Mariam Kandelaki is an animation film director, producer and cultural organizer with over three decades of experience in animation and audiovisual storytelling. She is the founder of SAQANIMA – Georgian Animators Association, ANIMA Tbilisi International Animation Conference, and the Black Sea Animation Project Development Workshop, organized in partnership with the Annecy Festival. She is the organizer and programmer of the Nikozi Animation Festival. Kandelaki has served on juries at major international festivals, including Annecy, Ottawa, Animafest Zagreb, PIAFF and Anifilm. She is a board member of the EMILE European Animation Awards and a member of the European Film Academy. In 2026, she received the Giannalberto Bendazzi Award for her contribution to animation culture and industry.
Sophie Mirouze is General Delegate and Co-Artistic Director of the Festival La Rochelle Cinéma (Fema).
Born in 1980, Sophie Mirouze undertook audiovisual studies in Toulouse, then cinema studies at Paris X Nanterre. After various experiences in production (Fidélité), exhibition (Pathé), foreign sales (Playtime) and cinema institutions (Centre Pompidou, AFCAE), she joined the team of the Festival La Rochelle Cinéma (Fema) in 2003 and became General Delegate and Co-Artistic Director in 2018.
She is also in charge of film programming for the multidisciplinary festival “Un Week-end à l'Est”. A member of the Académie des César and the European Film Academy, she regularly takes part in festival juries and various film subsidy commissions (CNC, Nouvelle-Aquitaine Film Workout, etc.).
Head of the Programme Department; programme coordination and content implementation; project management for country focuses.
Andrea Bauer joined Film und Medienfestival gGmbH in January 2001, initially responsible for programme implementation. Over the years, she took on increasing responsibilities in programme design and development, particularly for the International Festival of Animated Film, as well as for other FMF events.
She studied Romance Philology and Art History (M.A.) at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and Lettres Modernes at Université Rennes 2. She began her professional career as a freelance translator and editor and, from 1995 to 2000, worked as an assistant to the festival director of the French Film Festival Tübingen-Stuttgart and the Mediterranean Film Festival Tübingen.
Velislava Gospodinova is an animation director, artist, researcher and lecturer in the field of animated film. Her short films The Lighthouse (2009), The Blood (2012) and Firebird (2017) have been selected for and awarded at numerous international film festivals. The Lighthouse has been particularly successful, becoming the most acclaimed Bulgarian student animated film in more than two decades. Velislava has nearly twenty years of professional experience in animation, visual effects, architectural visualisation and storyboarding. In 2025, she received a PhD in Film Studies with a dissertation dedicated to the global development and application of cutouts in animated film. For the past eight years, she has taught in the Bachelor’s and Master’s animation programmes at New Bulgarian University. She serves as a jury member at national and international film events, publishes articles on animated film in academic and specialised publications, leads workshops and masterclasses, and regularly takes part in exhibitions and academic conferences.
A graduate of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In 2004 – 2006 she was the director of the Rotunda Film Discussion Club and was responsible for programming the Cinema's film repertoire. Since 2002 she has been working on the organization of Etiuda&Anima International Film Festival and other cultural and film events. For many years she participated in the selection of animations submitted to the competitions.
She is currently the director of the ETIUDA&ANIMA International Film Festival and curator of many film projects on a national scale and internationally. She is the curator of the Polish School of Animation project, presented in 42 countries in Europe, North, South and Central America and Asia, including Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Italy, Japan, China and France. Since 2024 she is the programmer of the CREATIVE LAB E&A project dedicated to animation, virtual reality, augmented reality and various arts from the borderland.
