SADYK SHER-NIYAZ

Ambassador of the Kyrgyz Republic to France, Permanent Delegate of Kyrgyzstan to UNESCO.

Film director, producer, and public figure, best known for his work on the film ”Kurmanjan Datka: Queen of the Mountains”

Founder of Aitysh Public Fund, Aitysh Film Kyrgyzstan, Aitysh USA and Aitysh France Association.

Founder of the Asian World Film Festival in USA.

Kuban Toichubayev

Film producer, businessman, philanthropist, public figure of Kyrgyzstan.

Costa Gavras

Costa-Gavras is a Greek-French film director, screenwriter, and producer who lives and works in France. He is known for political films, such as the political thriller Z (1969), which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Missing (1982), for which he won the Palme d'Or and an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Most of his films have been made in French, but six of them were made in English.
He was president of the Cinémathèque Française from 1982 to 1987, and again since 2007.

PETER SCARLET

One of the most respected film festival organizers and programmers on the international scene, Peter Scarlet was at the helm of the San Francisco International Film Festival from 1983 to 2001. Since then, he has served as Director General of the Cinémathèque Francaise, and was in charge of the Tribeca Film Festival, the Abu Film Festival and the Mar del Plata International Film Festival. He curated a major exhibition of Abbas Kiarostami’s photographs and films  in 2015 at Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum. Named an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters by France’s Minister of Culture, he has served on film festival juries around the world, and is currently at work on a memoir.

David Franzoni

David Harold Franzoni is an American screenwriter and film producer. He conceived the story for, co-wrote and co-produced the 2000 film Gladiator, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Filmography

1. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” 1986.

2. “Citizen Cohen” (Life and Times of Roy Cohen). 1992. He won Cable Ace, best screenplay and a Peabody Award. He was nominated for an Emmy.

3. “Amistad”, directed by Steven Spielberg. 1996. Film was nominated for several Oscars.

4. Gladiator. 2000. He was nominated for two Oscars (one for writing one for best picture) and won the Oscar for Best Picture. Golden Globe and BAFTA same. 

5. King Arthur. 2004.

6. Gladiator 2 producer

Nino Kirtadze

European Film Academy-award-winning film director Nino Kirtadze was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, she is based in France since 1997. She is one of the few Georgian directors who made her cinematic debut in France and quickly established herself as one of the leading film directors in Europe working with international coproductions. Her films deal with difficult and controversial subjects, placing the accent on the human drama and creating deep insightful human portraits.
Kirtadze’s films have won international acclaim and numerous prestigious awards at festivals worldwide. The highlights include Best Director Prize at Sundance for « Durakovo-village of fools », the European Film Academy award and Visions du Réel Grand Prize for “Pipeline next door”, Germany’s top award, the Adolf Grimme Gold, for “Chechen Lullaby” and the Cinema du Réel prize for “Tell my friends that I’m dead”. Her film « Don’t breathe » places this dark comedy on the edge of documentary and fiction was premiered in Toronto IFF.
Kirtadze’s personal retrospectives were held at Berkeley Art museum and Moma New York (USA 2015), Zagreb (Croatia) and Sheffield (UK) 2016, La Rochelle (2022) and Melies Cinema, Paris 2023 (France).
Actually, she is working on her new fiction film “Me, mom and the War”.
Nino Kirtadze is also a scriptwriter and actress. Her acting career started by the lead role in a “Chef in love”, a film by Nana Djordjadze, which was presented in Cannes and got nominated for an Oscar. She has worked with Peter Brook, Vittorio Gassman, Philippe Monnier, Jean-Pierre Ameris, Claude Goretta , Jacques Perrin ,Olivier Langlois , Josée Dayan.
From 2019 till 2023 Nino Kirtadze has served as national representative at board of management of Eurimages, the cultural support fund of the Council of Europe, and the EFP, European film `promotion .
She collaborates on a regular basis with different national and international organisations as a consultant, jury, lecturer, and tutor.

Zhaidarbek Kunguzhinov

Stunt Coordinator, Stunt Performer
Founder and Director of the Nomad Stunts Action Company

Taurus World Stunt Award Nominee in 2017
Taurus World Stunt Award Winner in 2020

For several years worked together with such world-known actors as:

Sylvester Stallone l Arnold Schwarzenegger l Bruce Willis l Chuck Norris l Jean-Claude Van Damme l Colin Farrell l Stephen Lang l Nathan Jones l Ed Harris l Natalie Portman l Danny McBride l Sean Bean l Ron Perlman l Asano Tadanobu l Mark Dacascos and Russian actors including: Dmitry Dyuzhev l Gosha Kutsenko and others.

The selected filmography:

Mulan, Tomiris, Marco Polo TV Series, 47 Ronin, Expendables 2, Your Highness, The Way Back, Conan The Barbarian, Mongol, Kelin, Mynbala, Nomad, Day Watch and etc.

Askar Salymbekov

Kyrgyz public figure and philanthropist, honorary chairman of the Dordoi association, founder of the Cinematika network in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia.

François d'Artemare

François d'Artemare a créé en 1996 la société cinématographique portugaise Filmes do Tejo, qui gère aujourd'hui un catalogue de plus de 70 titres. Il a produit avec la société parisienne Les Films de l'Après-Midi, qu'il a fondée en 2001, trois longs métrages de Manoel de Oliveira : CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, THE ENIGMA (Venise 2007), ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLOND-HAIR GIRL (Berlin 2009), THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA (Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2010).

