DK · 2026
JS
Jury President
N° I
Joachim Strand
Jury President · DenmarkDirector of three Cannes-selected features and a long-time champion of short cinema. Founder of the Aarhus Film Workshop.
Our jury is composed of working filmmakers, programmers, critics and craftspeople from across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Each member watches the entire competition shortlist before the festival begins.
Chaired this year by Danish director Joachim Strand, the feature jury is responsible for the Grand Prix, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography and the Jury Special Mention. They watch every shortlisted film and meet for two full days of deliberation in early May.
Director of three Cannes-selected features and a long-time champion of short cinema. Founder of the Aarhus Film Workshop.
Norwegian director whose debut short Saltvann won the FIPRESCI Prize at Locarno. Currently in production on her first feature.
Independent producer behind award-winning shorts at Clermont-Ferrand and TIFF. Founder of the Tokyo Shorts Lab.
Senior film critic at Cahiers du Cinéma, with a long-running column on European short cinema and emerging voices.
BAFTA-nominated cinematographer with credits across narrative, documentary and music film. Mentor at the National Film & Television School.
Editor of four Nordic Council Film Prize nominees. Teaches editing at the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Each of our three specialist programmes is judged by an independent two-person panel of practitioners working in that form. They convene the day before the feature jury and submit their decisions before the main deliberation begins.
Director of Cold Bell, winner of the IDFA Special Jury Award 2024. His documentary work explores landscape, labour and memory in the north.
Independent animator and head of the Annecy Off-Limits programme. Her short Salt of the Coromandel tours twenty festivals in 2026.
Essay filmmaker and curator of the BAFICI Frontera section. Recently published Notes on the Long Take with Editorial Mansalva.
Investigative documentary director at NRK. Her short Northern Light, Southern Border won the OSFF Documentary Prize in 2024.
Animator and educator. Her stop-motion shorts have been screened at MoMA and the British Film Institute. Visiting faculty at KHIO.
Sound artist and moving-image practitioner whose works have been exhibited at the Sharjah Biennial and Sonic Acts Amsterdam.
Every step of the jury's process is documented and published. Below is the actual schedule for the 2026 jury.
Sixteen selectors watch every submission in full. Each film is seen by at least two selectors and discussed in a weekly programmers' meeting.
Approximately 280 films advance from roughly two thousand entries. Selectors write a one-page memo for each longlisted film.
Programme Director and the senior selectors reduce the longlist to one hundred officially selected works. The jury begins watching.
Each jury member watches the full shortlist privately, with three weeks to view, re-view and make their own notes.
Two full days at Kulturhuset. Contested films are re-screened together. Categories are debated in rotating sub-panels.
The fifteen jury honors are presented at Oslo Konserthus, alongside the Audience Award voted by the public during the screening week.
The jury president changes every year and is invited at least eight months before the festival begins. They join the entire deliberation, but only vote when the jury is tied.
Director · Denmark. Cannes-selected three times.
Director · United Kingdom. Oscar-winning documentarian.
Actor & Director · Norway. National stage and screen icon.
An honorary chair held in his memory, voted by the office.
Director · Finland. Quiet, decisive, often the last to speak.
Director · Norway. Our inaugural jury chair.
News from the office, curated short film recommendations, calls for submission and the occasional long-read from our programmers.