Jury of the Competition Programme – Narrative Short Film of the 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival

 

 

Goran Gajić is a writer, film, television, and theater director whose career began in Yugoslav journalism, literary criticism, new wave culture, and underground multimedia before expanding into music videos, short films, documentary, feature film, and international television. He graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade in 1989. 

 

His work includes Victory Under the Sun, The Fall of Rock'n'Roll, episodes of HBO’s Oz, and The Storks Will Return, widely regarded as one of the defining television series of the former Yugoslav region. He is the director of Antigone, The Docutragedy, and the husband of the late actress and writer Mira Furlan. 

 

 

Natalia Mirzoyan is an animation director and artist from Yerevan, Armenia, based in Estonia. She holds a Master’s degree in Animation from the Estonian Academy of Arts. Her films have been selected for numerous international festivals, including Berlinale, Cannes, Annecy, Animafest Zagreb, and Hiroshima, and have received multiple awards. Her latest film Winter in March (2025), which is also her first puppet film, won the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Narrative Short Film in the Competition Programme at the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival. In addition, the film received awards in Cannes, as well as at the Animateka, Monstra, Fantoche, and Animafest Zagreb festivals She has participated in several group exhibitions and held three solo exhibitions. 

 

 

David Montenegro is a film curator, cultural manager, and visual researcher with over nine years of experience in film festivals and large-scale cultural events. He is currently the Head of Programming at the Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival (FICCI), the oldest film festival in Latin America, where he leads the festival's curatorial strategy and programming. He holds a Master's degree in Visual Culture from Lund University (Sweden). His thesis received the Britt and Karl Hugo Axelsson Memorial Foundation Award for Outstanding Master's Theses in Art History & Visual Studies. He has served as a jury member, speaker, and consultant for film festivals and cultural institutions in Spain, Sweden, Canada, Brazil, and Colombia. His research and curatorial practice explore critical and decolonial approaches to film programming.