ZHANG Lu

Born in 1962. Zhang Lu is a film director and producer. He made 16 features, including Grain in Ear, Desert Dream, Dooman River, Gyeongju, and A Quiet Dream. His films have screened at Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Locarno, and Busan. He received the 2023 Fukuoka Prize in Arts and Culture.

KANG Mija

Kang Mija is an independent filmmaker and editor who has directed one short and two features. She teaches film editing at Korea National University of Arts and other film institutions. Her feature film Spring Night (2024) screened at the Berlinale Forum and won the Grand Prize at the Muju Film Festival.

Laila PAKALNIŅA

Born in Latvia, Laila Pakalniņa graduated from the Department of Film Directing at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow in 1991. Since then, she has directed and written 45 films, including 34 documentaries, 5 short films, and 6 feature films. Her works have screened in the official selections of major international film festivals, including Cannes, Venice, the Berlinale, Locarno, Karlovy Vary, and Rome, where they have received numerous awards.

KIM Ayoung

Kim Ayoung is a media artist whose work explores technology, labor, mobility, and myth through lens-based media, game engine animation, generative AI, performance, and extended reality. She received the 2023 Golden Nica Award, 2024 ACC Future Prize, 2025 LG Guggenheim Award, and 2026 Chanel Next Prize.

ODA Kaori

Born in Japan, 1987. Oda Kaori is a filmmaker and artist whose work traces invisible histories in landscapes and lives. She studied at Béla Tarr’s film.factory. Aragane (2015) received a Special Mention at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. Underground (2024) screened in the Berlinale Forum.

Erika BALSOM

Erika Balsom is a Reader in Film Studies at King’s College London, where she researches experimental film and documentary. Her books include An Oceanic Feeling: Cinema and the Sea (2018), TEN SKIES (2021), and The Edges of Cinema (2026).

HONG Jinhwon

Hong Jin-hwon is an artist and filmmaker examining power relations around photography and images. Across photography, film and web programming, he held solo exhibitions including melting icecream (2021) and organized Space Nowhere, The Scrap, and docs. He won awards at the 2021 DMZ Docs and 2022 Image Forum Festival.

Fabian TIETKE

Born in Germany, 1981. Fabian Tietke is a Berlin-based film critic, historian, and programmer. He works on documentary forms, animation, film, and social movements, and Italian and Chinese cinema. He writes for taz, Tagesspiegel, Cargo, and Perlentaucher, and joined the Berlinale Forum selection team in 2023.

JOO Hyunsook

Joo Hyunsook works in documentary and is concerned with the landscapes that arise in the mind at the moment of choice. After making works on migration, women, and history, she now re-examines the meaning of social disaster and trauma through community memory, asking how people living in the same era are faring. Her filmography includes She Is (2007), Red Brick(2017), Yellow Ribbon(2019).

KIM Sohee

Kim Sohee is a film critic and a member of the selection committee for the 2nd Critics’ Choice of the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival. She planned and edited This Is a Camera and is the author of First Love. She is currently a regular contributor to Cine21.

CHO Hyeyoung

Cho Hyeyoung is a film critic and a member of the visual culture collective "Project 38." Her writing explores queer feminist perspectives, with a particular focus on modes of image production on digital platforms, post-documentary, and cinematic games. She currently co-hosts the film podcast "38 Pages" with her colleagues and is pursuing research on the theme of care as a Research Professor at the Institute of Comparative Culture at Kyung Hee University.

HAN Changwook

Han Changwook is a film critic who is interested in “conversational criticism” and runs Letters of Criticism, an epistolary criticism journal. He also works as a translator and has translated the books Martin Scorsese Teaches Filmmaking and The World of the Odyssey.

JANG Byungwon

Jang Byungwon is the former editor-in-chief of the weekly film magazine FILM2.0. He previously worked as a programmer for the Jeonju International Film Festival and has been a senior programmer for the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival since 2022. He continues to write on cinema while teaching.