The INFF places great emphasis on a balanced judging of the submitted films. Therefore, the team of INFF-jurors is mixed from professionals in the field of cinema, environmental film productions and the environmental sciences. The respective winner of the previous year is invited to the jury of the succeeding edition.
Jury
Christian Berger
Screenwriter, film producer, cameraman, director and emeritus professor of the Vienna Film Academy.
Christian Berger started his career in 1968 as a permanent freelancer of the ORF [Austrian Broadcasting Association]. In the 1970s he founded his own production company; intensively worked on documentaries and photojournalism and also cooperated in TV productions as director, producer, and co-author. Since the 80s he has been focusing on his own, frequently award-winning feature film projects. Starting in the 1990s, he has taught at important film schools, e.g. in France, Germany, Italy, Cuba, Israel and Switzerland.
Together with Bartenbach LichtLabor he developed the new film lighting method, the “Cine Reflect Lighting System”, which he has used in all of his work since 2011.
In addition to numerous international awards for this work, a highlight of his career was the 2010 American Society of Cinematographers Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography for “The White Ribbon”. And, of course, there is the 2010 Oscar Nomination for “Best Cinematography”.
Myriam Gast
After a Masters’ degree in Cinema at La Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris, Myriam Gast started as a youth instructor and film programmer, teaching film analysis to high schools students’ subscribers of special program in the Île-de-France area and programming experimental films for festivals. She then became a cinema director but decided to quit and to become a festival programmer.
During a few years, she worked for several events such as Paris Film Festival, the Costumes and Cinema Film Festival in Paris, Moulins-sur-Allier or Tunis and for Fife Ile-de-France as a programmer and coordinator. She also worked occasionally between 2006 and 2008 for a distribution company KMBO, in charge of Marketing and Sponsoring.
Since 2009 she’s the Head of the programming of Fife Ile-de-France. This main environmental film event welcomes now 12, 000 spectators, who are given the chance to discover a wide and rich selection of thought-provoking films which stress the importance of environmental issues: 101 films, 20 web documentaries, 41 countries, numerous Q&As and debates, professional meetings…
Oliver Goetzl
From 1990 to 2000, he studied biology at the University of Hamburg. Goetzls main focus was Zoology at the Zoological Institute and Museum of the University of Hamburg, further Geology/Palaeontology at the Geology and Palaeontology Institute and Museum of the University of Hamburg and Hydrobiology/Fisheries Science at the Institute of Hydrobiology and Fisheries Science, University of Hamburg. In 2000 he made his degree as a biologist.
He later became known as a nature filmmaker together with the cameraman, photographer and filmmaker Ivo Nörenberg, with whom he founded Gulo Film Productions in 2004. Oliver Goetzl filmed previously in Africa (Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa), Canada, USA, India, Sri Lanka, Italy, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Russia, Germany and in the high Arctic (Ellesmere Iceland, Spitsbergen).
Johannes Kostenzer
has a degree in biology. In 2001 he founded Innsbruck Nature Film Days, held annually since then. 2013, the event was renamed in Innsbruck Nature Film Festival. Since then, the international competition for movies with nature and the environment is growing and has developed into an international event in the capital of the Alps.
After completing his studies Johannes Kostenzer worked in France, Corsica and Marseille. After a few years as a self-employed he started to work as an expert of Natural History for the State of Tyrol. After a training in public relations, he built up the publicity for Nature Conservation of the State of Tyrol. This period also saw the beginning of the Innsbruck Nature Film Days. From 2005, he planned and coordinated the development of care and placement of Tyrolean sanctuaries. Since 2008 he is the Tyrolean Environmental Ombudsman with the aim to sensitize people for the careful handling of nature and the environment.
Katja Trippel
born in Sindelfingen, Katja studied geography in Münster, Aix-en-Provence and Berlin and then worked as an urban planner in a Potsdamer plate area. Jump to Hamburg at the Henri Nannen School of Journalism. After a stopover in the science section of the “Stern” magazine, she since 2005 is text and TV-editor at the magazine GEO. She takes care of the topics and stories of the “Biosphäre” and is responsible for “360 ° GEO-report” on arte (TV-channel), which again produced 26 documentaries in the 16th year of its existence. Since 2014 she is responsible for the selection of documentaries of the new pay-TV channel GEO-TELEVISION .
In 2008 she won a trio with two GEO colleagues the Henri Nannen Prize for the GEO Report on overfishing of the oceans. Furthermore she wrote two books: One on cormorants and “Stadtlust – Joghurt ist uns Landliebe genug”.