Rahul Jain was born in New Delhi and raised in various parts of India. In his higher education, he studied Mechanical engineering, Film and Video, as well as Aesthetics and Politics. His first film, Machines (2016), premiered at the main competitions of IDFA and Sundance, winning several awards including the Excellence in Cinematography Award at the Sundance Film Festival. He is now finishing his second film, Invisible Demons, a meditation about his alienation from the ecological degradation of his hometown.
Donatella Palermo started working as a projectionist and, seamlessly, she became a producer. For a long time, she has been switching between first feature films and films by big directors. During her career, she has produced movies such as: Tano da Morire by Roberta Torre, a musical about mafia, Lettere dal Sahara, the last movie by Vittorio De Seta, The Red Shadows by Citto Maselli, Caesar Must Die by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. In 2015, she met Gianfranco Rosi and produced Fuocoammare, with which they got nominated as Best Documentary at the 2017 Academy Awards. The latest movies she has produced in chronological order are: Corleone by Mosco Levi Boucault, Faith by Valentina Pedicini, Last Words by Jonathan Nossiter, starring Nick Nolte, Stellan Skarsgård and Charlotte Rampling, and Notturno by Gianfranco Rosi. She is currently working on Leonora Addio by Paolo Taviani.
Sebastian Sorg is a freelance curator and specialist for the new media and funding. Before working as funding executive at FFF Bavaria and the Zurich Documentary Film Commission, he studied as film director at the University for Television and Film Munich and also studied Literature and Political Science in Heidelberg, Bologna and Berlin. He founded the film market at the International Documentary Film Festival DOK.fest Munich. Sebastian realized publications and created several prizes and new matchmaking formats for the creative market as well as taking care of international collaborations and expositions for the new media. Since 2015, he has been working as a freelance specialist, curator, author and teacher for film and Extended Reality in Germany and abroad.
Elisa Cuter is a film critic and author of the essay "Ripartire dal desiderio” (lit. Restart from desire) (2020, minimum fax). Editor of the magazine Il Tascabile published by Treccani, she is a PhD student and research assistant at the Filmuniversität Konrad Wolf in Babelsberg. Over the years she has collaborated with Museo del Cinema in Turin, Lovers Film Festival Turin LGBTQ Visions, Carbonia Film Festival - Cinema Lavoro e Migrazioni and the Berlin Feminist Film Week, and has dealt with cinema and gender issues for various newspapers.
Pierfrancesco Li Donni (1984) graduated in Contemporary History and studied editing at Cineteca di Bologna. In 2012 he made his directorial debut with the documentary film Il Secondo Tempo. Loro di Napoli is his second documentary, winner of the best Italian film at the Festival dei Popoli, of the Télérama Award at the Fipa in Biarritz and of the Docs MX in Mexico City. In 2016 he made the TV documentary Prima cosa buongiorno. In 2017 he won the first edition of the Zavattini Award with the short film Massimino. In 2020, La nostra strada was the Best Italian Film at the 16th edition of Biografilm Festival and in competition at the 33rd edition of Idfa. He teaches at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Sicily.
Sissi is an Italian artist living in Bologna. She currently teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. Trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, she was selected in 2001 by the Antonio Ratti Foundation for the Advanced Course of Visual Arts held by the artist Marina Abramovic. Starting from the performance, the artist investigates the subjectivity and the social and emotional construction of the body in an emotional anatomy that sees constant experimentation on different artistic levels: from the performance comes a material sign that is embodied in sculptures, installations, drawings, paintings and photographs. In 2012 she won the Gotham Prize; in 2006 she was awarded a scholarship by the American Academy in Rome. In 2005 she was awarded the New York Prize of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; in 2003 the Gam (Modern Art Gallery) of Bologna awarded her the Alinovi Prize and in 2002 she won the Furla Art Award. In 2008 she joined the Tokyo Wonder Site - Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture residency program and in 2004 was an artist in residence at the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz.
The educational project Tutta un’altra storia (A whole different story) involves a group of boys (age group) detained in the Penal Institute for Minors of Bologna. Biografilm Festival organizes a series of weekly meetings focusing on storytelling and guided film screenings. From a tailor-made selection of films the inmates choose a winner, and this prize is published at the award ceremony of Biografilm festival. During the festival, the participants of this project also have a possibility of meeting filmmakers and other film professionals.
The project is carried out with the collaboration of the Penal Institute for Minors “Pietro Siciliani” of Bologna and the Ministry of Justice - Department for Juvenile and Community Justice - Emilia-Romagna and Marche Juvenile Justice Center, with the support of Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna and the Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands.
“Bring The Change”, is the project in collaboration with Terra Di Tutti Film Festival of Bologna which provides live educational activities with class IV EMM of Istituto Aldini Valeriani of Bologna, conceived in collaboration with the Multimedia Library Fuori Catalogo of the school. The students will be guided in watching some films of the festival, focusing in particular on the issues of social change and youth activism in the world, among which they will choose the story that most impressed them. Live or online meetings with film professionals and the participation in the awards ceremony as jurors are also planned for them.
