Jury

Our Juries select the winning films in the narrative feature, narrative documentary and short film categories.

Jurors at previous festivals have included actors Carrie Fisher, Richard Dreyfuss, Willem Dafoe, Michael Clarke Duncan, Peter Riegert, Laura Harring, Judy Greer, Karen Allen and Jane Alexander, screenwriters Guillermo Arriaga, Carlos Cuaronand Jeff Arch, and film critics Richard Schickel, David Ansen and Robert Koehler.

______________________________________________________________________________________

BIFF 2011 Jury

Hans de Weers

Hans de Weers started his career in the music industry for CBS Records, which was followed by a stint with the Dutch theatre group Orkater and a period as the initiator and organiser of the largest Dutch cultural festival abroad, Holland in Canada (1987). Together with Hans de Wolf, the film, TV and theatre production company Bergen was founded in 1991 and produced Antonia's Line by Marleen Gorris, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1996.

Egmond Film and Television was founded by De Weers in 1997. Its feature films include Bluebird by Mijke de Jong, winner of the Crystal Bear, and Mariken by André van Duren, selected for the Berlinale, awarded by the Toronto, Chiacago, Montreal and Antwerp International Film Festivals for Children. International co-productions include Alexander, Mrs. Dalloway and House of America. Egmond is now part of the Eyeworks Group and its production credits include The Happy Housewife by Antoinette Beumer, Stricken by Reinout Oerlemans and The Letter for the King by Pieter Verhoeff, co production with oa Heimat film.

Tommaso Fiacchino

Tommaso Fiacchino started in the film business by organizing gatherings where filmmakers seeking finishing funds could screen their works-in-progress to industry representatives. This led to the creation of Finishing Pictures, a New York based company that throughout the '90s offered filmmakers consulting and production services. Tommaso was then awarded a scholarship for the European Master in Law and Economics in the audiovisual sector (EMALE), which he completed while working as a script analyst for Miramax Films.

Tommaso's early producing credits include "Quienes Son" (Who Are They?), a short film which was an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival; the feature "El Destino no Tiene Favoritos" (Destiny Has No Favorites), which was an official selection in the Cannes Film Festival's Cinema du Monde section, and was distributed in the US by Wellspring; and PBS documentaries, "Al Otro Lado" (To The Other Side) and "Revolucion: Five Visions." In 2003 he joined Santa Monica based Cherry Road Films, where he's now senior VP of development and production.

Larry Gross

Screenwriter Larry Gross is perhaps best known as the co-writer with Walter Hill of 48 Hours, Streets of Fire, Another 48 Hours and Geronimo. Production on his latest script, Belleville Cop, directed by Academy Award-nominee Rachid Bouchareb is set to start soon. Other projects include Chinese Box, co-written with Jean Claude Carriere, directed by Wayne Wang (premiered at the Venice Film Festival 1997), True Crime, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, Bill Pullman's directorial debut The Virginian (2000), and Prozac Nation (2001) starring Christina Ricci.

In 2004, Larry won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival for We Don't Live Here Anymore starring Mark Ruffalo and Naomi Watts. The production of his original screenplay Crime and Punishment in Suburbia (2000) screened at Sundance and his adaptation of Jim Thompson's This World then the Fireworks (1997) was selected for Critic's Week of the Cannes Film Festival. He is a frequent contributor to film journals including Film Comment, Sight and Sound, and Movie City News.

Duncan Hall

Duncan is the founder and director of the Bermuda Documentary Film Festival. Launched in 2009, the festival is held twice annually. He is also programming director of the Weekend Film Series, presented in partnership with the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute. Duncan spent eight years with the Bermuda International Film Festival, most of them as deputy director, where he focused on programming, marketing, and press relations. In his previous lives, Duncan worked as a lawyer and journalist.

Whitney Kimmel

Whitney Kimmel is an entertainment and awards publicist at LT-LA consulting. She has represented such films as "The King's Speech", "Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire", "Biutiful", "Inglourious Basterds" and "A Single Man" creating and executing upon their respective awards campaigns. Prior to her work in awards she worked for both the Sundance Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Festival.

Rose Kuo

Rose Kuo is the Executive Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center which presents the New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films. She has led world-class film festivals and organizations, produced and directed fiction and documentary films, and worked with critically-acclaimed filmmakers including Michael Mann, Edward Zwick, Paul Schrader, and Martin Scorsese.

As AFI Fest's Artistic Director for three editions, Rose was the architect of AFI's successful "free festival" in 2009. Kuo has served as a programming consultant specializing in Asian cinema and has also worked for the San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Mill Valley film festivals. In December 2009, the International Film Festival Summit honored her with its prestigious IFFS Excellence Award.

She produced and directed the documentary California Aids Ride '94.

Peter Williams

Jamaican/Canadian actor Peter Williams comes to the Bermuda International Film Festival for the first time in person having been here before only on screen. The 2008 incarnation of BIFF hosted well-received screenings of A Winter Tale by acclaimed Trinidadian/Canadian filmmaker Frances-Anne Solomon featuring Peter as the central character Gene Wright. In a review from the Montreal Film Festival John Griffin of the Montreal Gazette referred to Peter as "one of the country's finest actors".

A decade earlier Peter was nominated in the category of best-actor-in-a-leading-role at the Canadian Genie Awards for his portrayal of Tyrone in Soul Survivor (Cannes, Sundance, TIFF) written and directed by his brother Stephen. Peter can also be seen in such Hollywood fare as Catwoman and The Chronicles Of Riddick.

With television characters on long running Canadian series Neon Rider (CTV) and DaVinci's Inquest (CBC) under his belt, Canada is familiar with Peter's career, but it is the more than five seasons as the arch-nemesis Apophis in the internationally syndicated sci-fi series Stargate SG-1 that has produced most notoriety.

2011 finds Peter networking with Caribbean filmmakers, appearing in the upcoming Antiguan folk-horror feature "The Skin", blogging (about any and everything - www.ackeeloverchronicles.blogspot.com), writing travel articles and developing material for yet to be disclosed projects.

Peter is honored to be invited to the jury of this year's BIFF.