Nikias Chryssos was born to German-Greek parents near Heidelberg and now lives in Berlin. He studied film and video production in England and directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg. During his studies, he was selected for the Résidence du Festival de Cannes in Paris. His short films screened at festivals such as Berlinale, Tribeca, Rotterdam and Oberhausen and received numerous international awards.

After founding Kataskop Filmproduktion, he produced his first feature film DER BUNKER in 2015, which premiered at the Berlinale, screened at over 40 festivals and received several international awards.

His second feature film A PURE PLACE, a German-Greek co-production, premiered at the 2021 Munich Film Festival where it won the Best Director Award. In 2022 he shot LEBEN TOD EKSTASE, a TATORT for hr, for which he also served as co-writer.

American photographer and filmmaker Laura J. Padgett has lived in Germany for many years and teaches film theory at Goethe University in Frankfurt. She studied painting and film at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (NY) and film, photography, art history and aesthetics at the Städelschule and Goethe University.

Her short films FRAGMENT (1987) and HILDEGARD VON BINGEN (1990) were shown in Oberhausen, among other venues, and her film SOLITAIRE (2017) was screened at various festivals in North America and Europe, such as the 35th Kassel Dokfest in Germany. In addition, there are numerous international solo and group exhibitions.

Her photographs are part of the collections of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Hamburg), the Jewish Museum Frankfurt, the Deutsche Bank Art Collection and the DZ Bank Kunststiftung.

Since 2017, Thorsten Schaumann has been the Artistic Director of the International Hof Film Festival. Previously, he worked as a rights agent and buyer at film festivals around the world, including Berlin, Cannes, Tokyo, Pusan, Hong Kong, etc. for the feature film world distributor Bavaria Film International and subsequently Sky Deutschland.

He is a member of the advisory board for film, television, and radio of the Goethe Institute, on the program advisory board of the Urania Berlin as well as on the award jury HessenFilm and media for the area "festivals, events and series".

Furthermore, Thorsten Schaumann holds teaching positions at the HFF Munich, the ifs Cologne, the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, the Filmwerkstatt Munich and the DFFB Berlin, among others.

Lotte Schubert worked for four years as a curatorial assistant and co-curator for ACC Galerie Weimar and HALLE 14 in Leipzig. At the same time, she studied graphic design/book arts there at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst.

During her subsequent acting studies at the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch Berlin, she appeared at the Schaubühne as Grusche Vachnadze in DER KAUKASISCHE KREIDEKREIS (director: Peter Kleinert) and the short film LEO (director: Rebecca Pap) in the title role.

After graduating in 2021, she took up her first engagement at Schauspiel Frankfurt. In addition to her work on stage, she is active in film and television as well as a voice actress and releases her own music as SMILLA ZORN.

Erin Högerle studied theatre, film, and media studies and English at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and completed her doctorate on "Asian American Film Festivals: Frames, Locations, and Performances of Memory" (published by De Gruyter in 2021).

Since 2018, she has been working as a feature film editor at Hessischer Rundfunk and is responsible for the material development and realization of "Tatort" and "FilmMittwoch" productions. Furthermore, she supervises debut films and cinema co-productions.

Dennis Stein-Schomburg works in animation and interactive media. His short films have been shown worldwide at festivals such as the Berlinale and the Cannes Film Festival (XR). They have received numerous awards, including the German Young Filmmakers Award and the Short Tiger Award.

In 2015, he founded the animation studio "Raumkapsel" (raumkapsel.space) with Martin Schmidt. Together they realize their own films, commercial films and series productions, as well as interactive VR experiences and installation in the room.

In addition to his work as a producer, he is working and doing his doctorate as an artistic assistant at the Kunsthochschule Kassel.

Liberty Adrien is a curator, art historian and critic. Since 2022, she is the curator of Portikus in Frankfurt am Main, together with Carina Bukuts. Liberty Adrien is the founder of the independent art space Âme Nue in Hamburg, dedicated to contemporary art and culture, and the Âme Nue Ateliers in Paris. The French Ministry of Culture awarded her a research grant in 2016 for her study on "the history of works by women artists acquired for the French national collections, from 1791 to the present day". Since then, she has collaborated with the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP) and the Institut français Paris to present exhibitions of video works from the French collections in several European cities. In 2021, was the artistic director of the art space Les Vitrines at the Institut français Berlin. Together with Carina Bukuts, she curated the large-scale project Balade Berlin: an exhibition route in public places, for which they worked with artists, such as Christine Sun Kim, Ulrike Ottinger, Jimmy Robert, and Slavs and Tatars.

Britta Färber is an art historian and, since 2022, the head of the Deutsche Bank's global art program. After her master's degree in art history, literature, film and media studies in London, Kiel and Frankfurt, she gained professional experience at various cultural and media institutions, as an editor at a Frankfurt city magazine and as a freelance art critic and mediator.

In her previous role as Senior Curator and now as the Head of the Art Program, she has worked with the Deutsche Bank Collection and managed the "Artist of the Year” award. She has curated exhibitions with artists such as Koki Tanaka, Basim Magdy, Zhang Xu Zhan and most recently LuYang. As part of the cooperation with the Frieze Art Fair in London, New York, Seoul and Los Angeles, she created the Deutsche Bank Frieze Los Angeles Film Award.

Saul Judd is an independent curator based in Frankfurt, Germany. Since 2010 he has been responsible for the video art section of the LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International. He conceived exhibitions with artists such as Keren Cytter and Mike Bouchet in the context of the festival until he created the LICHTER Art Award in 2011. He started to curate the LICHTER Short Films International program in 2015. Among his projects BLANK SLATE a publication about art, architecture and design he started in 2016 with SCHAUT! - a series of exhibitions of contemporary art film and video art at the MAL SEH’N movie theatre in Frankfurt. In 2017 he presented the artist John Skoog as a guest curator for Double Feature at Schirn Kunsthalle.