The Berlinale has named its international competition jury members who will decide the winners of the Golden and Silver Bears for this year’s festival, which runs February 12-22.
Director, writer and photographer Wim Wenders was announced last year as head of the jury. He will be joined by Nepalese director and producer Min Bahadur Bham; South Korean actor Bae Doona; Indian director, producer and archivist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur; US director, screenwriter and producer Reinaldo Marcus Green; Japanese director, screenwriter and producer Hikari; and Polish producer Ewa Puszczyńska.
Nepalese filmmaker Bham’s second feature, Shambhala, was the first Nepali film to compete for the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlinale, later winning the Cultural Diversity Award at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards and marking his second Oscar entry.
South Korea Doona’s credits include Bong Joon-ho’s Barking Dogs Never Bite and Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, as well as Take Care of My Cat by Jeong Jae-eun, and Air Doll by Hirokazu Kore-eda. Her international credits span Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending, as well as Netflix’s Sense8. Soon she will be seen in the sci-fi comedy Alpha Gang by David and Nathan Zellner.
Director, producer, and archivist Dungarpur founded the production company Dungarpur Films in 2001 and is the festival director of the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. His production credits include Celluloid Man and The Immortals, which premiered at Busan, and seven-hour documentary epic CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel.
Green’s feature debut, Monsters And Men won a special jury award at the Sundance Film Festival. His biographical sports drama King Richard, starring Will Smith, earned six Oscar nominations. He has also directed three episodes of Top Boy and HBO’s We Own This City. Most recently, he directed and co-wrote Bob Marley: One Love starring Kingsley Ben-Adir.
Hikari’s feature debut, 37 Seconds, had its world premiere at the 69th Berlinale, winning the Panorama audience award. Most recently, she co-wrote and directed her second feature, Rental Family, starring Brendan Fraser, which premiered at Toronto. Her other work includes directing the pilot episode of the Emmy-winning Netflix series Beef and episodes of Tokyo Vice.
Puszczyńska’s credits include Paweł Pawlikowski Ida and Cold War, winning an Oscar for Ida. In 2012 she founded Extreme Emotions, producing Silent Twins by Agnieszka Smoczyńska and Kill It and Leave This Town by Mariusz Wilczyński, which premiered in the former Berlinale Encounters section. She also coproduced Hostages by Rezo Gigineishvili, which premiered in the Berlinale Panorama, and Quo Vadis, Aida? by Jasmila Žbanić. Her recent successes include Oscar-winner The Zone of Interest by Jonathan Glazer and A Real Pain by Jesse Eisenberg.
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