Jury for the IDFA Competition for Short Documentary

Jay Rosenblatt is an internationally recognized artist who has completed over 35 films and has twice been nominated for an Academy Award®. His films explore our emotional and psychological cores, are personal in their content yet universal in their appeal. They have received over 100 awards and have screened throughout the world at festivals including Sundance and IDFA. A selection of his films had theatrical runs at the Film Forum in New York and theaters nationwide. A feature-length program of his work was screened for a week at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Several of his films have been shown on HBO, PBS, and the Sundance Channel.

Articles about Rosenblatt’s work have appeared in the Sunday NY Times, the LA Times, the NY Times, and Filmmaker. He is a recipient of Guggenheim, USA Artists and Rockefeller Fellowships. He has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 2002 and served on the Executive Committee of the Documentary Branch for 12 years. 

Sarah Vanagt makes documentaries, video installations, and photos, combining her interest in history with her interest in cinema and its origins. Her films include After Years of Walking (2003), Little Figures (2003), The Corridor (2010), Dust Breeding (2013), Every Tear (2018) and Divinations (2019); among her video installations are Les Mouchoirs de Kabila (2005), Power Cut (2007), Ash Tree (2007), and The Models (2024).  

Her work has been screened at film festivals (FidMarseille, Viennale, Doclisboa, IDFA, Visions du Réel), and museums (Frankfurter Kunstverein, Fact Liverpool, NGBK Berlin, Shedhalle Zürich). The installation The Wave was first shown at the Biennale of Sydney in 2012. The films In Waking Hours and Still Holding Still premiered in 2015 at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The installation Showfish was presented in 2016 in M HKA, Antwerp. Vanagt’s film The Porters premiered in the Short Film Competition at IDFA in 2022, where it received a Special Mention. Her artwork for a metro station in Brussels opens this October. 

Mandisa Zitha is Festival Director of the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival. She completed her BA in Film and Media Studies at UCT in 2005, majoring in Documentary, and in 2007, she took over as the head of Encounters until 2012, returning to the position of Festival Director in 2019. Zitha is an ambassador for the South African film industry. She was named one of the Mail and Guardian’s Top 100 Women for the Arts and Culture Sector in 2011 and received the Mbokodo Award for Women in Media in 2020.

Mandisa represents Encounters at major festivals, markets, and funding selection committees both locally and internationally. Her participation includes IDFA (Netherlands), Thessaloniki (Greece), GZDOC (China), Cinema du Réel (France), Dok.fest (Germany), Cannes Doc (France), DOCSP (Brazil) and many more. Mandisa has recently been awarded the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres medal by the French Government.