European Film Promotion (EFP) has appointed the jury for SHOOTING STARS 2009. At the beginning of December, the five jury members who are well known personalities from the film industry, will meet to decide on the ‘Best of the Best’ of the new up-and-coming acting talent from across Europe. The jury will make its selection from among 18 new faces who have been nominated by the EFP member organisations. Ten finalists will be presented at the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) in 2009.

This year, the members of the jury are the Belgian director Marion Hänsel, the Spanish producer Antonio Saura, the British film historian Peter Cowie, the Portuguese casting director Patrícia Vasconcelos and the Macedonian actress Labina Mitevska who was one of the first SHOOTING STARS in Berlin in 1998. Please see below for further information.

Director Marion Hänsel commented: “As a director I have been very exited and interested as soon as the Shooting Stars initiative started. I find it very important to give to young, talented actors an opportunity to show their work and put the best of them in the spot lights during the Berlin Film Festival. It is a great opportunity for us to discover newcomers from all over Europe. It gives a lot of energy to see the craft and the beauty of this new generation of actors.”

At the Berlinale the short-listed 10 SHOOTING STARS 2009 will be introduced at various events from 7 – 9 February and have the opportunity to make important contacts with the international film industry. The presentation of the SHOOTING STARS AWARD – sponsored by Studio Babelsberg - is the glamorous highlight of the weekend’s event. SHOOTING STARS is supported by the EU MEDIA Programme, the EFP member countries with Studio Babelsberg acting as the main sponsor of the event.

In order to give SHOOTING STARS an even higher profile, EFP has created a dedicated website. www.shooting-stars.eu is a unique platform for European acting talent, providing an archive with the biographies of all of the SHOOTING STARS since 1998 and publishing up-to-date news about the programme during the Berlinale.



Jury SHOOTING STARS 2009

Peter Cowie (UK) is one of the most respected international writers on film, having in 1963 founded the annual survey of world cinema, the International Film Guide, which he has edited for over 40 years. As an author, he has published many influential books on cinema, including biographies of Louise Brooks and Francis Ford Coppola. In 2007, he was the co-editor of Projections: The European Film Academy, which included interviews with some 40 European directors, actors, technicians, and producers, and he is a contributing editor to The Ingmar Bergman Archives, published by Taschen this year. In 1989, Cowie joined Variety and served as the trade paper's International Publishing Director from 1993 to 2000. He now serves as a special consultant to the Berlinale and the Berlinale Talent Campus. In 1989, Cowie was decorated by the King Carl Gustaf of Sweden with the Royal Order of the Polar Star for his services to Swedish culture.

Marion Hänsel (Belgium) is a producer-director with a career spanning over three decades. She set up her own company Man's Films in 1977 to make her first short film Equilibres. Her first feature film The Bed in 1982 won the Cavens Award as “Best Belgian Film”. Since then, she has produced and directed nine feature films, including: Dust (1984), On Earth As In Heaven (1991), Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea (1994), Clouds – Letters To My Son (2001) and Sounds Of Sand (2006). Man's Film has also produced or co-produced films by Jacques Doillon (La Puritaine), Danis Tanovic (the Oscar®-winning No Man's Land and L' Enfer) and Dany Deprez (Science Fiction). In 1987, Marion Hänsel was named Belgian "Woman of the Year" and has served for several terms as the President of the French Community Film Selection Board.

Acclaimed Macedonian actress Labina Mitevska started her acting career with the role as Zamira in Milcho Mancevski's 1994 Golden Lion winner and Oscar®-nominated Before the Rain. In 1996, she began a successful collaboration with Michael Winterbottom on Welcome to Sarajevo and I Want You which resulted in her being selected as one of the Shooting Stars at the Berlinale in 1998. Since then she has had roles in films from across Europe, including: David Ondrichek´s Loners, Vlado Cvetanovski´s Secret Book, Giancarlo Bocchi´s Nema Problema, Sergej Stanojkovski´s Kontakt, Christian Wagner´s Warchild. In 2001, she established the production company “Sisters and Brother Mitevski Production” with sister Teona and brother Vuk, later appearing in Teona's films How I Killed a Saint and I am From Titov Veles. Mitevska became a member of the European Film Academy in 1998 and in recent years has served on festival juries in Cottbus, Edinburgh, Karlovy Vary, Dresden, Plzen, Palic, Moscow and Mannheim.

Antonio Saura (Spain) comes from a distinguished family of filmmakers and artists and has developed a career in audiovisual production, training and writing. He has worked as both producer and executive producer for Zebra and La Fiera Corrupia two companies which he runs; and also as an executive for some of Spain's leading production companies, on such films as El Dia De La Bestia by Alex de la Iglesia and Ay Carmela! by Carlos Saura. Since 2000, he has produced Antonio Hernandez's Goya-winning City On No Limits and Hidden, Carlos Saura's Salome and Fados, and Jose Luis Lopez-Linares' The Chicken, The Fish and the King Crab. Saura founded and directed the prestigious Media Business School. He is a member of the European and the Spanish Film Academy and was director of the Experts Committee of the Medea Programme of the European Union.
Patrícia Vasconcelos (Portugal) began her career as a casting director in 1989 and has a long list of credits on national and foreign feature films, TV programmes and series as well as over a hundred TV commercials. The films she worked on include: Sinas De Fogo (Lus Filipe Rocha), Mortinho Por Chegar A Casa (Carlos Silva and George Sluizer), Tentacao (Joaquim Leito), Zona J (Leonel Vieira), Jaime and Os Imortais (Antonio-Pedro Vasconcelos), La Reine Margot (Patrice Chereau), Alice (Marco Martins), and most recently Call Girl (Antonio-Pedro Vasconcelos), How To Draw A Perfect Circle (Marco Martins) and O Meu Pai (Joaquim Leito). Patrícia has taught casting techniques at universities and several model agencies. In summer 2000, she began organising the ACT workshops to teach actors technical skills for film and TV, and later became a co-founder of ACT with Elsa Valentim in 2001. Patrícia has also embarked on a second career as a jazz singer after an appearance in her father's film Os Imortais.