2024 Graduation Films Jury
Discover the Graduation Films jury members for the 2024 edition’s awards.
Eric BECKMAN
Founder & CEO
GKIDS
USA
Eric Beckman is founder and CEO of NYC based GKIDS, an independent producer and distributor of award-winning animation. Since 2010, the company has scored 13 Best Animated Feature Oscar® nominations and 6 Golden Globe® nominations (and one win!) including for their most recent release, Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron. GKIDS is the US home of Japan’s Studio Ghibli, one of the world’s most coveted animation collections, along with some of the most iconic and successful European and Asian animation titles, studios, and directors.
In 2017, Eric and GKIDS launched the annual Animation Is Film festival, in partnership with Annecy Festival and Variety. AIF is now the preeminent animation festival in the US and a fixture on the fall awards circuit. Eric is also co-founder of New York Int’l Children’s Film Festival, an Oscar®-qualifying event and the largest film festival for children and teens.
Eric received the Mifa & Variety’s Animation Personality of the Year Award at Annecy in 2017.
Julie LOCKHART
President of Production & Founding Partner
Locksmith Animation
United Kingdom
One of the film industry’s most experienced animation producers, Julie Lockhart’s work has received three Academy Award nominations.
She held leadership roles at Aardman Animation and was producer on many acclaimed animated shorts, commercials and ground-breaking television series, including Creature Comforts and Shaun the Sheep (Cristal for Best TV Production Annecy 2007). Stepping into features, she developed and produced The Pirates! Band of Misfits for Sony Pictures and Shaun the Sheep Movie for Studio Canal/Lionsgate.
Whilst at Locksmith, she has been instrumental in building a brand new studio from scratch into the international high end animation feature film company it is today, as well as serving as Producer on Locksmith’s debut feature film Ron’s Gone Wrong, and Executive Producer on the company’s latest production, Richard Curtis’s That Christmas for Netflix.
Jeff ROWE
Director & Writer
Paramount Studios
USA
Jeff Rowe is known for his exceptional contributions to the world of animation.
Rowe made his directorial and writing debut with the animated feature Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which was released in theaters in 2023 and has become the highest-rated animation film of the year. The feature has been praised for its visually striking art style.
Additionally, Rowe co-wrote and co-directed the Academy Award-nominated film The Mitchells vs. the Machines. The film, which was released on Netflix in 2021, went on to become Netflix’s biggest animated film of the year and has been recognized for its unique visual style.
On the television side, Rowe served as a writer on the Primetime Emmy award-winning Disney Channel animated series Gravity Falls from 2014 to 2016, before going on to write on the animated series Disenchantment for Netflix.