Anne Gaschütz

Jury Shorts
Anne Gaschütz grew up in Dresden, Germany before she moved to Great Britain in 2002. Six years later, with her film studies behind her, she returned to her homeland and experienced all stages of film production at the Dresden-based production company filoufilm. Since then she has been working on numerous film projects as a production assistant and production manager. She joined FILMFEST DRESDEN – International Short Film Festival in 2013 and became deputy director of the festival in 2019. She is responsible for the festival coordination and the forum ‘Visegrád in Short(s)’ and also part of the festival’s selection committee.

Sanjay També

Jury Shorts
After his move from India to Germany, Sanjay També completed his postgraduate studies of Business Informatics and International Business (MBA) in Munich. Having worked in the IT and software industry for several years, he founded Munich Masala e.V., a community for oriental culture. The associated platform www.InderNet.de has since evolved into a popular network for people in Germany who are enthusiastic about India. In 2016, Sanjay També became President of non-profit organisation Indien-Institut e.V. in Munich.

Constanze Weigl-Jäger

Jury Documentary
Constanze Weigl-Jäger studied Anthropology, Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures (Urdu) and History of South Asia at Heidelberg University and Edinburgh University. To conduct fieldwork in the context of her PhD thesis on reproductive health behaviour of Muslim women in urban North India and do internships at Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and Max Müller Bhawan, she has lived in New Delhi for two years. Since 2009 she has been working at Heidelberg University and was a research associate and coordinator for the Master programme ‘Health and Society in South Asia’ at the Department of Anthropology, South Asia Institute until 2016. Since 2017 she has been coordinating the German-Indian cooperation project ‘New Directions in Active Ageing‘ and ‘Age-friendly Culture in India and Germany’, as part of which she has co-organised the Film Festival for Generations in New Delhi 2018.

Rüdiger Heinze

Jury Feature film
From 1988 to 1990, Rüdiger Heinze was trained as a precision mechanic. After having worked in this profession for several years, in 1996 and 1997 he completed internships with Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg and various film production companies. In 1997 he began to study at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, first Directing and later Production, graduating with his diploma film ‘Der Ärgermacher’ in 2002. Rüdiger Heinze worked as a film producer and screenwriter as well as a director and actor. His short film ‘Der Mann mit dem weißen Bart’ achieved the excellent ‘Besonders wertvoll’ rating by Filmbewertungsstelle Wiesbaden. In 2008, he established the production company Zum Goldenen Lamm together with Stefan Sporbert, which has been developing films and documentaries for cinema and TV which have been successful in Germany and abroad ever since.  

Cengiz Akaygün

Jury Shorts
Born in Germany, Cengiz Akaygün grew up as a Kurd in Turkey and returned to Stuttgart with his family at the age of seven. While he studied Communication and Media Sciences, he lived out his passion for film by making a documentary on the identity of Kurdish students in Diyarbakir, filmed with hidden camera at actual locations in Turkey. He produced, directed and wrote his first short feature film ‘Free Monkeys’ (2014), which received several awards including the prize for the Best Film of the Genrenale festival in Berlin. ‘Der Barbier’ followed in 2016, while his third short film ‘Der Mandarinenbaum’ was awarded the grand prize in the short film category by Filmschau Baden-Württemberg in 2018. Cengiz Akaygün is currently working on the script for his first feature film, ‘Mira & der Strandgeist’

Kamran Sardar Khan

Jury Feature film
Kamran Sardar Khan, born in 1966, was working as an architect before he followed his passion and started his second career in the film business in 2001. He has worked as CEO of an independent film distribution in Stuttgart and has been involved in numerous consultancy projects for international companies, specializing in Indian cinema with the focus on Bollywood presence in Europe. In 2009, Sardar Khan he took charge of the newly established film distribution company Camino Film. Since 2018 Khan has been chairing his new film production and distribution company Weltenwandler Film in Stuttgart.

Ruma Dutt

Jury Feature film
Currently a doctoral fellow at University of Potsdam, Germany, Ruma Dutt is pursuing her comparative doctoral research on Hindi and German cinema at the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi. Her areas of interest include media and cultural studies, feminist theory and multiculturalism. She has been previously awarded fellowships by Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research (GEI), Braunschweig and Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). She has also been teaching German at the University of Delhi for the last fifteen years.

Krishna Saraswati

Jury Dokumentarfilm
Krishna Saraswati studied Documentary Film Direction at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg and won plenty of prizes worldwide with his student films. His desire to go beyond the documentation of social issues on film by initiating real change processess made him strike a new path after his studies. Thus he established the educational movement Funkenflug and the company Living Circles. With a multidisciplinary team he plans and builds innovative kindergartens and schools. Krishna Saraswati received a Markelstifung and a Caligari scholarship as well as numerous international awards for his work.

Paramvir Singh

Jury Documentary
As a child Paramvir Singh got enthusiastic about comic books and super heroes. When he grew up, his creative and visual arts skills landed him a job in advertising, in the same office where India’s legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray used to work. But the lure of the moving image led him to study cinema at the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India. His experimental cinematography on his diploma film ‘Parsiwada Tarapore, Present Day’ won him the President Of India’s National Award for Best Cinematography. Paramvir Singh went on to shoot a big-budget Bollywood movie ‘EMI, Liya Hai To Chukana Padega’ and the indie film ‘Hulla’. He also shot for the feature-length documentary ‘Leaving Home, The Life and Music of Indian Ocean’. This film won the President's National Award for Best Film in Art And Culture. Thereafter Paramvir Singh went on to shoot TV commercials, short films, music videos and documentaries, co-founding one of India’s top TV commercial production companies.