We received more submissions than ever this year, which makes us very happy. Now the selection jury has a good month to review the nearly 400 animated, documentary and feature films. At the beginning of September, they will decide which films will be included in this year's festival program. The Filmschoolfest team is already very excited and looks forward to seeing what the program has in store. You can marvel at it from November 13 to 18 at the HFF Munich and meet the young filmmakers from all over the world.

Here you can find out about our selection jury, which is now busy screening and selecting the films. A big thank you to these three cineasts!

Gisèle S. Mbamu is a Polish-Congolese writer and filmmaker who grew up in Stuttgart. She studied screenwriting at the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF), where she successfully graduated with a diploma. She has received several awards for her short films and screenplays. She is currently writing short stories, narratives and her first Mbamu novels. Her story "Drei Erinnerungen an Pascal" was published in the anthology Neue Prosa aus Schleswig-Holstein. For one of her novel projects, she received the working scholarship of the state of Schleswig-Holstein in 2023 and was awarded the literary scholarship of the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg for another. She lives and works in a small community in northern Germany.

Joanna Żak is a film programmer and festival producer, currently based at the International Young Audience Film Festival, Ale Kino in Poznan, Poland. She has previously worked for the New Horizons Association and ran her own auteur projects: Kinoranek and Orbis Pictus Cinema. Joanna is an alumna of the NEXT WAVE training programme at Die Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin, and a lecturer at Krzysztof Kieslowski Film School in Katowice. She has also been a jury member and speaker at various film festivals and industry conferences.

Ribal Chedid is a young Lebanese filmmaker and film editor, born in Beirut on July 11, 1999 and currently based in Paris, where he is pursuing a masters degree in film production. He wrote, edited and directed multiple short films during his undergraduate studies at IESAV, the latest being his senior film TALK TO ME (2022). This film sheds light on Ribal's interest for simple forms, family dramas & dysfunctional family relationships in cinema. It won the “Best Fiction Film'' Award at the 7th International FilmSchool Fest Tétouan in Morocco, and the “Best Performance” & "Outstanding" Awards at the 21st International Student Film & Video Festival of Beijing Film Academy in China, and a Special Jury mention at the Alexandria International Short Film Festival in Egypt. TALK TO ME represented Lebanon in the prestigious 33rd Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia under the “Carthage Cinema Promise '' section. It was also screened across more than 15 festivals so far in Canada, Turkey, Germany, Egypt, the United States, Tunisia, Morocco, Belgium and Lebanon. He is currently in the development phase of his second short film.