Jury

Tanya Ivanova is a long-time journalist at the Bulgarian National Radio – she is a news editor there, runs a weekly column on extreme sports, does interviews and reports on these topics. She also publishes in other media – on her own website ludarabota.com, on the climbing website climbingguidebg.com, etc. For several years she has been covering events related to mountaineering culture, such as the Bansko Film Fest, competitions, etc. Her free time is dedicated to her two children, to projects related to the development of climbing in Bulgaria, as well as to her own climbing.

Mojca Volkar Trobevšek (1981) is a graduate in comparative literature and a professor of the Slovenian language working as a Slovenian language teacher, editor, moderator, publicist, and author. She does research and writes scripts for documentary films for Slovenian national television and other producers. She’s co-authored and edited various biographies and other works on Slovenian alpinism, its history and protagonists. She writes for Planinski vestnik (a Slovenian mountaineering magazine) and designs cultural events, and recently she’s been focusing on moderating book clubs and discussions, as well as writing. She’s particularly interested in mountains and the people connected to them. She’s worked with the Festival gorniškega filma since 2008 and has served as a jury member at festivals in Ljubljana, Graz, and Tegernsee. She has a very close connection to the mountains; she used to be an alpinist and a climber and has dedicated much of her time to educating young mountaineers as a voluntary mountain guide and ski instructor. Together with her husband and three sons, she lives and works at the foot of the Kamnik Alps.

Fulvio Mariani has nurtured a deep passion for mountaineering and photography from an early age. He works as a cinematographer for the Swiss television RSI, for which he made a dozen alpine and adventure documentaries. His images often stand alone, not needing narration or dialogue to interpret their meaning to the viewer. In 1983 he took part in his first mountaineering expedition to the North Face of Everest, where he shot his first documentaries. Some of his most notable films are Cumbre, The Wooden Man, and Siachen: A War for Ice, among many others. His filmmaking has taken him all over the world, from Patagonia to the Himalayas, from Siberia to Pakistan, and he’s won numerous international awards, including one of the first International Alliance for Mountain Film Grand Prizes, which he won in 2004.

Milan Romih (1960) is a climber and alpinist known for countless climbs in the Alps, Andes, and Himalaya. These mountains are his cosmos and his life has Milan Romih (1960) is a climber and alpinist known for countless climbs in the Alps, Andes, and Himalaya. These mountains are his cosmos and his life has always revolved around them. He explores them and strives to unlock their secrets, which gives him a chance to learn from them again and again. He selflessly shares his explorations with friends and people who are or would like to become a part of this world. He’s written two books and made two films: Lhotse (2000) and Ballet above the Sea (2009); he’s also worked on the film Credo, which was released in 1997.

Zehrudin Isaković (1966) holds a Masters in Arts in communication and works as a journalist, but much of his life has been devoted to mountains. He’s the author of a TV series about the Balkan Mountains, several documentaries about mountains all over the world (around seventy), and numerous maps and hiking guidebooks. He’s won many awards for his films and participated in several festivals as a member or the president of the jury. As a youngster, he was an active alpinist with more than 250 climbed routes. At the tender age of seventeen, he climbed the north face of Petit Dru in the Mont Blanc Massif, which was an adventure of a lifetime. He’s been to most of the world’s mountain ranges and took part in expeditions to Everest and Cho Oyu. He was the president of the Mountaineering Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2014–2018) and was awarded its gold medal for his work in alpinism.

A filmmaker, an alpinist, and a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and Wajda Film School in Warsaw, Poland. Her films have been awarded at many international documentary festivals, including Hot Dosc (Canada), Locarno FF, and Los Angeles FF. Her latest documentary The Wall of Shadows, a story of Sherpas and an expedition to Jannu has won thirty international awards, including the Grand Prix at Cervino Cinemountain, Cinematography Award at Salem FF, Zürcher Filmpreis for Best Directing, and Grand Prix at Festival gorniškega filma. She is currently working on a full-length documentary about Wanda Rutkiewicz, one of the best female mountaineers in the world. Eliza has climbed on several expeditions all over the world, including Greenland, Morocco, Pakistan, and Mali.

Writer, translator, alpinist, and world traveller Dr. Iztok Osojnik (born in  1951) is the author of over 50 books of poetry, fiction, and professional publications. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages. He’s also translated several books on alpinism written by Mark Twight, Stipe Božić, and Steve House, to name a few. During the most active period of his climbing career, he’s climbed some of the most demanding routes in Slovenian and elsewhere. He lives and works in Ljubljana.

Art historian and journalist Melania Lunazzi (born in 1971) has had a strong passion for mountains since she was a teenager. She likes climbing and ski mountaineering, especially in the Dolomites, Carnic Alps, and Julian Alps. As a freelancer, she works for different Italian magazines and newspapers writing about art and mountain topics. She is also an archive researcher who’s written several books dedicated to local alpine pioneers such as Napoleone Cozzi and Balthazar Hacquet. In 2019, she wrote a drama about the Grassi sisters, two unconventional mountain women, which has become a successful theatre production.

Producer, director, and videographer Jure Niedorfer (born in 1981) has a bachelor’s degree in geography. He’s the father of two wild rascals. For the past twenty-five years, he’s been pursuing various mountain activities, and he’s been working as a professional filmmaker for the last fifteen years. While most of his projects are commercial, he’s participated in various festivals where he’s won several awards. He’s motivated by his passion for the mountains, the aesthetics of the images, and the sincerity of the stories.

Tom grew up in Mexico City and Munich. His love for mountains was passed on to him by his parents and he’s travelled and climbed all over the world – in the Alps, Patagonia, Andes, Himalayas, and Karakoram. Tom is successfully juggling his passion with his job as a journalist. He’s a well-known mountain writer, famous mainly for the biographies of Reinhard Karl and Kurt Albert, as well as for his work Cerro Torre – The Myth of Patagonia. He’s writing columns for the Alpin and Bergundsteigen magazines and is the screenwriter and director of award-winning documentaries. He lives with his family between Munich and the Alps.

An alpinist and mountain guide who has a special place in his heart for mountains and alpinism for as long as he can remember. His enduring love for dry rock has been intertwined with Himalayan giants, steep ice and mixed routes, and ski touring. In a single year, he summited Everest and Aconcagua, opened a difficult route on the north face of Triglav, climbed an 8b sport route… And had his first daughter. He always tries to capture notable moments from his mountain adventures with photography and writing. He’s had his photos exhibited on several occasions, he writes articles, and his come computer is full of his stories. For fifteen years, he compiled and wrote alpinism news for a Slovenian newspaper and website.

Marjeta was born into a mountaineering family and from an early age, she’d already fallen in love with the mountains and the wisdom of people living close to them. A history professor with a degree in ethnology, she’s spent almost twenty years making documentaries and TV features about the natural and cultural heritage of mountainous areas all over the world. For ten years, she was in charge of a monthly TV show called Gore in ljudje (Mountains and People) on Slovenian national television, which garnered several awards on international festivals. Her postgraduate studies were in Ljubljana and London and she has worked extensively on heritage interpretation. She was the vice-president of CIPRA International, as well as a founding member of Mountain Wilderness Slovenija and Interpret Europe. Recently, her main focus has been her work at the National Institute of Public Health.