The prizes awarded by the professional jury include the Grand Prize, the Canadian Grand Prize, the Jury Prize, the Best animation short film, the Best documentary short film.
Charles Tesson
Film critic and film historian
Charles Tesson is the vice-president of the French Film Critic’s Union. He has been the Artistic Director of Critic’s Week at Cannes Film Festival from 2012 to 2021. He was the President of Aide aux Cinémas du Monde (CNC- Institut français) from 2016 to 2021. He has been film critic in Cahiers du cinéma (1979-2013), and former editor of this magazine (1998-2003).
He is also professor in cinema, history and esthetics, at la Sorbonne nouvelle (University of Paris III). He wrote several books and essays on cinema, as Satyajit Ray (1992), Luis Buñuel (1995), El from Luis Buñuel (1996), Photogénie de la Série B (1997), Théâtre et cinéma (2007) and Akira Kurosawa (2008). He directed few special issues for Cahiers du cinema, as « Made in Hong Kong » (1984) with Olivier Assayas, « Made in China » (1999) and codirected the book L’Asie à Hollywood (2001).
Mia Falstein
Film programmer,Melbourne International Film Festival
Mia is a film programmer, talks curator, and event producer who currently lives and works on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people of the Eastern Kulin Nation in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia).
Immersed in the Australian film scene for over a decade, she spearheaded Seen & Heard Melbourne at ACMI, a film festival dedicated to screening the works of women and non-binary filmmakers. Mia was subsequently nominated as a Young Social Pioneer by the Foundation for Young Australians, winning the Arts stream with her pitch for a digital platform to promote the works of diverse filmmakers.
Mia has since lent her programming and production experience to other film organisations across the east coast of Australia, such as Sydney Film Festival, the Human Rights and Arts Film Festival, and Stranger With My Face International Film Festival. Currently appointed Program Manager for the Melbourne International Film Festival, Mia leads the short film and extended reality programming.
Maxime Giroux
Filmmaker
Maxime Giroux has directed several short films, including Le rouge au sol, Les jours and La tête en bas. These films have been shown at over 50 film festivals and received numerous international awards.
After his first feature, Demain, he directed Jo for Jonathan (2010), which premiered at Locarno before being screened at more than 40 other festivals. His third feature, Felix and Meira (2014), won the award for Best Canadian Feature Film at TIFF. The film was then screened at over 80 festivals, winning some 20 awards. It had a worldwide theatrical release, including France, the USA, Australia, Belgium, Switzerland and Taiwan. Felix and Meira was selected to represent Canada at the 2016 Oscars. His film The Great Darkened Days (2018) premiered at TIFF and won five Canadian Screen Awards and one Iris.
His most recent feature, Norbourg (2022), set a Quebec record for opening-week box office and was nominated for six Iris awards. Giroux is currently working on an English-language adaptation of the series Plan B for the CBC.
Samir Karahoda
Filmmaker and programmer
Samir Karahoda began working as a photographer in 1992. In 2003 he completed his photography studies at the Academy of Fine Arts at Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul. In addition to his work as a photographer, he is also a cinematographer, tutor and curator of the short film program at the Documentary and Short Film Festival DokuFest.
His documentary short film "In Between" was his directorial debut, which in 2019 had its world premiere at the Berlinale. Displaced (Pa vend) was his second short film which premiered at Official Competition at Festival de Cannes in 2021 where was awarded with EFA nomination for European Film Awards 2021. Displaced, won IMDb Pro short cuts award as best short film at Toronto International Film Festival, best nonfiction at Sundance.
He's a member of European Film Academy and in 2019 Karahoda was awarded with Annual Cinematography Award from Ministry of Culture of Kosovo.
Sophie Desmarais
Actress
Since graduating from theatre school, Sophie Desmarais has played many roles. She made her big-screen debut in Curling (2010), directed by Denis Côté. In 2013, she received acclaim for her roles in Sébastien Pilote’s Le Démantèlement and Chloé Robichaud’s Sarah Prefers to Run, both screened at Cannes. For Sarah Prefers to Run, she was named a Rising Star at TIFF 2014. She played a lead role in Éric Morin’s Hunting the Northern Godard. She also appeared in What Are We Doing Here? (2014) by Julie Hivon, Henri Henri (2014) by Martin Talbot, Gurov and Anna (2015) by Rafaël Ouellet (2015), A Place to Live (2018) by Bernard Émond (2018) and Vacarme by Neegan Trudel (2020). Her upcoming films include Les jours heureux (2023) by Chloé Robichaud and Philippe Lesage’s next feature film.