Les Films de l'Après-Midi ont produit des films du monde entier : Bosnie (SNOW de Aida Begic - Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique, Cannes 2008 - CHILDREN OF SARAJEVO - Mention du Jury Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2012), Angola (THE HERO de Zeze Gamboa - Prix du Jury World Cinema Dramatic à Sundance 2005), Roumanie (ONE FLOOR BELOW de Radu Muntean - Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2015 - ALICE T. - Locarno 2018), Bangladesh (MADE IN BANGLADESH de Rubaiyat Hossain - TIFF 2019), France (I WANT TO TALK ABOUT DURAS de Claire Simon - San Sebastian 2021).

ASEL SHERNIYAZOVA

Asel Sherniyazova Is a managing director of Asian World film festival, has an economic and business educational background and for two years studied in China (Shanghai Organization of Cooperation), representing Kyrgyzstan on the Cross-Cultural Exchange Program. Fluent in Chinese, Russian, English, and Kyrgyz, she is a Co-Founder of a Business Consultancy Company in China, Investment Corporation in the USA and a non-profit organization in Kyrgyzstan.

During 2014 Asel worked on the Oscar and Golden Globe campaigns for the multi-award-winning film Kurmanjan Datka Queen of the Mountains which was Kyrgyzstan's submission for Best Foreign Language Film. Now, as Managing Director of the Asian World Film Festival, each year she coordinates the programming of all films from the Asian region which have been submitted to the Academy and the Golden Globes for Best Foreign Language Film.

Asel is an integral part of the Festival, managing the structure and strategic content as well as event sponsorship and all promotional activity. She is also instrumental in liaising between Consulates, Embassies and Ministries from the Asian Continent, ensuring that their countries' films and filmmakers receive a high degree of exposure during the Festival.

Julia BENETTI

Linguist and cultural events organiser.

Member of the executive board, cultural events organiser at the UNESCO Community Association.

President of the International Association for Cultural Diplomacy.

Secretary General of the French department of International Action Art.

In 2021, she received a Silver Medal from the Société Académique française "Arts-Science-Lettres".

In 2023 she was appointed delegate for Corsica and the Yvelines region by the Société Académique française "Arts-Science-Lettres".

Ihsan Kabil

Ihsan Kabil was born in 1959 in Istanbul. He studied History at Bogazici University, and entered the Master’s degree in the History of Art at the same department. During his studies, he wrote articles on film, made film reviews, translations, compilations, and interviews in various film journals. Before graduating from this program, he was accepted to the MA degree in Cinema Studies at the Ohio State University in the United States. He returned home while continuing his Doctoral studies in the same place. He started working for Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality as the cinema consultant at the Cultural Office. In the meanwhile, he published his Master’s thesis, “Redeemed Worlds: Bresson’s Pickpocket and Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice” in a co-written book “Dream, Reality and Cinema”.
Beginning with 1997, he started attending the foreign festivals like Fajr FF, Urban FF, Shaken Stars FF, Yakutsk FF as member of the jury. He became a co-representative of Turkey to Eurimages during 2005-07, and continued to be the representative at the European Audio-Visual Observatory by 2006. He then became the director general of various film festivals in Turkey like The Unknown Cinemas FF, The Developing Countries FF, International Turquoise Film Days, Malatya International FF, Sufi Film Days, Ten5 Zero7 Film Week, and Korkut Ata Turkic World FF. He was the member of the Advisory Board at the Film Comission of Istanbul 2010 Cultural Capital of Europe. He led the establishment of Hayal Perdesi Film Workshop at the Science and Arts Foundation, and gave lectures on Film Culture at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Fatih Sultan Mehmet Univ. beside continuing to write articles on cinema in various periodicals, and in the newspaper Star for many years.

Guillaume Rat

Poet, Singer, Composer

OBTAINED 2 SILVER MEDALS FROM THE COMPANY THE AUTHORS AND POETS OF THE FRANCOPHONY.

He participates actively in the itinerant exhibition of the Tour de France of the Poetry which began on July 9, 2011 in the main Library in Carnac and which will be welcome in many cities in France.

AT MOMENT

Guillaume Rat keeps on managing actively his career as a poet-singer of French romantic style, especially for his project :

"The Road to the Stars"

Which aims to help children with disabilities, he spreads among his audience his own compositions and those of notorious authors.

Meder Suyundukov

Film producer from Kyrgyzstan, his produced films "Shambala" and "Salvador Dali" took part and became winners of different awards at many prestigious  international film festivals

DIANA ASHIMOVA

Executive director

Festivals programmer, artistic director, NETPAC member, film producer; has MA degree in filmmaking. Was the head of programming at Eurasia International Film Festival for 9 years and has run several international film festivals in Kazakhstan and abroad including Dialogue of cultures IFF in New York. Since 2011 is the Artistic director of Bastau International film festival. In 2017 has founded a film company “A Team” that supports the young filmmakers and produces short films, full length feature films and documentaries. The films were in the official selection of many big film festivals including A list film festivals and got several awards.

Was a program consultant of Cairo international film festivals.

Since 2021 is a senior lector of Turan Film Academy. Jury member of many international film festivals.

diana.ashimova@cinemaheritage.org