Mentors
Bianca Oana
Head of Studies
Bianca is a young Romanian screenwriter and producer. Since 2009, she has been working in developing, producing and promoting multi-awarded art-house films, including Toto and His Sisters (San Sebastian IFF World Premiere, Won Angers Grand Prix, Zurich IFF Golden Eye Award, Best Documentary Warsaw IFF, Nominated for EFA Best Documentary, nominated for Lux Prize), Turn Off the Lights (World Premiere Tribeca Film Festival New York - Viewpoints, Won The Heart of Sarajevo for Best Documentary Sarajevo Film Festival, and Best Director Zagreb Dox), If I Want to Whistle I Whistle (Berlinale Grand Jury Prix and Alfred Bauer Award for Innovation 2011). In 2015, she founded her own company, Monogram Film. In 2017, she was selected in the Emerging Producers program. Dedicated to discovering filmmakers with a particular artistic view, Bianca has been building an expertise in handling challenging filmmaking processes, at the unpredictable border between fiction and reality, and with complex international co-production structures: Collective (Oscar nominee for Best Documentary and Best International Feature) by Alexander Nanau, Golden Bear winner Touch Me Not by Adina Pintilie, and Anhell69 by Theo Montoya. She is the creative producer of the 2022 Romanian Pavilion at Venice Art Biennale with Adina Pintilie's You Are Another Me - A Cathedral of the Body.
Dominique Welinski
Producer
In 2012, after more than 20 years in distribution, Dominique Welinski founded DW, a production company. Since then, she curates and produces the Factory program at Director’s Fortnight in Cannes. After Taipei, Nordic, Chile, South Africa, Lebanon and Tunisia, in 2019, Factory took place in South East Europe. She has produced or co-produced, among others: Sanjeewa Pushpakumara’s Burning Birds, Alireza Khatami’s Oblivion Verses, Midi Z Road to Mandalay, John Tengrove’s The Wound, Suba Sivakumaran’s House of my Fathers and Yona Rozenkier’s The Dive. DW is actually developing films in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Israel, South Africa, Kenya and Bhutan.
Dana Bunescu
Editor, sound designer and director
Dana Bunescu is a Romanian editor and sound designer. She co-directed with Mona Nicoară the feature documentary The Distance Between Me and Me (2018). Dana is a winner of the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at the 2017 Berlinale for Călin Peter Netzer’s film Ana, mon amour. She has been working in the field since 2000. Known for editing The Death of Mr Lazarescu directed by Cristi Puiu (awarded the “Un
certain Regard” prize in Cannes 2006), Cristian Mungiu’s films 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (Palme d’Or, Cannes, 2007), Andrei Ujica’s documentary The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu (for which she also did the sound design), screened at Cannes in 2010. She is also known for the sound design and editing of Child’s Pose by Călin Peter Netzer, winner of Golden Bear for Best Film at Berlinale 2013, as well as for the sound design of Aferim, I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians and Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn by Radu Jude. She edited and did the sound-design of numerous documentaries. Bunescu was nominated and won several Gopo Awards for Best Editing and Sound Design.
Britta Rindelaub
Producer, director
Since 2015, after working as a documentary director and teaching cinema at HEAD – Geneva, Britta Rindelaub has produced a dozen short films by up-and-coming filmmakers, international documentaries (KINSHASA MAKAMBO, 2018 - DELPHINE AND CAROLE, 2019) and feature films (I AM TRULY A DROP OF SUN ON EARTH, 2017 – HIVE, 2021 - THE LAND WITHIN, 2022), as well as Series (MINOR OFFENCE - 2023, RTS / Proximus). She has a strong international co-production network, esp. with France, Belgium, Balkan countries, Spain and Latin America. She loves cinematographic approaches that are personal, risky, but always inspired. Britta has three children and two dogs.
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Nathalie Álvarez Mesén
Director, Screenwriter
Nathalie Álvarez Mesén is a screenwriter and director with roots in both Costa Rica and Sweden. She began her career in physical theater and obtained her bachelor's degree in mime acting from the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts. Nathalie subsequently attended the Alma Screenwriting Program and earned an MFA in directing and screenwriting from Columbia University in New York. Her feature film debut, CLARA SOLA, premiered at Cannes 2021 in the Directors' Fortnight section and won 5 Guldbagge Awards in 2021 for Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Cinematography, and Sound. Nathalie's short films have been showcased at film festivals worldwide. Her short film FILIP won "Best Film Under 15 Minutes" at the Palm Springs ShortFest 2016, and ASUNDER was featured at the Telluride Film Festival in 2016.
Ivana Mladenović
Director, screenwriter, actress
Ivana Mladenović (1984, Serbia) studied Law in Belgrade and then moved to Romania where she studied film directing at the National School of Film and Theatre (UNATC) in Bucharest, receiving both her BA and MA. Her short student films were shown and awarded at various film festivals around the world. In 2012, Mladenovic's first feature-length documentary Turn Off the Lights premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and won the Heart of Sarajevo Award for Best Documentary and Gopo Award for Best Romanian Documentary. In 2016, she made her debut as an actress in Radu Jude’s Scarred Hearts. Her feature film debut Soldiers. Story from Ferentari (2017) premiered in Toronto and won Premio Sebastiane in San Sebastian, while her second feature Ivana the Terrible (2019) won the Special Jury Prize in Locarno. The films went through a strong festival circuit from Busan to Copenhagen, Los Angeles to Zagreb, and Trieste to Minsk.