She has also starred in many plays and has become a fixture on Quebec television through her roles in Mon ex à moi, L’imposteur, Prémonition, District 31, En tout cas and Can You Hear Me? For District 31, she was awarded a Gémeaux. Finally, she was also a cast member in the series C’est comme ça que je t’aime and Sonia Bonspille Boileau’s Pour toi Flora.
This jury will give the Shoot no Mattter What! Award to one of the shorts of the eponymous program.
Chloe Roddick
Senior programmer for short films at the Morelia International Film Festival
Chloe is Senior Programmer for the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), where she has worked for the past ten years programming both international and Mexican cinema. She is also currently Head of Mexican Documentary for that festival. Between 2019 and 2021 she was the Director of Programming for the Tulum International Film Festival (FICTU). She was a program consultant for Sheffield Doc/Fest in 2018 and 2019, and currently watches docs for Ambulante and SXSW.
She has written film criticism and articles about film for publications like Sight & Sound and Little White Lies as well as curating and assisting on programs of Mexican cinema for festivals and institutions such as Il Cinema Ritrovata, the BFI, MoMA and the Cinémathèque française, among others.
Nicolas Paquet
Filmmaker
Nicolas Paquet is an independent filmmaker who directed his first feature film, La règle d’or, in 2011. His debut was followed by the feature Ceux comme la terre and the short film Sugar Shack Tales, which were both screened at multiple festivals in Canada and around the world. In 2017, he released Esprit de cantine, selected for the Montreal International Documentary Festival, among others. His most recent film, The Act of Beauty, takes the viewer into the mind of the farmer and philosopher Jean Bédard. Paquet’s work depicts the realities of rural life and the quest for sincerity. He creates an opportunity for dialogue among those who resist the mundane.
He has a master’s degree in political philosophy focusing on the Indigenous revival, and his films present his reflections on community, rural land, loss and injustice. He is a cofounder of franC doc, a production company founded in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region in 2003. He directed the documentaries Verdoyant pure laine (2005) and A beau venir qui part de loin (2009).
Charlie Boudreau
Executive and artistic director, Festival Image+Nation
Charlie Boudreau has worked in Montreal’s cultural sector as an artist, promoter and festival programmer for more than 30 years.
Charlie holds a master’s degree in communications. In the 90s, Charlie emerged as a media artist with international reach, starting with a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and followed up by producing films that were screened around the world. Charlie’s photography questioning gender representation has been exhibited in several galleries in North America.
In 1997, Charlie became executive director of Image+Nation, Montreal’s LGBT2SQueer film festival, where Charlie started as a programmer in 1991 and became artistic director in 1996. Charlie also founded Canada’s first queer short-film festival and the My Queer Canada project, an online platform aimed at collectively writing Canada’s LGBT2SQ+ history, through art history and collective memory.
Charlie has chaired juries at the Berlinale and been a juror at Frameline San Francisco, GAZE Dublin and the Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival, among others. Charliie serves on the board of the Chambre de commerce LGBT du Québec and has been a guest speaker at events such as the Entertainment Management Conference and the Flare BFI Film Festival London.
The AQCC Critics Jury is back for a fourth year in order to award the Quebec Critics Award AQCC to a short film of their choosing amongst international films in the official competition.
Jérôme Delgado
Film critic
Since beginning his media career over 20 years ago, Jérôme Delgado has made writing his primary vocation. He is a cultural journalist who specializes in art and film criticism. After working for La Presse and the weekly paper Voir, Delgado has been a regular contributor to Le Devoir since 2007. He has also appeared in most of the specialized publications in Quebec, including Séquences, which has published his work for the past 15 years. He is also the author of Guide du Montréal créatif (Ulysse, 2013) and an occasional translator from Spanish to French. He has been working as a publishing coordinator for the magazine Ciel variable since March 2020.
Marc-Antoine Lévesque
Film critic
Marc-Antoine Lévesque has studied film and television for 12 years (bachelor’s, master’s, PhD). He has written about cultural topics for more than 15 years.
He is the founder and content director of La Marquise content lab. Some of the projects he has worked on include collaborating with the ACPQ to create the parlecinéma platform and managing communications for the La ruchée arts education lab, a project that focuses on providing French-language arts education across Canada.
He has extensive experience with coordinating and supervising projects, consulting on programming and scriptwriting, evaluating applications and programming festivals. He has also served on festival juries, worked in communications, facilitated numerous educational film workshops and travelled the country promoting Quebec films. His knowledge of the audiovisual industry in Quebec and Canada is unparalleled.
