LICHTER Juries 2024
The juries of the 17th LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International
Jury Regional Feature Film Competition

Nils Menrad
Nils Menrad is a festival director and media artist. He founded dokKa - das dokumentarfestival and has been its director since 2014. After studying media art and film at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG), he worked on film and media projects for museums, institutions and companies.
In addition to his artistic work, he is actively involved in various cultural organizations and committees in Karlsruhe. His commitment to the promotion of film art and cultural diversity has had a lasting impact on the artistic and cultural landscape in Karlsruhe and beyond. Furthermore, he also teaches documentary film in the context of various lectureships.

Bella Halben
Bella Halben lives in her hometown of Hamburg, where she completed an apprenticeship as a commercial photographer. After her training she started as a camera assistant, then quickly became an operator in the areas of current affairs, documentary film and advertising film. She took over the camera and direction of various advertising productions and has been working as a freelance camerawoman since 1988.
In 1995, she took over the cinematography for Christopher Roth's film LOOOSERS! She has received numerous awards for her ongoing camera work: in 2006 the Adolf Grimme Award in Gold for Hans Steinbichler's film HIERANKL, also in 2006 the German Television Award for BELLA BLOCK - DAS GLÜCK DER ANDEREN.
In 2006 and 2009, she was nominated for the German Camera Award for Caroline Link's films HIERANKL and IM WINTER EIN JAHR. She has been responsible for the cinematography in numerous award-winning cinema and television film productions. Most recently for DAS WUNDER VON KAPSTADT (2022) and Caroline Link's miniseries SAFE (2022), among others.
She has shot numerous cinema and television productions with Hans Steinbichler, Caroline Link, Francis Meletzky, Nicolette Krebitz, Anno Saul, Detlef Buck, Franziska Buch and many others.
In 2023, she received the German Cinematography Award of Honour.

Wolfgang Richter
Wolfgang Richter is an independent filmmaker. He is one of the founders of AG DOK, a member of the Association of German Film Critics and the German and European Film Academy.
In 1972, Wolfgang Richter founded docfilm with Hannes Karnick and docMovie GmbH in 2012.
They made around one hundred TV documentaries on political, cultural and social topics and successful cinema films such as MARTIN NIEMÖLLER - WHAT WOULD JESUS SAY? (1985), RADIO STAR - THE AFN STORY (1994) and WHEN DOCTORS KILL (2009).
His films have received funding from the BKM, Hamburg, NW and Hessen and have been shown and honoured at many film festivals in Germany and abroad, including Berlin, Bilbao, Bombay, Bratislava, Cannes, Chicago, Denver, Florence, Galway, Hof, Krakow, Los Angeles, Leipzig, Lille, Mannheim, Munich, Ludwigshafen, Montreal, Moscow, Oberhausen, Tampere and Zagreb.
The docMovie production RADICAL EVIL (written and directed by Oscar winner Stefan Ruzowitzky), which was supported by Hessen, received the Avner Shalev-Yad Vashem Prize 2014 at the International Jerusalem Film Festival, among others.
Jury Regional Short Film Competition

Luana Almeida Pees
Luana Almeida Pees makes short films as a producer, director and author and is currently studying at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB). Born in Berlin, she grew up in São Paulo and Vienna and studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt. In 2021, she founded the "Bildsturz Kollektiv" with young filmmakers from the Rhine-Main region.

Natascha Gikas
Natascha Gikas studied sociology and theater, film and television studies in Frankfurt am Main. From 1990, she gained her first experience in cinema work at CinéMayence in Mainz and at the Frankfurt Filmschau. She was involved in the realization of various short film projects.
Since 1995, she has been a permanent employee at the cinema in the ‘Deutsches Filmmuseum’ in the areas of programme design and conception of film series. She has also been head of the cinema department since 2016. Her activities also include various jury and board work as well as involvement in film festivals, including as director of the Africa Alive Festival.

Nikita Diakur
Nikita Diakur experiments with forms and narrative styles in his works. He creates stories about bizarre characters and the whims of physics in everyday life, which often leads to unexpected twists and turns. His latest works "Ugly", "Fest" and "backflip" have received numerous awards and screened at international film festivals. Diakur shares his expertise through lectures and workshops, participated in the artist-in-residence programme at Q21 in Vienna and is a member of the European Film Academy.
Jury 14th LICHTER Art Award

Iryna Yaniv
Iryna Yaniv is a Ukrainian-German cultural manager and curator. She has been organizing and curating expanded cinema program at the Cinémathèque Leipzig since 2022. Recent projects include a film program for the exhibition "Perspectives of war and belonging", a film and event series for the 150th birthday of Hanns Eisler, the exhibition by Kat Austen "This Land is Not Mine". In 2018 and 2019, she was a jury member of the Festival for Contemporary Arts “Zukunftsvisionen” in Görlitz and co-designer of the supporting program.
In Ukraine, she focused on cultural policy topics and, along with five other experts, was part of the working group that developed the cultural strategy for the city of Lviv. From 2013 to 2016 she worked in the PPV Knowledge Network, where she implemented socio-cultural projects in Eastern and Central Ukraine.

Marie Oucherif
Marie Oucherif is a curator and art theorist. She studied Comparative Literature in Vienna and Paris and Curatorial Studies in Frankfurt am Main. From 2020 to 2023, she worked as assistant curator at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt on the exhibitions Cosima von Bonin – Feelings (2024), Elizabeth Price – Sound of the Break (2023), Niki de Saint Phalle (2023), Carlos Bunga (2022) and WALK! (2022), and curated the solo exhibition Maruša Sagadin – Luv Birds in toten Winkeln (2023). For the monthly video art platform DOUBLE FEATURE, she has worked with the moving image artists Peng Zuqiang, Maeve Brennan, Lydia Ourahmane, Pınar Öğrenci and Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński.
In addition to her curatorial work, Marie Oucherif regularly writes texts. She is the editor of the accompanying publication of the exhibition Maruša Sagadin – Luv Birds in toten Winkeln (Kettler 2023), and co-editor of the publication WALK! (Verlag für moderne Kunst 2022). Furthermore, she has written texts for catalogues such as Rasoul Ashtary (Diez Gallery 2022) and Art for No One (Hirmer 2022).

Saul Judd
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.
JURY - 8. VR STORYTELLING AWARD

Sebastian Oschatz
Sebastian Oschatz is co-founder and creative director at MESO (https://MESO.DESIGN). Through MESO, he supports museums, institutions and companies in the development of pioneering digital communication solutions and advises on the interface between communication, architecture and technology. He studied computer science, initiated the development of the graphical programming language VVVV and is an honorary professor for interaction design in the Department of Design at HfG Offenbach.

Philip Hausmeier
Professor Philip Hausmeier is head of the Augmented and Virtual Reality Design course at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences. As a freelance artist and designer, he has been showing his work in international exhibitions for two decades and is represented in various collections. He is also co-founder of Radiance VR, an international online platform for artistic VR experiences.

Franziska Nori
Franziska Nori has headed the Frankfurt Art Association since November 2014. Between 2007 and 2014 she was director of the Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence after she headed the digital art department at the Museum of Applied Arts in Frankfurt from 2000 to 2003. Nori has been Honorary Professor of Museology and Curatorial Practices of Contemporary Art at Marist University Lorenzo de Medici since 2011.