INTERNATIONAL JURY

Younès Boucif

A native of Mont-Saint-Aignan, Younès Boucif developed a passion for theater at an early age. Music called him, and the rapper trumpeted his prose with a debut project entitled Yoon on the Moon in 2017. After supporting his friend Rilès on his zenith tour in 2019, Même les feuilles was released in March 2020 by Belem Music, followed by the EP Bientôt à la mode. And in 2022, he released his first rap album, Identité Remarquable.

Younès Boucif is also pursuing his career as an actor. Directed by Zangro in Ramdam, a comedy in competition at the La Rochelle TV Fiction Festival in 2017, he took part in Vincent Cardona’s feature film Les Magnétiques, which won the SACD Prize at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes in 2021 and the César for Best Film the following year.
In March 2022, he was revealed to a wider audience: Netflix subscribers discovered him in the series Drôle, alongside Mariama Gueye and Elsa Guedj. In 2022, he starred in the American film Lonely planet, directed by Susannah Grant, alongside Laura Dern, Liam Hemsworth and Diana Silvers. He is also shooting Cosmetic valley, directed by Jérémie Rozan for Netflix France.

Basile Vuillemin

Basile Vuillemin is a Franco-Swiss director, born in Geneva in 1990 and now living in Brussels. He
grew up in a family of actors and discovered cinema at an early age. For a long time, he was destined for the acting profession, before leaving to study directing in Belgium at the IAD, from which he
graduated with a Master Fiction Cinéma in 2015.

He has since directed several self-produced shorts (Le Crayon, Dispersion, ...), exploring different worlds and confirming his passion for directing actors through films that are both intimate and formally assertive.

His first short film, Les Silencieux, won numerous awards at international festivals, was nominated for a César and won the Magritte for best fiction short film 2024.

He is now developing his first feature film.

Erika Sainte

Erika Sainte is a Belgian actress and director. She was awarded the Magritte for Best Actress for her role in Elle ne pleure pas, elle chante by Philippe de Pierpont. She has worked with Léonor Serraille on Jeune Femme, Gilles Lellouche on Le Grand Bain, Mark Noonan on You’re Ugly Too and Vincent Baal on Brabançonne...
She has also appeared in series such as J’ai Tué Mon Mari by Rémy Silk Binisti and Les Rivières Pourpres alongside Olivier Marchal. She directed Je suis Resté dans les Bois, her first feature film with Michaël Bier and Vincent Solheid, and Raphaël Germser’s video Queen of the Desert. At the same time, she continues to enjoy taking part in short films, most recently Les Yeux d’Olga by Sarah Carlot Jaber and Lynx by Julien Henry

Florian Berutti

Florian was born in Brussels. When he was ten, his parents moved to the cultural desert of Picardy. He took refuge in his family’s VHS collection and discovered Tarkovski’s Stalker, which changed his life.

At eighteen, not feeling capable of much, he entered the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts. After several unsuccessful attempts to get into film schools for directing, he finally entered INSAS in the Image section. Thanks to INSAS, he made his first short film, Tristesse Animal Sauvage.

He became colorist for several years. He made a second short film that nobody has seen.
In 2014, Claude Schmitz asked him to photograph his first film, Le Mali (en Afrique). Since then, he has been photographing auteur films, and that makes him happy.

This biography was sent to us by Florian Berutti.

Mara Taquin

Spotted at the age of 17 during a wild casting by director Camille Mol, Mara Taquin has since appeared in some thirty works, including shorts and features, as well as series.

The actress appeared in Nikita Trocki’s Dispersion, the Belgian series Ennemi public, and then landed a role in Hors normes, directed by Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, which took her to the Cannes Film Festival. In 2020, Mara played in La Ruche and Rien à foutre by Emanuel Marre and Julie Lecoustre, which brought her to Cannes for a second time.

In 2023, she is Isabelle Huppert’s daughter in Jean-Paul Salomé’s La Syndicaliste, and will be co-starring with Fabrice Luchini in Guillaume Nicloux’s La Petite. Mara is also in Jean Xavier Delestrade’s series Sambre and Frédéric Farrucci’s latest feature Un Mohican, where she co-stars with Alexis Manenti. She has just finished shooting Laurent Micheli’s latest film, Nino dans la nuit.

NATIONAL JURY

Clémence Ducreux

Fascinated by minimalist classical music from an early age, Clémence learns how to play the piano. She soon developed an interest in electronic music.

This dual culture enabled her to graduate from ESRA as a sound engineer and from Berklee in music for image. Combining classical orchestral music with more synthetic sounds, she has worked on around thirty short films, and has scored several documentaries for Canal+ and France TV. In 2022, she was given the opportunity to compose for Lionel Baier’s film Au Sud, selected at Cannes. In 2023, she won the Trio, Crescendo and SOFILM awards, and took part in the 3e Personnage de Marseille. In 2024, she wrote the soundtrack for Elsa Bennett and Hippolyte Dard’s feature film Des jours meilleurs and for the series Enjoy! directed by Lionel Metal for France TV Slash.

