Loraine Blumenthal is a documentary filmmaker from Berlin with extensive experience in film production. Her first feature-length documentary, The Mayor's Race, screened at over 30 international festivals and received multiple awards. As a freelance producer and archive specialist, she has worked on projects for public broadcasters such as Arte, ZDF, 3Sat, and WDR. As a director, she creates documentaries that are both challenging and engaging. Her second feature-length film, Im Osten was Neues (ZDF – Kleines Fernsehspiel), premiered in May 2025 at Dokfest Munich, where it was nominated for the German Competition and the VFF Production Award, and at the MV Filmkunstfestival, where it won the WIR Diversity Award and the Gedreht in MV Promotion Award. The documentary was also selected for Germany’s first Impact Lab. Loraine is an alumna of the IDFAcademy and currently works as a freelancer on independent film productions.
 

Otto Lazić-Reuschel is a film director and producer born in Trieste, Italy. Since 2011, he has been based in Berlin. His When I Dance, the Earth Trembles, a one-take short film set in Berlin, was presented at the 24th Black Night Film Festival. After graduating from the ZeLIG School for Documentary in Bolzano, his film Do You Get Me? was selected for the 54th Visions du Réel and won the main award at dokumentART in 2023. He has worked in various roles on international film sets and currently collaborates with the Berlin International Film Festival. He is the co-founder of Zero Stress Production, a Trieste-based company specialising in social and political documentaries.
 

Greg Stepniak, is the Artistic Director of the Mastercard OFF CAMERA International Festival of Independent Cinema. He holds a PhD in Queer and Performance Studies and a degree in Drama and American Studies. He studied at the University of Pittsburgh, the School of Theatre, Film and Television at UCLA, and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He published a book titled The Art of Living Otherwise: Performing Queer Space and Time in American Performance Art and Independent Cinema, as well as numerous articles and essays in magazines, anthologies, and books. He also works as a dramaturg, playwright, performer, and actor; most recently, he starred in the film Three Loves, directed by Łukasz Grzegorzek. His interests focus on Gender and Queer Studies, as well as American film, television, and theatre.

Regina Kräh studied film and cultural studies in Berlin and Amsterdam, earning a Master of Arts in Film and TV Studies. She worked as a freelance editor for television and as a director and production assistant on feature films and documentaries, before creating her own films, including Lost (2005), Heimat Luckenwalde (2009), and Eine kleine Landpartie (2025). She co-authored the symposium Legendenbildung und Dokumentarfilm (Legend Formation and Documentary Film) at Filmhaus Köln and co-founded the online platform Cinetramp. After further training as a screenwriter and dramaturge, she has worked as a freelance curator and programmer for the achtung berlin film festival since 2014, becoming co-festival director in 2021. She co-initiated the 16mm film series Stadt Land Film and has curated numerous film history retrospectives

Lucas Brunier-Mestas has been part of the Lab selection committee at the Clermont ISFF since 2018, where he also serves on the International selection committee for South and South-eastern Asia, China, South Korea, and Taiwan. He is part of the programming team for the Bloody Night, the Thrills, the Decibels, and WTF programs in Clermont. He hosted the Lab Q&As from 2018 to 2024. He also preselected films for the Fipadoc Festival in Biarritz and contributed to organising the Etrange Festival Clermont-Ferrand until 2023. While working on screening materials for the Clermont ISFF, he gives equal importance to the technical aspects of cinema and its aesthetic, political, and social dimensions. He views cinema both as a technical tool and as a unique language to evoke meaning, sensation, and emotion. Since 2025, he has also been one of the organisers of the Anatomie du Labo exhibition, in which professional artists and students provide their own graphic interpretation of films in the Lab competition.