Linz International Short Film Festival Jury - Linz International Short Film Festival

All 87 short films are nominated officially for the festival’s film competition and will be judged in various categories by an international jury of experts. The jury consists of:

Yi Tang

Yi Tang / filmmaker, winner Palme d’or

Yi Tang

Yi Tang is the winner of the Palme d’Or for Short Films at FESTIVAL DE CANNES 2021 for “All the Crows in the World.” She moved to the U.S. from Hong Kong after being accepted to NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where she is pursuing an MFA in Graduate Film. Yi enjoys telling stories about women, underrepresented groups and social issues, which she captures through a subversive, darkly comedic film lens. After premiering her first short film, Black Goat, she was named one of the 25 Screenwriters to Watch in 2020 by the Austin Film Festival. She has also won awards at AFI Fest and the Hong Kong Fresh Wave int Film Festival. She is currently represented by WME and M88 for her first feature film.

Marie Luise Lehner

The young talented Austrian writer and filmmaker graduated from the Institute of Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and also Screenwriting and Dramaturgy at the Film Academy Vienna. She is currently studying directing at the Vienna Film Academy in the class of Jessica Hausner and contextual painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Ashley Hans Scheyrl. She writes screenplays and prose and plays in the feminist punk band “Schapka”. Her short films have been shown at various international film festivals and her literature works have won numerous awards.

Iliana Zakopoulou

Iliana Zakopoulou/Greek film center, Hellas Film

Iliana Zakopoulou has worked for several years in the festivals sector and has been Head of the department of Sales and Promotion (Hellas Film) of the Greek Film Centre for the representation and promotion of Greek films (funded or independent) to International Festivals and Audiovisual Markets.

In particular and in the framework of Hellas Film, she acts as sales agent for the films which haven’t secured worldwide sales by pitching the films to film professionals (festival programmers, distributors, TV channels), undertaking the negotiations for the contracts, screening fees or travel to festivals.

Besides, her responsibilities include planning and preparing the Greek participation in major festivals and markets such as Berlinale, Cannes, Toronto, Venice IFF, Tokyo F.F., Shanghai F.F., Locarno F.F. Chicago F.F., Montreal F.F., Karlovy Vary F.F, Istanbul F.F., IDFA, Moscow F.F., Haifa F.F., Mumbai F.F., Cairo F.F., Rotterdam F.F., as well as programming and coordinating Film Events and Retrospectives in collaboration with International Festivals as well as Museums, Universities, Associations, Embassies, International organizations and institutions.

Barbra Windtner

Barbara Windtner / co-president of the ADA – Austrian Directors’ Association

Barbara Windtner

Barbara Windtner is an independent austrian writer, director and producer of documentaries and experimental short films. She is co-president of the ADA – Austrian Directors’ Association, representing the interests of Austrian directors, which also organizes workshops and monthly film screenings. She lives and works in Vienna and studied theater, film and media studies at the Universities of Vienna, Salamanca, Spain and Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. She worked in various TV productions for ORF. From 2008 to 2013 she lived and studied film in Buenos Aires/Argentina, founded the directing collective Onírico films and shot her first feature-length documentary ‘Searching for Isolde’, which opened the Crossing Europe International Film Festival 2015. Barbara Windtner also works as a dance and movement educator.

Reinhold Bidner

Reinhold Bidner was born in Salzburg. He studied at the University for applied sciences and technologies in Salzburg, (MultiMediaArt), at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Scotland, Dundee (Animation and Electronic Media) and completed his degree with merit within the scope of a Socrates Scholarship at K.O.P.P.-Film Berlin.

In 2002 he came to work at the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Linz where he became KeyResearcher in the field of TimeBasedMedia. Since 2006 he is freelancing in the fields of Video, Photography and Media Art, he also co-organizes and co-curates the Austrian Flipbook Festival.

He has received both awards and scholarships for his work and has exhibited these internationally (New York, Dallas, Oslo, Seville, Madrid, Prague, Dresden, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Linz etc.). 2006 he spent 8 months at Palac Akropolis in Prague during his “Pepinieres europeennes pour les jeunes artistes”-Map-XXL scholarship. In 2008 he won the Media Art Award Salzburg and the Music-Video-Clip-Award of the Backup-Film-Festival Weimar, both in the frame of the MediaArt Collective 1n0ut (with Robert Praxmarer). End of 2008/Beginning of 2009 he received scholarshipfs for Paris (at Cite des Arts International) and Paliano (near Rome, IT). Currently he lives and works in Salzburg, where he teaches at University for applied sciences and technologies Salzburg in the field of Media- and PostProduction, and Vienna, where he continues his experiments in the fields of Music Visualisation, Performance, Video, Music and Photography.