Who will choose the festival winners this year?

Meet the jury members who will choose this year’s SevilFest winners! 

Öykü Sofuoğlu is a Paris-based film critic and journalist. She is part of the editorial teams of Outskirts Film Magazine and Emitaï. Her writings in Turkish, English, and French have been published by MUBI Notebook, Documentary Magazine, Letterboxd, Filmexplorer, and Swissinfo, among other outlets.

She has participated in leading international film criticism programmes, including the European Workshop for Film Criticism, Berlinale Talents, and Locarno Critics Academy. She is a member of the European Film Academy and the French Union of Film Critics, and serves as a Golden Globe voter.

Samira Kidman is a film editor working between Baku and Mumbai. She has contributed to numerous documentaries, fiction, television, and commercial productions, and has also worked as a line producer and assistant director alongside her editing practice.
Samira studied Film Editing at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and participated in an exchange programme at FAMU in Prague.
In addition to her experience in both international and local film production, she provides editing consultations and mentorship for emerging film professionals and filmmakers.

Returning to SevilFest as a jury member, Şirin Bahar Demirel won the festival's Best International Film Award in 2025 with her animated documentary Between Delicate and Violent.

Based in Netherlands, Şirin Bahar Demirel is a filmmaker and visual artist whose practice spans moving image, collage, and installation. Her work explores the intersection of personal and collective memory, often engaging with themes of gender, politics, and patriarchal systems. In recent years, she has been particularly interested in textiles and needlework as mediums for expressing resistance, care, and embodied histories.