For the past five years, he has served as Director of Programming for the non-profit Association Cinémaniak. He has also served as treasurer on the Board of Directors of the Association québécoise des critiques de Cinéma (AQCC) for the past three years. Finally, he has collaborated with Ciné-Bulles since 2022.
Shelagh Rowan-Legg
Film critic
Originally from Ontario, Shelagh Rowan-Legg holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Film Studies from the University of Toronto. She was a programmer for the Toronto After Dark Film Festival and FrightFest. In 2010, she moved to London, where she obtained a doctorate from King's College, with a dissertation on Spanish fantasy cinema. Her book, The Spanish Fantastic: Contemporary Filmmaking in Horror, Fantasy and Sci-Fi, was published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Press. She has been Editor-in-Chief of ScreenAnarchy since 2008 and has written several essays for Second Sight Films and Arrow Video. She was a guest editor for Panorama-cinéma, for whom she edited a special report on Atlantic Canadian cinema. She was Executive Director of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies for two years. She is a director and producer at Thirteenth Tiger Films, and her short films have been screened at festivals around the world.
Consisting of three members, this jury will award a film amongst the Canadian shorts in the official competition with the International FIPRESCI critic’s award.
Enoe Lopes Ponte
FIPRESCI critic
Enoe Lopes Ponest is a PhD student in the graduate program in contemporary communication and culture at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA).
She also has a part-time doctorate in media studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg and a master's degree in communication, also at PósCom/UFBA. She specializes in TV direction for teledramaturgy through CAL (Casa das Artes de Laranjeiras). She has a degree in performing arts (with an emphasis on theatrical interpretation) from the Federal University of Bahia and a degree in journalism from the Social University of Bahia. She was a Golden Globe Awards voter, and, since 2017, has been part of juries and curators for film festivals such as the Young Jury at Festival Panorama Internacional Coisa de Cinema, the jury and the curatorship of Mostra Lugar é no Cinema, the curatorship of Baiano Film Festival (FECIBA) and the jury of Filmfest München. She is a member of ABRACCINE (Brazilian Association of Film Critics) and Fipresci (International Federation of Film Critics).
Since 2014, she has been working as a communications advisor in the cultural sector, working with events, audiovisual works and production companies. Since 2014, she has worked as a film critic for the website Coisa de Cinéfilo and, more recently, for Aratu On site.
Patrick Mullen
FIPRESCI’s jury
Patrick Mullen is the publisher of POV Magazine, which covers Canadian and international documentaries in print and online. He has also contributed to outlets including Complex, Sharp, Xtra, BeatRoute, Paste, The Canadian Encyclopedia, and That Shelf. He is the vice president of the Toronto Film Critics Association and an international voter for the Golden Globe awards. He studied film and English at Carleton University in Ottawa and Queen’s University in Kingston where his research focused on adaptation and Canadian cinema. Pat lives in Toronto with his cat, Fellini.
Michela Manente
FIPRESCI critic
Michela Manente, headmaster and film critic, is an Italian journalist involved in the field of education, specifically media education. She is a member of the National Union of Italian Film Critics and of FIPRESCI.
She has collaborated with newspapers, magazines, websites and film reviews. She is a regular attendee of the main Italian and European film festivals and has recently been a jury member at the goEast Film Festival (Germany), El Gouna Film Festival (Egypt) and Revine Lago, Reggio Calabria and Sulmona film festivals (Italy).
The Youth competition jury gives the Best youth short film award.
Jake Laystrom
Festival Manager - Chicago International Children's Film Festival
Jake Laystrom is the Festival Manager of the Academy-qualifying Chicago International Children's Film Festival. After starting as an intern, Jake returned to the festival full-time after graduating from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Sophie Farkas Bolla
Filmmaker
Sophie Farkas Bolla is a Montreal-based filmmaker who divides her time between writing, directing and editing. Granddaughter of a Hungarian political refugee who reinvented himself as a real estate developer in Northern Canada, Sophie grew up playing in the woods. This period of her life defined by imagination and nature had a profound impact on her. As a filmmaker, she likes to revisit that time by telling stories driven by young people. She has directed several short films that have travelled to children's film festivals around the world. In 2023, she will release her first feature film, Adventures in the Land of Asha.
Sylvie Poisson
Expert in youth short films
Sylvie Poisson is a great ambassador for youth short films. Founder of REGARD’s youth section, she has been responsible for its programming for 20 years. A graduate in ATM from the Cégep de Jonquière and in cinema from UQAC, she was the general manager of the Ciné-Club de Jonquière, and has had the opportunity to work for several cultural organizations as well as on film sets. She is presently working as a production coordinator at Balado Boréal.