The Jury | European First Feature Film Competition
Erol Afşin // Christina Ebelt // Eurydice Gysel
Photos: Linda Rosa Saal // Maja Claussen // CZAR.BE
Erol Afşin is an actor, screenwriter and director. He has appeared in national and international projects, including Homeland (2015), Les Filles du Soleil (2018) and The Turkish Detective (2023). His directorial debut Es brennt celebrated its world premiere at the 2023 Munich Film Festival and was the opening film at the 2023 Münster Film Festival and was shown at national and international festivals. Afşin lives in Berlin and Istanbul and works on film and series projects in Europe and the USA.
Christina Ebelt is an award winning German director and screenwriter. She studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM). In collaboration with Jan Bonny she wrote the feature film Counterparts which premiered at the 2007 Cannes International Film Festival. The film went on to win the Best Screenplay Award at the Munich Film Festival and received a nomination for European Discovery at the European Film Awards. 2019 She directed her first feature Stars Above Us which was premiered at the Munich Film Festival and received several awards and award nominations, including the Award of the Academy of Performing Arts 2020. Her second directorial work Monster im Kopf also won several awards and was released in German cinemas in 2023.
Eurydice Gysel started as a producer at CZAR.BE in 2000. The production company was founded by Koen Mortier and quickly developed into one of the most creative commercial film production companies on the international market. In 2010, Eurydice became executive producer and managing director of the company and since then has headed the fiction department CZAR FILM & TV together with Koen Mortier. Eurydice Gysel is also a member of the ACE Producers Network. In 2006 and 2008, Eurydice produced Ex Drummer and 22nd of May, two feature films by Koen Mortier, both of which enjoyed extensive festival careers. She also co-produced Borgman (2013 in competition at Cannes), Schneider vs. Bax (2015 at Locarno) and NR10 (2021 at Tallinn Black Nights), all directed by Alex van Warmerdam, as well as L’étrange couleur des larmes de ton corps (2013) by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani (Locarno & TIFF). In the meantime, there have also been a number of intense collaborations with the BBC, including the series The White Queen (2013) and three seasons of the series The Missing (2014-16, nominations for the Golden Globes, People’s Choice Awards, BAFTA TV Awards). In 2023, Skunk (based on the novel by Geert Taghon), a new feature film by Koen Mortier, premiered at Tallinn Black Nights in the youth competition, won Best Film and was a box office hit in Belgium.
The Jury | European Short Film Competition
Jonathan Berlin // Alina Cyranek // Frederic Kau
Photos: Jakob Fliedner // Nicole Keller // Alexander Gruber
Jonathan Berlin, born in Ulm in 1994, studied acting at the Otto-Falckenberg-Schule in Munich and has appeared in numerous films and series, for which he received the German Acting Award and the New Faces Award for Best Young Actor. His best-known films include Die Freibadclique (2017), Kruso (2018), Der Passfälscher (2021) and Black Box (2021). His first directorial project August was shown at numerous international festivals, including the Norwich Film Festival, the Dresden Film Festival, in Budapest, New York and Manchester. His short documentary film Thoughts of a Young Person Watching a Disintegrating World received an honourable mention at the Münster 2023 Film Festival.
Alina Cyranek works as an author, director and producer. In her films, she primarily deals with socio-political issues. In addition to her artistic film projects, she works as a realiser for the MDR short film magazine unicato and arte Kurzschluss. Alina has received numerous awards for her short films, including the Golden Rider at the Bamberg Short Film Festival, the Best Doc Award at the Social Machinery Film Festival in Salerno and the Audience Award BEST IN SHOW at the Chicago Feminist Film Festival. She studied at the TU Dresden and completed a double master’s degree in media art at the Bauhaus University Weimar and Tongji University Shanghai as a DAAD scholarship holder specialising in documentary and experimental film. In 2018, she founded hug films GbR in Halle (Saale) with animation artist Falk Schuster. Curtains (Dok Special at the Münster 2025 Film Festival) is her debut film.
Frederic Kau, although born in North Rhine-Westphalia with Belgian roots, has always felt like a true Bavarian thanks to moving to the Munich area as a toddler. That didn’t stop him from spending a third of his life in England without lederhosen. As a teenager, he first went to a boarding school before studying political science at Cambridge University, which kept him on the island. In order to stay on the supposedly predetermined path of the blueprint, he was then hired by the management consultancy The Boston Consulting Group back in Munich. When Frederic realised that realising the company’s internal image film was the happiest day on the jet-set hamster wheel to date, he took some time out as part of his quarter-life crisis and went to the seaside alone. There he listened to himself for so long that he finally admitted to himself: “The boy has to go into film!” With the help of his entire family, he successfully worked on his application film for the London Film School, which would take him back to England, his second home, for two years. For his politically and socially topical graduation film Rubberneck (2018), he returned to Bavaria and set lorries, a German-British crew and a Belgian chip shop in motion. With the realisation that directing should be the focus of his filmmaking, he went to Hamburg Media School. After graduating, he now works as a freelance director and pursues his passion for telling entertaining yet relevant stories. His last short film Those Who Follow won the Filmwerkstatt Grand Prize in Münster in 2023.
The Jury | Westfalen Connection
Sophie Charlotte Erichsen // Lotte Ruf // Andre Sebastian
Photos: C. Schüning // Seriencamp // Münsterland e.V., Anja Tiwisina
After studying media studies with a focus on film at the University of Paderborn, where she learned to love the diversity of film while working at the student arthouse cinema Lichtblick, Sophie Charlotte Erichsen took the path to working in the field of film education and film mediation through her work at the SchulKinoWochen in NRW. Since 2018, she has been working at the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum in the film education and film mediation department. Since 2024, she has also been responsible for school screenings and children’s film days in the Ruhr region at Essen’s art house film theatres. She prefers to spend her holidays at the cinema and at film festivals.
Lotte Ruf, born in Düsseldorf in 1996, studied Film & Television Production at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. In February 2020, she completed her bachelor’s degree in film production at Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts with the historical web series Haus Kummerveldt, for which she was honoured with the FIRST STEPS AWARD. In 2022, she founded Goldstoff Filme GmbH together with director Mark Lorei, for which they received a scholarship from the Mediengründerzentrum NRW. Her graduation film Another German Tank Story (2024) celebrated its world premiere at the Shanghai International Film Festival and the Munich Film Festival and was released in German cinemas in April 2025. The sequel to Haus Kummerveldt is currently available in the ARTE media centre and was awarded the Grimme Prize Special in 2024.
Andre Sebastian is Head of the Cultural Office at Münsterland e.V., one of Germany’s leading regional management organisations. Under the motto “Network. Coordinate. Promote.” he is responsible for the implementation of the Regional Culture Programme NRW (RKP) in the Münsterland region and supports cultural players in the development, financing and implementation of their projects. He began working in the theatre while studying in Münster. Until 2009, he worked as a director at various theatres in German-speaking countries and in the independent scene before switching from artistic practice to cultural management. From 2011 to 2013, he was managing director of the NRW Landesbüro Freie Kultur in Dortmund, while at the same time completing further training as a cultural manager and taking over the management of the Kulturbüro Münsterland in 2013. Since December 2024, he has also been a transformation manager for sustainable culture (IHK) and advises cultural professionals in the Münsterland region on ecological sustainability – from climate accounting and resource management to climate-friendly event formats.