All awards and jury's at DOCVILLE 2025.
Jury award for best International Documentary
Purchase award by VRT/Canvas valued at +/- 8.000 euro.
This award Academy Award™ Qualifying.
Mark Levinson
United States
Mark Levinson is the director of the award-winning documentary Particle Fever, which won the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication. Before embarking on a film career, Mark earned a PhD in physics. In the film world, he first became a specialist in sound editing, working on over 40 feature films, including The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley. He is the director of the fiction feature, Prisoner of Time, the hybrid documentary The Bit Player, and most recently The Universe in a Grain of Sand, a meditation on the synergy between art and science. He is currently adapting Richard Powers’s award-winning novel, The Gold Bug Variations, into a feature film.
Helmut Boeijen
The Netherlands
Helmut Boeijen watches more or less ten documentaries a week and reviews the latest documentaries on the website dedocupdate.com and in the weekly documentary newsletters De DocUpdate and NPO Doc Weekly. Helmut began his journalistic career as a writing (pop)journalist and radio host. At the end of the 90s he started to work for Dutch television. In the following years, he worked on numerous tv-programs for VPRO and Omroep Brabant and also directed a couple of television-documentaries. Since 2009, he has been a lecturer at Fontys Journalistiek in Tilburg, specializing in documentaries and video portraits.
Isabelle Tollenaere
Belgium
Isabelle Tollenaere makes short films, feature length films and installations, playfully moving between the codes and conventions of documentary and fiction, film and contemporary art. In her practice she mainly explores the connections between the current shifts in reality and the memory of the past. Her filmography includes the short films Viva Paradis (2011), The Remembered Film (2018), and The Fruit Tree (2022), as well as the feature length films Battles (2015) and Victoria (2020, in co-direction). She's currently working on a new feature film called Paris, Paris. Her films have been shown at the Venice International Film Festival, Berlinale Forum (Caligari Film Prize 2020), IFFR (Fipresci award 2015), Centre Pompidou, Viennale, Visions Du Réel, FID Marseille, IDFA, CPH:DOX, and many others. Isabelle is part of Ursula, an Antwerp based collective of female artists working with the moving image.
Jury award for best Belgian Documentary
Cash award for the winning director of 2.000 euro, awarded by SABAM.
Ignas van Schaick
The Netherlands
Ignas van Schaick is a producer and director and the co-founder of MN Media, a company that produces, distributes and promotes documentaries that focus on social issues such as climate change and biodiversity. Van Schaick started his career as a B2B publisher and has accumulated more than 35 years of experience in the media business. Over the past decade, he has focused entirely on producing nature films. His aim is to make the beauty and diversity of Dutch nature accessible to a wide audience and to contribute to greater awareness about our planet. His debut film, The New Wilderness, was awarded a Golden Calf and his latest film production, The Wild North Sea, was awarded a Golden Film Award.
Håvard Bustnes
Norway
Håvard Bustnes is an award-winning director and producer. He holds a degree in Directing for Television from the College of Film and TV at Lillehammer and NTNU in Trondheim, Norway. His work has been selected for over 100 festivals and has had theatrical releases in multiple countries around the world. His documentary Golden Dawn Girls was selected for over 50 film festivals and won awards at the Human International Documentary Film Festival, One World Brussels, and Nordic/Docs. Another one of his works, Name of the Game, won the Gullruten Award, the Norwegian Emmy, in 2021. His latest film The Gardener, the Buddhist and the Spy, is featured at DOCVILLE 2025.
María Campaña Ramia
Ecuador
María Campaña Ramia holds a MFA in Documentary Filmmaking from the University of Strasbourg. She is a programmer at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). As a curator, she has worked for MajorDocs in Spain, Ambulante in Mexico, and Encuentros del Otro Cine (EDOC) in Ecuador, where she served as Artistic Director for ten years. She collaborates with Geneva’s FIFDH as a documentary consultant. María has organized festivals and showcases in Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, and the United States. She writes for international journals and film publications and evaluates projects for funds and institutions. She directed the short Derivatives (2015) and co-edited the book El Otro Cine - Eduardo Coutinho (2012). María lives in Rio de Janeiro.