Jeanne Dantoine

Jeanne Dantoine is a screenwriter and director. She started out as a self-taught filmmaker with her first short fiction film, Les Vagues, in 2018, discovering unprecedented pleasure on the set. She then decided to devote herself to cinema, directing several short films (fiction and documentary) on a self-production basis, while studying for a professional master’s degree in Scriptwriting, Directing and Production at Paris 1. She also developed a content creation activity, sharing her cultural discoveries and values online, through a Youtube channel. In 2023, she launched the LYRA-CINÉ CLUB, and other evening events to promote the work of women directors and short films, in Paris and Marseille, where she lives.

Maria Poliviou

Maria Poliviou has literally spent most of her life in a cinema! After acquiring a BA in Art History & Film Theory and a BA & MA in Dramaturgy and Performance Theory, she started working for the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Greece’s most important film festival & cultural organisation centred around film. During her many years as Head of Event Management for TIFF, she has co-curated and coordinated dozens of tributes, spotlights and special screenings, with the specific aim of cultivating the cinematic culture in Greece and attracting as big and as diverse an audience as possible to the film theatres. She passionately believes that the cinema space can function as an invaluable meeting place for any community and that film festivals are the beating heart of the film industry.

NEXT GENERATION JURY

Eve-Laure Avigdor

After studying Art History and Performing Arts in France, Eve-Laure joined the ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles) in 2004 for a year of postgraduate studies in cultural management. This was followed by a number of internships, voluntary work and other commitments in the organisation of film festivals, including the BSFF - Brussels Short Film Festival and the FIFF Namur.
After gaining experience in film distribution, she joined the Centre du cinéma of de Federation Wallonia-Brussels and the Film Selection Commission team in 2008, where she was responsible for supporting the production of short films for almost seven years.
In 2014, she left the administration to return to the set, this time in production, and joined
the Hélicotronc team as audiovisual production coordinator. She hasn’t left them since!

François Marache

After studying editing at INSAS, François Marache made a short film, NANA! AGAIN, inspired by the wacky world of John Waters. Too trashy and politically incorrect to find a place in conventional distribution circuits, he took the initiative of organizing a screening to bring his short and other independent, alternative, cheap, offbeat and committed films out of the shadows. The year was 2005, and the Courts Mais Trash festival was born! From a simple cinéclub, Courts Mais Trash is now on the eve of its 20th edition, and has become an international benchmark for underground cinema, attracting over 5,000 spectators over 6 days. François Marache is the director and programmer, Monsieur Loyal, and since 2019 has been organizing a 2nd “Queer Mais Trash” festival focusing on LGBTQIA+ themes.

Géraldine Sprimont

Graduated in Contemporary Arts and Management in Brussels, Géraldine Sprimont starts her career at Need Productions in 2011. In 2015, she took over the company with Anne-Laure Guégan. Since then, they produce
short films, feature films, animations and documentaries.

Among their latest productions are Felicite by Alain Gomis (Silver Bear at Berlin 2017), Nuestras Madres by César Diaz (Camera d’Or Festival de Cannes 2019), Clara Sola by Nathalie Alvarez Mesen (Directors’ Fortnight Cannes 2021) or Silent Voice by Reka Valerik (IDFA, FIPA, ... ), or Bloiestraat 11 by Ninke Deutz (Cristal short film Annecy 2018).

Graduated of EAVE Puentes (2016), EURODOC (2022) and SERIES WOMEN (2023), she develops emerging authors as well as established authors, with a particular attention for societal themes that have an international resonance.

Nathan Duboutay

After completing his dissertation on the Tax Shelter and graduating in economics from Solvay, ULB, Nathan joined the Versus team as a production administrator, a position at the crossroads of his training and his passion.

Always keen to improve his skills and expertise, he trained at La Fémis and took part in the EAVE - Ties That Bind 2021 workshop.

Since 2020, he has been supporting Jacques-Henri Bronckart in the artistic development of Versus, becoming junior producer in 2024.

TECHNICAL JURY

Quentin Devillers

for the best photo in the National Competition

Quentin Devillers grew up surrounded by fine art and audiovisual productions, he didn’t escape his educational fate: the art of framing light. Unique instant of truth in frozen time, the photography is a passion which lead him to do 24 times the truth per second as a profession. Being Director of Photography since 2012 in different parts of the industry allowed him to build his own vision but also travel, encounter different kind of light, landscapes and cultures. He is a member of the Belgian Society of Cinematographers (SBC).

Damien Keyeux

for the best editing in the National Competition

Damien Keyeux is a graduate of the editing section of the Institut des arts de diffusion (IAD). He also holds a master’s degree in film writing and analysis from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He has been a chief editor for 25 years.
He teaches editing at INSAS, IAD and ULB.

Fabrice Osinski

for the best sound in the National Competition

Fabrice Osinski was born in France in 1979. He studied sound at ENSAV in Toulouse, where he wrote a thesis on audiodramaturgy, or the links between sound and narrative.

In 2004, he moved to Brussels, where he worked for RTBF for 3 years. He then went freelance, recording sound for a number of creative documentaries and then fiction films.

Between shoots, he produces sound pieces: Bayangam Spotters, Paroles du 127 rue de la Garenne, La Tourmente. This year, he won the César for Best Sound for Thomas Cailley’s Le Règne animal and the Magritte for Emmanuelle Nicot’s Dalva.