International Competition Jury

Mike Downey

Educated at the Universities of Warwick, Paris III (Sorbonne-Nouvelle) and Paris X (Nanterre), Mike Downey founded the London/Dublin - based independent production house Film and Music Entertainment (F&ME) in 2000 and is quondam Chairman of the European Film Academy (EFA), and currently President of the Jury of the LUX Prize of the European Parliament. To date, Mike has production credits for well over 100 feature films. He has worked with four times Academy award nominee Stephen Daldry and many other directors across Europe including Agnieszka Holland or Peter Greenaway. 

Mike is involved in humanitarian work; he was a long-time trustee of the White Ribbon Alliance, which aims to reduce mortality in childbirth in the developing world, and at EFA developed the educational organisation, Filmclub, to bring quality cinema into schools across Europe. He is the founder of the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR), which aims to activate the film community’s collective response to filmmakers who face political persecution for their work. Mike was elected to the Council of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and to the BAFTA Film Committee.

Olha Zhurba

Olha Zhurba is a Ukrainian film director, editor, and screenwriter. Her debut feature documentary Outside (2022) premiered at CPH:DOX and Hot Docs. The film received the Willy Brandt Award at the Human Rights Film Festival Berlin and later the Japan Prize Award of Honor. The premiere of Zhurba’s second feature film, Songs of Slow Burning Earth (2024), took place at the Venice Film Festival. The film was nominated for the 38th European Film Awards in two categories—European Documentary and European Film—and for Best Director and Best Feature Documentary at the IDA Documentary Awards. In addition to her work as a director, Zhurba is an acclaimed film editor. Her editing credits include the award-winning documentaries This Rain Will Never Stop (2020) by Alina Gorlova and Home Games (2018) by Alisa Kovalenko, both of which have screened at major international festivals.

Pavel Jech

Professor Pavel Jech has been teaching at Chapman University in California since 2016 and is currently serving as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Previously, he was elected to two terms as dean of The Film and Television School of the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). He was the founding chair of FAMU International, which has hosted students from around Europe and the world, and he is the co-founder of the Midpoint Institute, a prominent European platform for the development of feature films and television series.

He has been an expert advisor for Berlinale Talents the Mediterranean Film Institute - Greece, the Sundance International Labs, Cine Qua Non (Mexico), the Asia Pacific Film Lab, and conducts workshops and lectures around the world. His manual on short scriptwriting, The Seven Minute Screenplay has been published by the Academic Press of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and is used by students worldwide. Pavel Jech also works internationally as a script writer, script consultant, script editor and script doctor, and has credits on the Czech films and series, The Prague Orgy, Grandhotel, The Lynching and two of the final films of Jan Nemec: The Ferrari Dino Girl, and Heart Beat 3D. Professor Jech has earned one degree from The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and two degrees from Columbia University in the City of New York.