Silver Screen Awards Jury

Ossama Mohammed is an award-winning director, scriptwriter and educator. His debut short documentary, Step by Step (1978), explores the transformation of impoverished children into soldiers and killers, and was selected for the Berlinale in 2013. Stars in Broad Daylight (1988), his feature debut, is a bold satirical allegory of the Ba’athist regime. His second feature, Sunduq al-Dunya (2002), investigates the imaginaries constitutive of the divine dictator. After his exile to Paris in 2011, Ossama released Silvered Water, Syria Self- Portrait (2014), an inventive documentary about the Syrian civil war. All his feature films are banned in Syria. He received the Prince Claus Award in 2015 for his cinematic and humanitarian work.

Mariana Gaivão studied photography at Ar.Co and film at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School. Her short films, such as Ruby (2019), have been selected for festivals including Rotterdam, Palm Springs, ZINEBI, Oberhausen, Las Palmas and Curtas Vila do Conde. Her work has also been aired on broadcasters like Arte and featured at venues like the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Beginning her career as a film editor, she became a frequent collaborator of renowned Portuguese directors such as João Pedro Rodrigues and Marco Martins. Additionally, she has been a programmer for Queer Lisboa and Doclisboa, and coordinator of the Advanced Post-Production Course at the School of Arts – Catholic University of Porto.

Lou Ye is one of the most prominent directors working in contemporary Chinese cinema today. His films, Suzhou River (2000), Purple Butterfly (2003), Summer Palace (2006), Spring Fever (2009), Love and Bruises (2011), Mystery (2012), Blind Massage (2014), The Shadow Play (2018) and Saturday Fiction (2019), were selected by major international festivals and awarded various prizes, including the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for Blind Massage and Cannes’ Best Screenplay for Spring Fever. In 2018, Lou Ye was invited to be member of the Film Academy Awards.

Santosh Sivan is an acclaimed Indian cinematographer, director, producer and actor. A graduate of the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India, Santosh has an illustrious career spanning over three decades, during which he has completed many feature films and documentaries across various languages. He is India’s most awarded director of photography. A founding member of the Indian Society of Cinematographers (ISC), Sivan is the first cinematographer from Asia-Pacific to gain membership into the American Society of Cinematographers. In 2024, he became the first Asian to receive the prestigious Pierre Angénieux Tribute Award at Cannes, further cementing his reputation on the global stage.

Sofia Jane began her acting career with Malaysian director U-Wei Haji Saari’s film, Perempuan, Isteri dan Jalang (1992) and was subsequently cast in several Malaysian television dramas and films. In 1994, she collaborated with Dato Noordin Hassan for his play, Malam Ini Penyu Menangis, and has since worked with the late Krishen Jit, Ida Nerina, Normah Nordin, Namron and many more. She won Best Actress at the Boh Cameronian Arts Awards 2014 for her portrayal of Bulan in Namron’s Laut Lebih Indah Dari Bulan. After a long hiatus, she is slowly picking up where she left off, with the series One Cent Thief (2022), the upcoming feature Mencari Ramlee by Megat Sharizal and Maryam Pagi ke Malam (2023) by Badrul Hisham Ismail, for which she won Best Actress at the 21st Asian Film Festival in Italy.

Daniela Urzola is a film critic and programmer who has been published in Spanish print and online media such as Caimán Cuadernos de Cine, Revista Mutaciones, Kinótico and NUEBO. She is part of the selection committee and the head of press for Filmadrid. Urzola has a Masters in Film Criticism and currently teaches a class in the same programme. In 2024, she was a part of the press team for Seminci, Valladolid International Film Festival.

Jason Tan Liwag is a scientist, actor, writer, educator and curator. He is an alumnus of film criticism programmes in Manila, Rotterdam, Udine and Yamagata, and the founder of QCinema Critics Lab. He has served on numerous festival selection committees and juries and was most recently a guest curator for Queer East 2024. Presently, he heads the short film programme at QCinema and is a shorts programmer at the Leeds International Film Festival. Outside of cinema, he lectures part-time at the CIIT College of Arts and Technology.

Timmy Chih-Ting Chen is Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Hong Kong Metropolitan University. Dr. Chen has published in A Companion to Wong Kar-wai (Wiley Blackwell), the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Surveillance in Asian Cinema (Routledge), The Assassin (HKU Press), Frames Cinema Journal, Sound Stage Screen, and Film Quarterly. He has served as jury for the Hong Kong Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival and the ifva Awards

May Adadol Ingawanij is a writer, curator, professor of cinematic arts, and co-director of the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media, University of Westminster. She has written for a wide range of academic and arts publications. Her areas of focus include Southeast Asian contemporary art, histories and genealogies of cinema, avant-garde legacies in Southeast Asia, contemporary Global South artistic and curatorial practices, aesthetics and circulation of moving image, art and independent films associated with Southeast Asia. Her recent curatorial projects include the 69th Flaherty Film Seminar, Legacies, and Animistic Apparatus.

Starting with the Jeonju International Film Festival programme team in 2004, Sung Moon has been active in various other international film festivals and documentary industry forums such as Busan, Jeonju Project Market and Docs Port Incheon. She has been a representative for Latin America at the Korean Film Council from 2013, and established the Buenos Aires Korean Film Festival in 2014. Moon has been working as a programmer for Jeonju since 2019. She has also edited books such as What Will Be Of Cinema? (2021) and Tsai Ming-Liang – Walker Series (2004).

Yosep Anggi Noen is a producer, screenwriter, filmmaker and educator. His short film, A Laddy Caddy Who Never Saw A Hole in One (2013), won the Sonje Award for best short film at Busan and the Grand Prix at Tokyo’s Short Shorts Film Festival. His feature debut, Peculiar Vacation and Other Illnesses (2012), premiered at Locarno and received the Special Mention at Vancouver. Two of his features, Solo, Solitude (2016) and The Science of Fictions (2019), also premiered at Locarno, with the latter receiving the Special Mention. 24 Hours with Gaspar (2023) premiered at Busan and was screened at SGIFF, while his first mystery horror film, Redemption of Sin (2024), was recently released in theatres domestically.