Big Screen Competition

Jan-Willem van Ewijk graduated from the Delft University of Technology and worked as an airplane designer and technology investor before quitting his job and pursuing his passion for filmmaking. He made his first feature film Nu. (2006) with friends, family and a video camera. The film won the Grand Prix at the European Independent Film Festival and Best Debut Feature at the Netherlands Film Festival. van Ewijk was invited to the Sundance Lab with his second feature Atlantic., about a Moroccan windsurfer, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. His third feature Pacifica., about American gun culture, was filmed throughout the American West. Van Ewijk’s fourth feature, the snowy mountain thriller Alpha., premiered in the Giornate degli Autori section of Venice Film Festival where it won the Europa Cinemas Label.

Sara Ishaq is a Yemeni-Scottish film director, screenwriter and trainer based in Amsterdam. Her debut film, Karama Has No Walls, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Documentary and a BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award in 2014, and her award-winning feature documentary The Mulberry House premiered at IDFA in 2013. Between 2017 and 2023, Ishaq ran film training programmes in Yemen through her foundation, Comra Academy, and in 2020 co-founded Marsa Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to cultivating spaces for filmmaking and artistic expression in the Arab region. Sara manages the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR) in Amsterdam and is set to release her debut fiction feature, The Station, in 2026, which won the La Biennale di Venezia Prize for Best Film in Post-Production in 2025.

Loes Luca is a Dutch actress, Rotterdam native, singer and comedian who has starred in successful films and television series, including Spetters, Het meisje met het rode haar, De Noorderlingen and Ja zuster, nee zuster.

More information will follow soon.

After programming film and events in various music venues in the 80s and 90s, Chris Oosterom joined the Filmmuseum (now Eye) in 1997, where he worked in programming and later headed the distribution department. In 2003, he started his own distribution company, first in Amsterdam, later in London, where his company Yume Pictures is still active. In November 2012, Oosterom became the Artistic Director of the Imagine Fantastic Film Festival in Amsterdam, and the General Director in 2020. Since 2017 he has been the co-organiser of the European Genre Forum, a pan-European talent programme for genre filmmakers. Oosterom is also the chairman of the Méliès International Festival Federation, a worldwide organisation that promotes European fantastic cinema across the world.

Mila Schlingemann is a senior programmer at Eye, the national museum for film and the art of moving image in the Netherlands. Eye is renowned for storing, restoring, and presenting a wide array of films, ranging from classics and blockbusters to early avant-garde films and the latest VR experiments. Schlingemann is responsible for all new releases and related special programming as well as analogue film programming on 70mm. Her role includes organising special evenings and talks with filmmakers and artists, as well as curating side programming for debuting filmmakers and iconic classic cinema.