Belgian Short Films Jury

This die-hard fan has been a BIFFF-regular since the 2nd edition. He’s crazy enough to spend his holidays each year at the festival. He’s a member of our short film jury and responsible for the smooth progress of the Audience Award. His name is Alain Galand, but everybody knows him as Tom Pouce.

After graduating from the Saint-Lucas School of Arts in 2012, Sarah Gury joins the team of UniversCité Belgium as editorial and marketing manager. UniversCiné, an initiative of Belgian independent producers and distributors, is a platform for renting and buying video on demand films (www.universcine.be) and also offers subscriptions (www.uncut.be).

Born in 1954, Christian Bontinckx studied psychology, pedagogy and cinematography at the ULB in Brussels. He also finished studies in art at the art academy of Sint Josse and Anderlecht, worked as a psy and helped on papers like “does cinema make you a mean person? “ that was presented at BIFFF in 2001. He participated at at the writing of pedagogic short movies made by Fredeirc Dumont in 1994 and Vincent Lannoo in 1996. He also curates expos.

Thierry Vandersanden (Brussels, 1968°) studied editing at the Institut des Arts de Diffusion. After some jobs and a short period at the RTBF, he takes over “Le Moniteur du Film” in 1994. This is a magazine specializing in the distribution and the exploitation of films in Belgium. For five years, he’s the only editor, courier, typist, encoder and stamp gluer. In 1999, he joins the team of the Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles. Nowadays he’s head of the promotion and distribution services, responsible for supporting distributors, theater owners, workshops and festivals.

In 1978, after graduating from the INSAS film school, Louis-Philippe Capelle takes part in numerous projects as director of photography: from art house documentaries to television films, from fiction to advertising and TV documentaries. At the start of his career, he helps to create the production company Triangle 7, where he stays for 15 years. He then sets up the postproduction company Hoverlord, which will last for 5 years. After that, he begins to work for Eye-Lite, Belgium’s biggest audiovisual material company. He first participates to the development of digital cinema and then manages the commercial and artistic relations of the organization. This doesn’t prevent him from continuing his passion as he partakes in different projects as director of photography. But Louis-Philippe doesn’t stop there. Besides from teaching at various schools, he’s the chairman of IMAGO, a European federation for directors of photography that regroups 53 countries with almost 5.000 members worldwide. Since January, he’s vice-chairman of the SBC (Belgian Society of Cinematographers).

Ellen J. Babeliowsky (15/05/1986) is a Belgian filmdirector and cinematographer. From a very young age she was a natural storyteller and encouraged by her grandfather, she fell in love with cinema. In 2015 she graduated cum laude at the Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound – Brussels (RITCS). Her most known shortfilm ‘Motel Motel’ was nominated at several Film Festivals abroad and won some very nice awards like ‘Best Cinematography’ at the Wildsound Film Festival Toronto. Ellen has a special interest for genre-cinema and the surreal. As it seems, all her films have certain surreal elements and turn out to be a complete mindfuck. She finds her inspiration with Lynch and Buñuel. For now, Ellen is mostly writing scripts. She has a feature film and a documentary going in pre-production very soon and she’s selling her script for a tv-series to a big production company.

Zahra Benasri (Liège°) studied European Politics in the Netherlands. After graduating, she decided to focus on what she was always passionate about: film. She gained experience at film festivals, in marketing, in international sales and in production. She directed two self-produced short films, LA PETITE HONTE and PENDANT 12 ANS, JE SUIS NEE LE 6 MAI, a documentary that was screened at several international festivals. While distributing her films herself, she discovered that filmmakers of self-produced works did not receive support in distributing their productions. In 2023, she founded Hors du bocal, an international sales and distribution company for short films with a focus on self-produced films seeking to raise the profile of films with low visibility. At the same time, she is working on a new film as a director.

Salomé Richard became an actress somewhat by accident. As a child, she rather saw herself as a designer or an architect. As a teenager, the Brussels native went to work at an advertising agency, more to earn some extra money than that she harbored film ambitions. In the end, Salomé never made a commercial. At the age of 19, she was spotted during a casting for a short film. Her first role was that of a…. corpse! Despite this “deadly” start, she did not give up and went on to play a series of small and then larger roles. She was the revelation of PANDORA as Ludivine. The militant character, whose values and beliefs she shared, seemed to have been written for her.