2025 Graduation Films & Off-Limits Short Films Jury
Discover the Graduation Films & Off-Limits Short Films jury members for the 2025 edition’s awards.
Réka BUCSI
Director and Painter
Hungary
Réka Bucsi graduated with a master's degree in animation filmmaking from Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest. Her graduation film Symphony No. 42 was shortlisted for the Oscars in 2014. Her personal films were screened at various film festivals worldwide, including all three of them premiering at the Berlinale Shorts Competition and two were in competition at Sundance. Réka's short film LOVE was nominated for Best Short Film at the European Film Awards in 2017. Her film Solar Walk won the Audi Short Film Award at the Berlinale 2018, the Grand Prix at Ottawa International Animation Festival 2018, was nominated at the Annie Awards and is now part of The Criterion Channel.
She served on 17 international film festival juries, including the Berlinale Shorts International Jury. Réka is also one of the jurors for the annual Red Dot Design Award. She was a speaker at Pictoplasma, Pratt Institute NYC, FMX Conference on Animation Germany and a guest teacher at CalArts.
Réka's clients include Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and FX Networks. Réka became a European Film Academy member in 2017 and an AMPAS member in 2021.
Manuel CRISTÓBAL
Producer and Director of the Seville European Film Festival
Spain
Manuel Cristóbal is a Spanish film producer and currently Director of the Seville European Film Festival. He is an AMPAS and Spanish Film Academy member, a mentor for Women in Animation and has produced 11 feature films. He is a five-time Goya Awards-winner and twice winner at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival with a Special Distinction for Wrinkles (2012, Ignacio Ferreras) and Jury Distinction for Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2019, Salvador Simó). The former is the only Spanish film ever to be distributed by Studio Ghibli in Japan and the latter won an EFA award.
He produced the very first European CGI film, The Living Forest (2001, Ángel de la Cruz), and The Glassworker (2024, Usman Riaz), which was Pakistan’s selection for the Oscars.
He joined the Madrid regional government as Audiovisual Industry Advisor from 2019 to 2023, he has a PhD in Film Studies and has given lectures in 22 countries.
Naomi VAN NIEKERK
Director, Multidisciplinary Artist
South Africa
Naomi van Niekerk is a South African-born multi-media artist. Her artistic expression ranges from film, installations, animated performances to illustration and printmaking. As a stop-motion animator, she creates hauntingly powerful short films based on sensitive interpretations of South African narrative poems.
These films, created with sand on an animation table, have been screened internationally and received worldwide acclaim. Her latest film, Box Cutters (inspired by a Ronelda Kamfer poem), won the award for Best Screenplay at the Ottawa International Animation Film Festival. Her work in the field of animation enables her to give meaning to the visual narrative in all its physicality and ephemerality.
Van Niekerk is based in Lille, France.