2015 International Jury

A former President of the Seoul Art Centre, Mr Kim is currently Chairman of the Presidential Committee of Cultural Enrichment, to support and promote culture in Korea. The highest appointment of its kind in the country, this position builds on his 27 years as a civil servant, which began at the Korean Ministry of Culture.

Mr Kim has won countless international awards for his work both in film and in the cultural development of the Republic of Korea. He has been bestowed with the highest civilian award given by the French government, the Knight of the Legion of Honor; the prestigious UNESCO Fellini Medal (2007), a tribute to major figures in the film industry; and Republic of Korea’s National Order of Culture, Silver Crown Award.

In 2013 Mr Kim was honoured on screen as the subject of the documentary Ongoing Smile. Made by celebrated Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the film features Kim Ki-duk, Anh Sung-kee, Juliette Binoche and Christian Jeune, head of the Cannes Film Festival and has screened around the world.

As president of the Korean Motion Picture Promotion Cooperation, now Korean Film Council, he played a major role in accelerating the Renaissance of Korean Cinema by constructing the Seoul Cinema Complex, the first state managed film studio in Korea.

Mr Kim has been a juror at more than ten international film festivals, including Cannes Un Certain Regard. His role as APSA International Jury President in 2015 marks his eighth appointment as the head of an International film jury. A long time APSA associate, Mr Kim became the first patron of the Asia Pacific Screen Awards in 2010.

His strong belief in the importance of education led him to establish the highly regarded Graduate School of Cinematic Contents at Dankook University.

Stepping behind the camera, Mr Kim directed his first short film, Jury, in 2012.

In 2014, he executive produced the multi-award-winning drama 10 Minutes.

He has published two books, ‘History of Korean Cinema Policy’ (2005) and ‘Mr Kim Goes to Festivals’ (2010).

A leading industry figure in his native Bangladesh and an internationally award winning filmmaker, writer/director Mostofa Sarwar Farooki was named by Variety as ‘a key exemplar of the Bangladeshi new wave cinema movement’.

His renowned fourth feature Television was the closing film of Busan International Film Festival and won the APSA Grand Jury Prize in 2013, as well as a further five international awards from Dubai, Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival, Rome’s Asiatica Film Mediale, and Kolkata Film Festival. His fifth feature film Ant Story (2013) was nominated for the Golden Goblet Awards and the Dubai International Film Festival’s Muhr Asia-Africa Awards. In 2014 it was also in competition for APSA and both the Singapore and Kerala International Film Festivals.

Farooki’s films often deal with the way individuals free themselves from the limitations placed on them by their identity, economic circumstances and belief systems. To counter the deprivation they face in real life, his characters often seem to create a fantasy world around them, lending elements of magical realism to Farooki’s signature style.

He is now working on his next feature No Land’s Man, a recipient of the APSA MPA Academy Film Fund and Film Bazaar India Best Project Award 2014.

A leading figure of Malaysian new wave cinema, U-Wei Bin Hajisaari is a published art writer, essayist and newspaper columnist and was the first Malaysian director to have a film selected for the Cannes Film Festival. A native of Pahang, Malaysia, he studied filmmaking at the New York school for social research in New York City. He is an active member of the Malaysian Film Director’s organization.

His film Woman, Wife and Whore (1993), received five awards at the 11th Malaysian Film Festival, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay. In 1995, The Arsonist, was invited to Un Certain Regard in Cannes Film Festival as well as Berlin, Montreal, Nantes, Fribourg, New York and Busan and was awarded Grand Prix at the Brussels Film Festival. Nantes Film Festival held a retrospective of his work in 2001.

Hajisaari became a member of the Asia Pacific Screen Academy in 2013 when his film Hanyut (Almayer’s Folly), based on the novel by Joseph Conrad, saw him nominated for the APSA Best Screenplay award. Hanyut also received a Special Honour Award at the 2013 Asean International Film Festival.

An internationally celebrated actress of stage and screen, Negar Javaherian is one of the most renowned performers in contemporary Iranian cinema, and has starred in more than 25 feature films.

In 2009 she won Best Actress at the Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival for her lead role in Before the Burial. Her lead role in Gold and Copper (2009) saw her win three best actress awards, from the 28th Fajr Film Festival, the 14th Khaneh Cinema (House of Cinema) Ceremony and the 14th ceremony of Iranian National Society of Film Critics and Writers. In 2011 she won Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Here, Without Me from the 15th Khaneh Cinema Ceremony.

A member of the Asia Pacific Screen Academy, Javaherian received a 2013 APSA nomination Best Performance by an Actress for The Painting Pool. The film won the 2013 APSA UNESCO Award and Javaherian received a Best Actress nomination at the Fajr International Film Festival. She starred in the APSA 2014 Grand Jury Prize winning film, Rakhshan Banietemad’s Tales, and the 2014 APSA Best Screenplay Award winner, Melbourne, for which she won Best Actress at the Mar Del Plata Film Festival.

Her other films include By No Reason, A Cube of Sugar, Nothing, Dowry’s Sugar Bowl and the recent Berlinale Panorama FIPRESCI Prize winner A Minor Leap Down.

Renowned Russian writer/director Alexei Popogrebsky was born in Moscow and studied psychology at Moscow State University and the University of Wisconsin.

In 2003 his joint directorial debut feature with Boris Khlebnikov, Koktebel (2003), was a phenomenal international success, screening in official selection at most of the world’s A-list film festivals including Berlin, Cannes and Toronto and Karlovy Vary.

Simple Things (2007), Alexei’s first solo effort as writer/director, also won numerous prestigious international awards, and was named Best Screenplay at Russian Academy Awards.

His third feature, How I Ended This Summer (2010), set and shot on a polar station in the Russian Arctic, won two Silver Bears at the Berlin Film Festival, Best Film at the London Film Festival Best Film and Best Screenplay at the Russian Academy Awards and was released around the world.

Experimenting with cinema’s possibilities, Alexei directed a 3D short, Bloodrop (2011), which went on to win multiple awards.

Alexei has been a jury member at some of the world’s leading film festivals, including Sundance, Karlovy Vary and Busan. Popogrebsky is the Head of the Directing Department at Moscow Film School, the leading private film school in Russia.

The multi-talented and highly regarded Professor Zhang Xianmin is a producer, director, curator, writer and actor, active across many areas of the film industry. As a Professor at the prestigious Beijing Film Academy, Xianmin teaches screen writing and documentary filmmaking and occasionally French cinema and absurdist theatre.

Xianmin has produced and co-produced many features, including Old Dog, which saw Sonthar Gyal nominated for the 2011 APSA for Achievement in Cinematography.

His acting credits include Rain Clouds Over Wushan (1996), Summer Palace (2006), Missing and Raised from Dust (2007), which he also wrote.

He is the founder of Heaven Pictures Indie Cinema Fund (2010) which has supported a dozen film projects, and is also the co-founder of both ISAAS (Indie Screening Alliance of Art Space) and Qifang Cinephile Collective (2011).

Xianmin has also been a juror at more than a dozen international film festivals and served as Jury President of One Foundation Video Festival in 2012 and 2013.  He organizes and programmes the China Independent Film Festival (CIFF) and Chinese indie cinema events around the world.