The Immersive competition section of the 26th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival embraces creations that make use of high-end technologies to present different views of extended reality, transcending film genres and immersing the viewer in an exciting interactive viewing experience. The Golden Alexander awarded to the best film of the section is accompanied by a monetary award of 2,000 euros. The members of the jury are: Sara Ferro, producer and festival organizer; Yannis Kantea-Papadopoulos, film critic; and Victoria Leshchenko, festival programmer and organizer.
Sara Ferro
Sara Ferro (1994) is a producer from Skopje, Macedonia. She is the manager of PPFP film production in Skopje which produces and co-produces mainly creative documentary films, but also arthouse fiction films. She emerged into documentary films through her 15 years of involvement with the Association MakeDox & MakeDox International Creative Documentary Film Festival in Skopje, where she is currently the Head of Industry and project manager.
Yannis Kantea-Papadopoulos
He was born in Athens in 1994. He started writing about cinema for “Toutestin” and “Reel.gr” while maintaining at the same time a radio broadcast on Poplie Radio. He made his first attempts behind the camera by directing and participating in short films. Prior to graduating from Panteion University’s department of Political Science and History, he was a member of the production team at Zagoriwood Film Festival, while in recent years he has been writing articles about cinema and music for Athinorama and the athletic zine, Humba. At the same time, he maintains the film criticism workshop “Words of Celluloid” at the seminar venue Fårö. Recently he was a programmer at Untold Greek Film Festival. He has collaborated with the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and Drama International Short Film Festival. He is a member of the Hellenic Film Academy, as well as the Greek Association of Film Critics.
Victoria Leshchenko
Victoria Leshchenko is a Berlin and Kyiv-based cultural events producer and curator, with a Master's degree in Cultural Studies from the National University “Kyiv Mohyla Academy.” She worked at Molodist KIFF in various roles from 2007 to 2011 and has collaborated with Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival since 2010, starting as program coordinator and now serving as program director since February 2019. She is a programmer for the International Documentary program at DOK Leipzig from May 2022.
