Laura Klippel is a German film director and screenwriter. She studied directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg. Her short film “Hot Dog” was shown and awarded at several international festivals. The film tells the story of a young woman who has to assert herself in a patriarchal society. Laura Klippel often deals with feminist themes in her work and attaches particular importance to authentic character portrayals.

Cem Kaya, born in Schweinfurt in 1976, is a German film director, screenwriter, cinematographer and editor who specializes in documentary and found footage films. After studying communication design at the Merz Akademie in Stuttgart, he initially worked as a producer, editor and director for commercials and music videos before turning to documentary film. His film “Aşk, Mark ve Ölüm” (Love, D-Mark and Death) about the music culture of Turkish migrant workers in Germany opened the LICHTER Filmfest 2022 after premiering at the Berlinale, where it won the Panorama Audience Award.

Volker Beller is co-founder of the Randfilmfest, a festival for independent and experimental films in Kassel. Beller is passionately committed to promoting independent filmmaking and, with the Randfilmfest, offers a platform for films outside the mainstream. His own cinematic works are characterized by innovative narrative structures and the exploration of marginal social issues.

Dascha Petuchow completed her studies in the field of communication design at the Rheinmain College in Wiesbaden. Since graduating, Dascha Petuchow has been involved in many aspects of the Hessen film scenes. In 2021, she co-founded the production company Plotlessfilm in Wiesbaen (now in Frankfurt). She is currently working on a screenplay for her debut film ‘’Wohin wir gehen’’ (AT)

After completing her actor training and subsequent several years of stage work, Brigitte Maria Bertele studied directing at the Film Academy in Ludwigsburg and the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires. Her feature film debut ‘’ Nach vor Augen’’ premiered at the 2008 Berlinale Forum and, as with her second feature film ‘’Der Brand’’ (2011), won national and international awards.

Since then, she has directed numerous feature and television films in a wide variety of genres, from drama to true crime, from comedy to literary adaptations, documentaries, and film essays. Her works have been screened at festivals across continents and received awards, including the Grand Jury Prize for Best Director at the Festival des Films du Monde in Montréal, the Grimme Prize, the German Film Critics' Award, the first steps Award, the German Short Film Award, among others.

Jakob Zapf is an author, director, and producer at Neopol Film. His works are particularly focused on societal issues and their impact on our lives. He studied Film, Theater-, and Media Studies; philosophy, as well as art history and worked as a director and editor for brands such as Toyota, Porsche and Fanta. Without a traditional film school education, he gained his skills from being self-taught and made a career out of writing, directing, and producing. His feature film debut, ‘’Eine Handvoll Wasser’’ (A Handful of Water),starring Jürgen Prochnow and Pegah Ferydoni, premiered in 2020. As a spokesperson for the regional film industry, he is devoted to the future of the film industry.

Sarnt Utamachote (ษาณฑ์ อุตมโชติ, they/them) is a Southeast Asian nonbinary filmmaker and curator based in Berlin. They curated many film events and exhibitions regarding postcolonial histories, Southeast Asian diaspora and activism. This includes for example, the exhibitions Young Birds From Strange Mountains (2025) at Schwules Museum, In Nobody’s Service (2024) at Galerie Wedding and Echoes of the Brother Countries (2024) at HKW Berlin. Currently they work as a film programmer at Short Film Festival Hamburg, XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin (2022-now) and Sinema Transtopia Berlin (2020-now). Their recent short film I don’t want to be just a memory(2022-24) had its premiere at 74th Berlinale Forum Expanded. They are a co-founder of un.thai.tled, an artist collective from the German-Thai diaspora. They are also a part of collective Cruising Curators whose project Dissident Paths take place at NGBK Berlin (2025-26). They were one of the selected participants at AFA (Artist-for-artist) masterclass 2022, Whole Life Academy of HKW 2021, and Young Curators Workshop at Berlin Biennale 2020. They served as jury for Kino Kiosk at Kunstraum Bethanien, Fantoche Switzerland Animation Film Festival, Porn Film Festival Berlin, London Short Film Festival, MIX CPH Copenhagen Queer FF, and more.

Jakob Sturm, born in 1966, is an artist, spatial activist and author. He studied sociology, philosophy and art in Munich, Frankfurt and Offenbach. He sees the transformation and production of spaces as both political and part of his space-related, installation-based artistic work. Jakob Sturm was co-founder of raumpool-Rhein-Main e.V. (2002), a nomadic platform for the cultural and artistic activation of vacant spaces, is co-founder and artistic director of the production and exhibition platform basis e.V. (from 2005) in Frankfurt, where he also set up and developed the vacancy agency RADAR (from 2011). From 2016, he worked as a consultant for the development of real estate for creative processes on behalf of the state of Hesse. Since 2020, three volumes of an autobiographical text project (“Orte möglichen Wohnens”, “Abschied vom Vater” and “Die geteilte Zeit”) have been published by Axel Dielmann Verlag.

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 is dont-miss.net, a multidisciplinary exhibition series in Frankfurt, 2000-2001; BLANK SLATE a publication about art, architecture and design and in 2016, SCHAUT! - a series of exhibitions of contemporary art film and video art at the MAL SEH’N movie theater in Frankfurt. In 2017 he presented the artist John Skoog and 2024 Florencia Levy as a guest curator for the Double Feature at Schirn Kunsthalle. In 2024, took part in the jury for the international RhineMain short film at the 24th goEast Film Festival.

Addie Reiss, C³PO


Cinematographer & Volumetric Capture Pioneer, innovates AI-driven 4D Gaussian Splats.


As Chief Content Creation Products Officer at DNE, he spearheads groundbreaking volumetric capture systems, merging cinematography with depth-sensing imaging for hyper-realistic holographic experiences. Reiss pioneered AI-powered 4DGS, capturing sub-millimeter emotional nuance as immersive motion holograms.

Reiss’s fusion of cinematographic intuition and technical mastery positions him at the forefront of volumetric media, transforming entertainment and education through emotionally resonant, dimensionally fluid storytelling. His projects span films, documentaries, cultural heritage, and immersive media, driven by the ethos: “We record truth—not approximations—using photons, not machine-hallucinations.”

Louis Savy is the founder and festival director of the London Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film, better known as SCI-FI-LONDON. Louis champions filmmakers who combine science fact and fiction for entertainment and education. He sees the medium of film as an easy and accessible way to communicate difficult scientific concepts and to look at possible outcomes of new developments. He has produced several films and organizes a major film competition as part of the festival, challenging participants to make original science fiction films within a weekend.