ERNEST ABDYJAPAROV

 

Kyrgyzstan

 

Chairman of the Jury

 

Film director, scriptwriter, producer, composer. Born in 1961 in Frunze (now Bishkek), USSR. In 1983 he graduated from the Pedagogical Institute of Russian Language and Literature in Frunze. Taught at a rural school. In 1988 he entered Kyrgyzfilm Studio as a director of the satirical TV magazine “Korogoch”. In 1992 he became an editor at this studio, then in 1993 he headed the creative youth fund “Umaj”. In 2001-2002 he served as a chief editor of Kyrgyzfilm. He was the secretary of the Filmmakers’ Union of Kyrgyzstan. Since 1999, he has been the head of his own studio. Participant and prize-winner of prestigious international film festivals. Winner of national and Russian film awards. His director’s filmography includes “Sparrow” (1995, short), “Village Under Sky” (2004), “Pure Coolness” (2007), “Taxi and Telephone” (2013), “Sayakbai” (2017), “The Narrator” (2022), etc.

KIRILL ZAITSEV

 

Russia

 

Film and theatre actor, director and producer. He won the Golden Eagle Award for his role as Sergey Belov in the film “Three Seconds”. He was born in 1987 in Volgograd. In 2012, he took a course at the Latvian Academy of Culture taught by Igor Konyaev and Elena Chyornaya at the Mikhail Chekhov Riga Russian Theater. After the course, he started acting at this theater. Since 2016 he has acted in Russian and foreign films, as well as in TV series. In 2020, he launched the production company Zaitsev Studio, and became the producer and lead actor in the docu-

mentary film “Color of the War” about artists of the sixties. In 2021, he debuted as director with the feature film “Sashka. A Soldier’s Diary”.

 

KULDIP PATEL

 

India

 

Tech entrepreneur and independent filmmaker based out of Mumbai (Powai). He co-founded November Films where he released his Gujarati feature film “Dhunki” (2019) as writer and producer. The film played across 125 screens and is now available on Amazon Prime. His debut feature film as a director “Powai” (2022) was presented at the Moscow International Film Festival this year and is currently doing festival rounds. He was also on the short film competition jury at the Moscow International Film Festival. Currently, he is writing his next Hindi feature film and producing another Gujarati feature film.