The jury of the OKO Film Festival 2023
This year, the competition program of the OKO International Ethnographic Film Festival will be judged by filmmakers and ethnographers from Ukraine and Bulgaria. The Ukrainian national jury will evaluate the Bulgarian and International short programs. The Bulgarian national jury members will watch and judge films from the Ukrainian national and International feature programs, respectively.
National Ukrainian jury
Anastasiia Puhach
Anastasiia is a PR director and press secretary of many film industry events. Executive producer of the documentary Divia by Dmytro Hreshko (2023) created by UP UA Studio and GOGOL FILM. She is also the PR director of the Mykolaichuk OPEN International Film Festival (Chernivtsi, Ukraine).
In 2008, she graduated with honors from Donetsk National University with a master's degree in international relations. From 2010 to 2017, she worked for the Donbas TV channel, covering rallies, making reports from seized buildings and the border with Russia, and other materials about the turbulent events of 2014. In 2015-2019, she was a press secretary and a co-director of the Theater of the Displaced People.
After that, Anastasia worked at the Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival, the Kharkiv MeetDocs International Film Festival, the Kinosaray Short Film Festival, and the Film Industry Association of Ukraine. In 2020-2021, she was the program director of the KinoVernissage – an open-air summer festival of Ukrainian films in Kyiv, organized by producer Polina German and UP UA STUDIO.
She was also in charge of promoting the films We Will Not Fade Away (Ukrainian Media for Berlinale 2023), Forever and Ever (Venice Film Festival, 2023), Blindfolded, Stars on Earth, Red Backpacks, As Far As Possible, Fragile Memory, The Train: Kyiv – War, and School #3.
Yevgeniya Kriegsheim
Yevgeniya is a producer, member of the Ukrainian Film Academy, founder, director, and program manager of the Kharkiv MeetDocs Eastern Ukrainian Film Festival.
From 2009 to 2019, she was a co-founder and executive producer of documentaries at Boekamp & Kriegsheim GmbH production company, working with ARD, ZDF/arte, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, SVT, and Creative Europe. In 2016, she was one of the initiators of the non-governmental organization Media Frontline e.V. Together with the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she has been creating initiatives and workshops for filmmakers and journalists in Ukraine, India, Nigeria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt.
In 2017, she set up the Kharkiv MeetDocs Eastern Ukrainian documentary and feature film festival in her native Kharkiv, supported by the German Federal Foreign Office, the Ukrainian State Film Agency, and the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.
In 2019, together with four peer producers, she founded The Thursday Company GmbH, a Berlin-based company. It produces high-quality documentaries for international streamers and audiences, including Living Simply (2019 – 2021), Eldorado / Netflix Original (2020 – 2022), and My Terribly Precious Neighbors (2021 – 2022). Yevheniya’s filmography also includes the following films: 1968 mm, Kabul Dream Factory, The Borneo Case, The Berlin Patient, etc.
Olena Ivanovska
A Ukrainian folklorist, Doctor of Philology, Professor, and Head of the Department of Folklore Studies within the Educational and Scientific Institute of Philology of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (2007 – 2019).
Her research interests include folklore theory, history of folklore studies, Ukrainian customary law, gender and age subjectivity of folk traditional culture, narratology of folklore, intangible cultural heritage of Ukraine, etc. Olena Ivanovaska is the author of about 100 scientific articles in specialized Ukrainian periodicals, textbooks “Customary Law in Ukraine. Ethno-formative Aspect” and “Ukrainian Folklore,” monograph “Ukrainian Folklore as a Functional and Imagery System of Subjectivity.” She was responsible for the supervision of 10 candidate dissertations and one doctoral dissertation.
She is a member of the Expert Council of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine on Intangible Cultural Heritage, the NGO “Institute of Culture of Ukraine,” and the Chairman of the Committee for the Award for the Preservation and Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Furthermore, she has given numerous interviews to the print and digital media, on radio and television, delivered public lectures, and spoken at scientific and practical conferences.
Olena Ivanovska is also a consultant for many projects dedicated to Ukrainian traditional culture. She has been a permanent OKO International Ethnographic Film Festival jury member since its first edition in 2020.
Olesia Naumovska
A Ukrainian folklorist, Doctor of Philology, Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Folklore Studies within the Educational and Scientific Institute of Philology of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Her research interests include fairy tale studies, international folklore, mythology, folk prose, and folk culture.
Olesia Naumovska is a reviewer of folklore periodicals, a member of the organizing committees of scientific forums and folklore festivals, and a participant in numerous radio and television programs dedicated to ethnic culture. Besides, she is a member of the International Organization of Folk Art (IOV) affiliated with UNESCO, an expert of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, and Head of the jury of the All-Ukrainian competition of the Minor Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (the folklore department).
She prepared five postgraduate students for thesis defense. She made scientific presentations at national and international scientific and practical conferences (Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, USA, etc.). In addition to her scientific and pedagogical activities, Ms. Olesia is engaged in volunteering. Since 2014, she has been supporting the Ukrainian army and founded the volunteer community “Whoever can – let’s help the front.”
Bulgarian National Jury
Nadejda Koseva
A Bulgarian director, producer, and screenwriter.
After graduating from the National Academy of Theater and Film Arts, she directed the short feature film Ritual, part of the omnibus film Lost and Found, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2005. Her next short fiction film, Omelet, won a Special Mention at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. Her other short film, Take Two, traveled worldwide after winning the Special Mention at its premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2011. Irina is her debut feature film, which was released in 2018 and won the European Film Academy Award for Discovery of the Year the following year.
In 2005, together with Svetla Tsotsorkova, she founded the production company Front Film. It has produced such films as: Waltzes and Tangos from the Village of Whitewater (dir. Ivan Vladimirov), a short feature film that received a special mention from the jury at the Mediterranean Film Festival in Montpellier in 2008; a feature film Buffer Zone (dir. Georgi Djulgerov); Thirst (dir. Svetlana Tsotsorkova) – a feature film that won the European Film Academy Award for Discovery of the Year in 2016; Ship in a Room (dir. Lubomir Mladenov) – a feature film that participated in the competition program of the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2017.
Aleksandar Aleksiev
Bulgarian actor, producer, and co-owner of NO BLINK production company.
In 2018, he won the Best Actor award for the Heights (2017) film at the Golden Rose International Film Festival. He has appeared in such films as I Spit on Your Graves (2013), Our Happy Holidays (2018), The Outpost (2019), etc.
In addition, Mr. Alexander has produced many music videos, commercials, documentaries, short films, and feature films, including Yana Titova's debut feature, A Dose of Happiness, which became the highest-grossing Bulgarian film of 2019. Currently, he is working on the post-production of Dimitris Georgiev's film What Stays After, starring Academy Award-nominated actress Maria Bakalova, who is also a co-producer.
Galin Georgiev
A Bulgarian ethnologist and author of a range of scientific works.
He graduated from the Faculty of History and Ethnography at the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” in 1999. Furthermore, he defended his doctoral dissertation in 2004 at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with the Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where he still works. He is also the co-chairman of the Rodolubets Cultural and Educational Society for Relations with Bessarabian and Taurian Bulgarians.
Mr. Galin specializes in the ethnological aspects of the instrumental music tradition, culture, and identity of Bulgarians in Ukraine and Moldova, as well as Gagauzes from the Odryn region. He is also interested in the practice of gift-giving in family rituals, folklore festivals, etc.