Geneva — After receiving nearly 800 films during a successful call for entries to its 2018 Global Migration Film Festival (GMFF), the United Nations Migration Agency (IOM) now has just under a month left for its jury to issue its choice of finalists for the festival’s most outstanding film.

Films have played an important role in tipping the scale on important issues, and it was with this spirit that the first Global Migration Film Festival was launched by IOM in 2016.  Last year, the Festival was present in 100 countries with a total of 345 screenings that had an audience of over 30,000 people.

The list of jurors for the Festival has now been posted on the official GMFF website (see it here). These jurors will focus on the two main categories of films sent for submission: full-length features and short films.

The six jurors bring expertise in migration, film-making and visual storytelling along with their passion for showcasing the challenges and promises of migration in our world today.

Florence Kim, who holds a PhD in International Law and has been the driving force behind IOM’s successful #IAmAMigrant perception change campaign, will be one of the judges for the feature films category. Kim currently directs media and communications for IOM’s Regional Office in West and Central Africa. She will be accompanied by David Hands, currently a partner in the Cyprus-based production company Crewhouse Media.

Hands brings 29 years of experience in film-making. He is a part-time lecturer on Documentary Production at the University of Nicosia and serves as Artistic Director of the Children and Youth Section of the Cyprus Film Days Festival. Kim and Hands will be joined by award-winning Somali-American filmmaker, Idil Ibrahim who has also served as an International Jury Member for the 2018 Plural Plus Global Youth Video Festival.

The second category of Festival judging will include Luca Lamorte, IOM’s social media manager. Lamorte earned a PhD in International History and Politics from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. As a cinephile who previously worked as a stage actor and theatre director before pursuing his career as an international civil servant, Lamorte presents a unique perspective on the judging panel.

He will be accompanied by Jacqueline Coté, Director of Public Relations at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. As one of the country’s youngest film directors, Coté’s production of the animated film “Smarties” put her on the film world’s radar screen early in her career. She was six years old at the time. Since then Coté has added experience as an international corporate lawyer who has worked in various business associations including the ICC in Paris.

The vibrant Brazilian visual storyteller Felipe Fittipaldi, based in Rio de Janeiro, will be the third member of this judging trio. His work has been displayed in numerous exhibitions around the world and placed first in the 2017 Life Framer photography awards. Fittipaldi recently completed his award-winning Lens Culture photo essay Backlands Sertão, which reflects on the current youth exodus and modernization of Brazil’s semi-arid countryside.

Out of the 784 submissions, selected to be part of the Official Selection were 20 feature films and 21 short films.  The jury will evaluate the entries and select a winner from each category. Each winner will win a cash prize. All selected films from the short films category also are eligible to win a cash prize and nine films from the Feature Films category are in the running for a USD 1,000 cash grand prize. 

Click here to access the official Global Migration Film Festival portal.

For more information, please contact Amanda Nero at IOM HQ at Tel: +41 227 179 482, Email: anero@iom.int