Jury award for best TOPICS Documentary
Cash award for the winning directed, value of 1.500 euro
An De Winter
Belgium
An De Winter worked for Fonk vzw, the organization behind DOCVILLE and Dalton Distribution, for more than 20 years. At Dalton Distribution, a distributor for short films and documentaries, she was in charge of the coordination for 10 years. Her love for film is strong, but so is her love for Brussels. That's why she decided to make the switch to Vorst in 2023, where she works as the coordinator of community center Ten Weyngaert. As part of her job, she stimulates cultural participation and brings film, among other things, to the community.
Ketil Magnussen
Norway
Ketil Magnussen is the founder and Program Director for The Oslo Documentary Cinema, a program of documentary film screenings and debates in Oslo. He is also the founder and Festival Director for the Human International Documentary Film Festival, Oslo’s largest documentary film festival. The festival includes, in addition to a well selected film program, theatre, concerts, performance, art exhibitions and a large number of talks and debates about current issues. The festival works together with more than 80 partner organisations and institutions to plan and execute their debate program. Among these partners are Amnesty International, The Norwegian Helsinki Committee, The Freedom of Expression Foundation (Fritt Ord), The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), The University of Oslo, The Nobel Peace Center and many more.
Christoffer Guldbrandsen
Denmark
Christoffer Guldbrandsen is a director and producer, who has trained as a journalist in Denmark and the UK. Guldbrandsen penetrates closed and secretive milieus like no other, letting the story take the lead. His breakthrough film, The Road to Europe (2003) was a doc-thriller about the enlargement of the European Union and created an international stir. With a stiking visual style and anability to turn complicated subject matter into cinema, his work has won several prices, ranging from the Peabody Award in the US to The Danish Art Council's Grant. In addition to his film work, Guldbrandsen has served as CEO for The Why Foundation, commissioning editor and channel executive for The Danish Broadcasting Corporation.
Jury award for best ScienceVille documentary
Cash award for the winning director, valued at 1.000 euro
Sandy Claes
Belgium
Sandy Claes is assistant professor at LUCA School of Arts (Associated Faculty of the Arts) and KU Leuven (Faculty of Social Sciences, Lab for Mediaculture and Policy). Previously, she has worked as a researcher at the innovation department of public broadcaster VRT. Sandy received her PhD in Engineering Science from KU Leuven in 2017 with her work on public visualization. She also has a master in audiovisual arts. Her work has been awarded at several international film festivals, such as I Castelli Animati in Rome and Kortfilmfestival Leuven. It has also been exhibited at several international venues, such as LABoral in Madrid and museum M Leuven. With this mixed background of science, design and arts, Sandy approaches research projects from a multi-disciplinary viewpoint.
Daisy van de Zande
The Netherlands
Daisy van de Zande was the director of InScience – International Science Film Festival Nijmegen (NL). She has a background in Dutch language and literature and Media and Film Studies. After graduation in 2008, she worked as a professor in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University for almost 10 years. She taught courses on Dutch film culture and industry, neuroscience and cinema, media and representation amongst others. As program coordinator, and later as director of the InScience Film Festival, she has been working on a high quality and state-of-the-art program of science films, keynotes, immersive and interactive stories, art expos, and on the professional’s program called InVision.
Bram Crols
Belgium
Bram Crols studied at the RITCS in Brussels and at the European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark. He then worked for ten years as a screenwriter, director and producer for television productions and visual events. Bram has been a documentary filmmaker and (co)producer with the production collective Associate Directors since 2007. Productions he collaborates on, range from creative narrative films to essayistic author documentaries and are produced in collaboration with both Belgian and international creators. Among others, he worked together with Magnus Gertten for Nelly & Nadine, Mads Brügger for Cold case Hammarskjöld and Sjors Swiestra for Shelter. Several of his productions premiered at, among others, Sundance, Berlinale and IDFA. In addition to filmmaking, Bram teaches visual storytelling and film production.
