Meet our juries
Encounters 2026 Competition Juries
We are delighted to announce the nine jurors who will decide the winners of this year's international competition.
Brief Encounters Jury
Alemberg Ang is a Filipino producer and the founder of Daluyong Studios. His credits include Plan 75, which received a Camera d'Or special mention at Cannes, and Isabel Sandoval's Moonglow, which has its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival next month. Four of his short film productions screen at this year's Encounters in the Philippine Shorts: In Focus programme.
Per Fikse is the Director of the Minimalen Short Film Festival in Trondheim, Norway, which he has programmed since 1994. He has published widely on film and serves on festival juries internationally.
Cynthia Okoye is an agent at Curtis Brown, where she represents writers and directors for film and television. Her clients include directors such as Jamie Adams, Shola Amoo and Simon Ellis.
Animated Encounters Jury
Rayna Denison is Professor of Film and Digital Arts and Global Engagement Director for the School of Arts at the University of Bristol. She is an expert in animation studies and contemporary Japanese cinema, and the author of Anime: A Critical Introduction and Studio Ghibli: An Industrial History.
Joanna Hepworth is Creative Director at A Productions, the Bristol-based animation studio behind shows for Disney, Netflix, CBeebies and Sky. She has 18 years of experience in animation production and her directing credits include Sesame Street animated specials and Pip and Posy Let's Learn for Magic Light Pictures.
Grant Orchard is a BAFTA-winning animator and director. He created the CBeebies series Hey Duggee and previously directed the Oscar-nominated short A Morning Stroll. Grant designed the Encounters 2026 festival image.
Documentary Encounters Jury
Mandy Chang is the first CEO of the Documentary Film Council, appointed in March 2026. Prior to the DFC she had an extensive career as a documentary director and producer before serving in senior roles including commissioning editor of the BBC's Storyville strand and Fremantle's Global Head of Documentaries. She joins us at Encounters for both the jury and a conversation with Dr Steve Presence about the future of UK documentary.
Nicholas Jones is a documentary filmmaker and the founder of Picture Imperfect. As producer, his credits include Sweet Little Despair, which won the South West Jury Award at Encounters. He founded the Bristol Documentary Film Festival, whose inaugural edition ran earlier this summer.
Nariman Massoumi is a documentary filmmaker and researcher with a specialist focus on British-Iranian biographical histories of oil, colonialism and migration. His most recent work is the short film Pouring Water on Troubled Oil (2023), which reimagines the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas's journey through Iran in 1951 on an assignment to write an oil company publicity film.