Emerging Greeks & Documentary
Marie-Pierre Macia
After earning a degree in Classics and French Literature, Marie-Pierre Macia started her career at the Cinémathèque Française and worked as a film curator at the San Francisco International Film Festival. She has created two festivals in Paris (Les Rencontres internationales de Cinéma à Paris and Paris Cinéma) and also Crossroads, the co-production forum of the Thessaloniki Film Festival. Macia is the former director of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Directors’ Fortnight) of the Cannes Film Festival, where she championed the first feature films by currently recognized filmmakers, such as Carlos Reygadas, Sofia Coppola, Stephen Daldry, Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu, etc. She produced among others the following films: The Turin Horse by Béla Tarr, Zama by Lucrecia Martel, Memory Exercises and EAMI by Paz Encina, Mariner of the Mountains by Karim Aïnouz, Xenia and Dodo by Panos H. Koutras, Ghosts by Azra Deniz Okyay, Rafiki by Wanuri Kahiu, etc. She is currently working on the new documentary Chocobar by Lucrecia Martel.
Malik Berkati
Malik Berkati is a Swiss journalist, film critic and political scientist, based in Berlin, Germany. He has worked for several years at festivals in Western Switzerland as a PR and program adviser. He is co-founder and editor-in-chief of an international multilingual online magazine focusing on culture and civic awareness (j:mag), and a correspondent in Berlin for various newspapers and magazines from the French-speaking part of Switzerland. He has served on numerous international juries in Europe and Asia for FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics), as well as on the German Film Critics Juries for the categories of Best German Documentary (2017, 2022 and 2023) and Best German Short Film (2019-2021). Since 2020, he has been a Jury Member of the Critics Award for Arab Films of the Arab Cinema Center (ACC). He is also member of the Swiss Association of Film Journalists (SVFJ • ASJC • ASGC) and the European Film Academy (EFA).
Christopher Zitterbart
Christopher Zitterbart is the founder of Berlin-based production house Watchmen Productions and a producer with an international track record of over 20 years in film production. His feature films, documentaries and short films have been shown and awarded at international festivals, including Cannes, Berlinale, Venice, San Sebastian, and Thessaloniki International Film Festivals. Besides his work in arthouse cinema, Zitterbart has shot countless commercials and image-films in more than 20 countries as a producer and director. In 2017, he received the prestigious German TV award, Grimme-Preis. He is an EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs) graduate and an alumni of the EMC Entertainment Master Class. He graduated as fiction producer at Filmhaus Babelsberg. Zitterbart is a member of the German Film Producers Association. His current production My Favourite Cake will premiere in the competition section at Berlinale 2024.
Short Films
Andrea Mavroidis
Andrea Mavroidis is the editor of COSMO sta ellinika, a cultural-political podcast aimed at Greeks in Germany, run by the public radio’s WDR, RBB, and Radio Bremen. She also co-hosts a monthly cinema podcast with Sofia Stavrianidou, where they discuss the international film world. In addition, she works as a freelance editor and author for Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Deutschlandfunk. Previously, from 2000 to 2005, she worked as a freelance correspondent in Greece. After studying political science at the Freie Universität Berlin, she completed a traineeship in journalism at the Grimme Institute.
Asteris Kutulas
Asteris Kutulas is an author, director, producer and polymedia artist. He was born in Oradea, Romania in 1960, as a son of Greek political emigrants. He moved to the German Democratic Republic in 1968. From 1979 to 1984, he studied German language, literature and philosophy in Leipzig. Since 1981, he has worked as an author, translator and publicist for over 40 books. He was the editor of the magazines Bizarre Städte (1987-1989) and Sondeur (1990-91). From 1981 to 2021, he had a close artistic collaboration with Mikis Theodorakis. Since 1989, he has also worked as a music and event producer. Together with director and lighting architect Gert Hof, Kutulas developed a new show format in 1999 – the outdoor light show – and by 2010, he had produced over 40 mega events worldwide, including the Millennium Events in 2000 at the Victory Column in Berlin and the Acropolis in Athens, as well as in Atlantic City in 2003 and Jerusalem in 2010. In 2016, he founded the Greek film festival Hellas Filmbox Berlin together with Ina Kutulas and Sandra von Ruffin.
Stelios Christoforou
Stelios Christoforou is a writer and director based in Athens, Greece. He is the founder and artistic director of the Anafi International Short Film Festival in Greece. The first film he wrote and directed, Sammer, traveled to 25 festivals around the world and won plenty of awards. He has worked both in the cinema and TV industry in various roles. Right now, he is organizing the second edition of the Anafi International Film Festival, while at the same time experimenting and creating short films around Greece.
