three times, with his short film The Two of Us in the Cinéfondation section (2005, second prize) and his feature films 977 (2006) and Tale in the Darkness (2009) in Un Certain Regard. Other works include Heart’s Boomerang (2011, Kommersant Weekend Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival), The Icebreaker (2016, four Golden Eagle Award nominations), Freeze Dance (2021, Kinotavr Grand Prize), and the TV series Pure (2024).
- Alena Shumakova (Italy) — curator. Graduated from the University of Urbino and worked at the Bologna Cinematheque. Since 2002, she has selected films from the former USSR and Eastern Europe for leading film festivals, including Venice Film Festival, curated the Directors’ Fortnight section at the Cannes Film Festival, and has been involved with festivals in Rome, Beijing, Trieste, and Turin. Organized retrospectives of Soviet cinema in Italy and abroad. Lecturer at the University of Bologna from 2007 to 2020.
IN SILICO EXPERIMENTAL FILM COMPETITION JURY
Awards the Silver Centaur for Best Experimental Film
- Zhenya Korchagina (Russia) — director, screenwriter for film and animation, artist. Curator of the “Scientific Conference” educational project. In 2022, her film My Vegetable Garden on Kolyma received the Student Jury Prize at Message to Man, awarded “for the ability to pose a question in the past and receive an answer in the present.”
- Mikhail Kurtov (Russia) — philosopher, PhD in Philosophy. Author of Between Boredom and Dreaming: An Analysis of Cinematic Experience (2012) and The Genesis of the Graphical User Interface: Toward a Theology of Code (2014). Recipient of the Andrei Bely Prize.
- Kerim Ragimov (Russia) — Russian artist, member of the Parazit collective and co-founder of the group Deus ExCavator with Petr Shvetsov. Creator of conceptual series in traditional painting and graphic techniques developed over decades (Human Project and Metro, both since 1994).
PRESS JURY
- Robert Garayev (Russia) — writer, journalist, and musician. Born in 1976 in Kazan. In his teenage years, he was involved in criminal youth gangs. In 2000, he moved to Moscow, where he worked as a music reviewer, DJ, guide at the Jewish Museum, and participated in the Heavy Metal DJs project. In 2020, Garayev released the book The Boy’s Word: Criminal Tatarstan from the 1970s to 2010s, which became the basis for the 2023 series The Boy’s Word: Blood on the Asphalt.“ He co-wrote the series with Zhora Kryzhovnikov.
- Yana Miloradovskaya (Russia) — editor-in-chief of Sobaka.ru in St. Petersburg and creative director of the Sobaka.ru brand, which covers 14 cities from Nizhny Novgorod to Irkutsk. Curator of the awards “St. Petersburg of the Future” and “Top 50 Most Famous People of St. Petersburg.” As an editor and creator of photo shoots, she collaborated with Lyudmila Gurchenko, Alexei German Sr., Alexei Balabanov, Mark Eidelstein, and Maria Matsel.
- Filipp Mironov (Russia) — Moscow-based journalist and editor-in-chief of KinoPoisk. He was previously the editor-in-chief of BURO, an editor for Afisha Daily, and part of the PR team at the V-A-C Foundation. In 2018, alongside former colleagues from Afisha, he launched the Telegram channel psycho daily covering culture and urban life.
STUDENT JURY
- Marylya Gembar (Belarus) — student at VGIK, workshop of Alexei Uchitel. Filmmaker. Studied at the Warsaw School of Economics.
- Izabella Tarasova (Russia) — student at the St. Petersburg School of New Cinema (workshop of Artur Aristakisyan). She graduated in 2009 from the Art History Faculty of the Repin Institute and has been involved in in contemporary art exhibitions for 15 years. In 2014, she was long-listed for the Kuryokhin Prize. In 2022, she completed the filmmaking course at the St. Petersburg State University of Film and Television.
- Raya Shmatova (Russia) — student at the St. Petersburg State University of Film and Television, non-fiction cinema workshop of Alexander Markov and Maria Popritsak. Certified graphic designer, contemporary artist, and creator of animated documentary. Her film Multicellular (2023) was featured in the In Silico Experimental Film Competition at the 33rd Message to Man IFF.
