Marta Magnuska is a Polish short film director and animator based in Berlin. Her short animated films Foreign Body's, The Other, and Misaligned had been screened and awarded at numerous international festivals, e.g., Cannes IFF, Locarno IFF, DOK Leipzig, Ottawa IAF, and Annecy IAFF. Graduated from the Faculty of Graphics and Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, Poland, with a diploma in editorial design and illustration, and one year later graduated from the Faculty of Animation and Special Effects at the Film School in Łódź, Poland.

Nienke Deutz is a director and animator based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Exploring the narrative and visual possibilities animated film has to offer, she looks to combine various animation techniques and ways of storytelling. Her work revolves around human experiences, a recurring theme is the feeling of being out of place or time. Her films Bloeistraat 11 and The Miracle received global recognition, screening at over 200 festivals and winning multiple awards, including the Cristal for best short film at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. In 2023, Deutz, in collaboration with filmmakers Alice Saey and Wiep Teeuwisse, established Tinsel Studio, a collective dedicated to directing and producing independent animation films.

Malte Stein is an independent animation filmmaker based in Berlin. In 2013, he graduated from the University of Film and Television “Konrad Wolf” in Potsdam Babelsberg with a diploma in animation. Before that, he studied scriptwriting and has drawn a lot of comic stories since the 1990s. His animated short films, BLUE DREAM (2013), FLOOD (2018) and THING (2021) were screened at many festivals and won several awards. In 2022, he took part in the TAIS Artist in Residence Program in Toronto, Canada. He has worked as an animator for several short and feature films, as a screenwriter for TV series, as a co-curator for Dok Leipzig, and as a jury member at several film festivals. Since June 2022, he has been working on his new animated film project, for which he is also taking on the role of producer.

Born in Nanchang in 1985. In 2009, he got a master's degree in animation from Tsinghua University. In 2010, his film This is LOVE was awarded Best Narrative Short at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. In 2013, his film Recycled was the winner of the Grand Prix shorts (non-narrative) at the Holland International Animation Film Festival. In 2014, he was the winner of an Asian Cultural Council grant. In 2017, he worked at the CalArts Experimental Animation Programme as a full-time faculty member. In 2018, he was invited as a New Academy Member for the Short Films and Feature Animation branch, and his installation Weekend was the winner of the Jimei x Arles Discovery Award. In 2019, his first feature film, Breathless Animals, was selected by the Berlinale Forum.

Sofiia Melnyk is a Ukrainian illustrator and animator. In 2018, she graduated from the Animationsinstitut at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg and has been working as a freelancer since then. She has illustrated several books and music album covers, worked as an animator, animation supervisor, and designer on short movies, as well as animated feature films and documentaries for TV and cinema. Her own projects have more of a documentary touch. Furthermore, she’s working with theatre, creating live visualisation for plays and audio-visual performances. Her frequent partners are GOGOLFEST and Dakh Theatre from Ukraine, Deutsches Theatre Berlin, and Münchner Kammerspiele. Since the beginning of the full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine, she has been exploring this topic in her work, participating in projects that explain Ukrainian issues to the world and promote Ukrainian art. Sofiia loves to combine animation with literature, illustrate music, and is a big AnimaDoc fan.

Luca Tóth is an award-winning animation director and illustrator, born in 1989. She studied animation at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest. After receiving her BA diploma, she went on to study in London at the Royal College of Art for her Masters degree. Her graduation film The Age of Curious won the Jury Distinction Prize at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. After studying and working in the UK, Luca moved back to Budapest, where she made her first independent short animation, Superbia, which premiered at Critics’ Week in Cannes in 2016, and got selected for more than 80 international festivals. Her latest independent short film, Mr. Mare, debuted at Berlinale in 2019.

Festival Director and Film Producer, Laura Almantaitė began her career in the audiovisual sector in 2007. She has worked as a consultant and producer on a dozen film projects, including documentary, animation and fiction films. In 2014 Laura founded the BLON Animation and Games Festival in Klaipeda, which she still heads today.

Aliona Penzii is a researcher at the Dovzhenko Centre, film critic and cultural manager. Since 2018, she has been working at the Dovzhenko Centre, where she focuses on the history of Ukrainian non-fiction film. She has organized retrospectives of Ukrainian animation at international and Ukrainian venues. She co-curated the exhibitions " The River Waild Like a Wounded Beast" and the film programs at the Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture (DCCC). She is a board member at the National Film Critics Award “KINOKOLO.” As a film critic, she contributed to LB.ua, Ukrainska Pravda and other media.