Jury: International Competition of First Feature Film of Directors

Paul Schrader

American screenwriter and director Paul Schrader is known for his films such as American Gigolo and Mishima.

It was the screenplay of Taxi Driver that brought him to the limelight. His collaboration with celebrated director Martin Scorsese turned out to be historic with cinematic milestones Raging Bull (1980) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Schrader debuted as a director in 1978 with Blue Collar and went on to make films such as The Comfort of Strangers (1991), an adaptation of Ian McEwan novel, scripted by Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter.

Shaji N. Karun

Cinematographer and director - Shaji made his directorial debut with the Malayalam film Piravi ("The Birth", 1988), which won him the prestigious Caméra d'Or - Mention d'honneur at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. His second film, Swaham (1994) was nominated for Palme d'Or at Cannes.He has also directed a Hindi film Nishad, which was premiered in the Fukuoka International Film Festival held in September 2002 in Japan. His latest film "Kutty Srank: Sailor of Hearts" will be screend at the 11th Mumbai Film Festival, Oct 29 - Nov 5, 2009.

Brillante Mendoza

Celebrated Phillipino director Brillante Mendoza (born July 30, 1960) has directed nine films since 2005. He won the award for Best Director for his film Kinatay at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival.

Irene Bignardi

A film critic, author and the former director of Locarno Film Festival, Irene Bignardi was born and educated in Milan, where she graduated in modern literature, and studied communications at Stanford University with a Fulbright Fellowship. She has worked as a cultural journalist for La Repubblica, since the inception of the daily newspaper in 1976, and from 1989-2000 she was head of its film critics' team. Prior to that from 1979-89, she wrote a column of film criticism for the weekly l'Espresso. From 1986-89, she was the director of MystFest, the International Film Festival of Film Noir in Cattolica, Italy and from 1992-94 she worked in the Venice Film Festival with Gillo Pontecorvo as head of the Venetian Nights with Giorgio Gosetti. From 2001-05, she helmed the Locarno International Film Festival.

Vimukthi Jayasundara

Vimukthi Jayasundara was born in southern Sri Lanka. He was a journalist, film critic and writer for the screen, and he attended the Institute for Film and Television in Pune, India.

After making ‘The Land Of Silence’, a documentary in black and white about the victims of the civil war which was selected for several festivals in Marseilles, Rotterdam and Berlin, Vimukthi Jayasundara studied in France at the Fresnoy School of Art before becoming a resident at the Cinefondation of the Festival de Cannes in 2003.

In 2004 he directed his first feature, ‘La Terre Abandonnÿ’. Vimukthi Jayasundara's picture, which took the 2005 Cannes Film Festival Camera d'Or for best first film (an award previously won by Dennis Hopper and Spike Lee), is done with sparse dialogue and haunting tableaux of the isolated rural landscape. "Land" has some of the strange poetry of Ingmar Bergman's great 1968 anti-war film Shame, but it's a more cryptic, exotic work, burningly immediate yet imbued with some of the quality of timeless fable. Only 27, Jayasundara seems a moviemaker of high promise. His Forsaken Land, a work of surprising sophistication and cinematic eloquence, may signal the arrival of a major international film talent.

Vimukthi Jayasundara was bestowed with the 1CKala Kirthi" title by the President of Sri Lanka. Fallen, his second long-length feature film, is actually in post-production. It was initiated by Le Films Hatari, Unlimited and co-produced by Arte France Cinema. The cast includes an enviable list of actors comprising of Chinese actress Lou Hong,Steve de La Zilwa, Thusitha and Kaushalya Fernando.

Vimukthi Jayasundara had received the commendation of being one of the great future hopes for the renewal of cinema in the world