Nesnadny + Schwartz
Documentary Film Competition

The CIFF is excited to present our seventh Nesnadny + Schwartz Documentary Film Competition. In 2005, after CIFF attendees voted documentaries as the winners of its audience choice award three years in a row, we decided to highlight these films since they hold such enormous interest for our audience.

Nesnadny + Schwartz is a preeminent international visual communications consultancy committed to providing clients what they least expect. Nesnadny + Schwartz is very proud to continue their support of the Cleveland International Film Festival and to sponsor a program that has such social, artistic, and popular appeal.

Documentaries in competition that are screening in the Festival will be viewed by our panel of jurors throughout the week, and the winner of a $5,000 cash prize will be announced at the Closing Night Reception.

Andrew Bird: Fever Year (USA)
Beauty is Embarrassing (USA)
Despicable Dick & Righteous Richard (USA, UNITED KINGDOM)
The Furious Force of Rhymes (USA, FRANCE)
Girl Model (USA)
The Girls in the Band (USA)
Paul Williams Still Alive (USA)
Under African Skies (USA, SOUTH AFRICA)
Unraveled (USA, CANADA)
Women With Cows (SWEDEN)

Our esteemed jurors this year are:

Dan O'Shannon Dan O'Shannon is a writer / executive producer for the TV series Modern Family. Before that, he wrote and produced shows such as Frasier, Cheers, and Newhart, among others. He's won three Emmy awards, two Golden Globes, four Writers Guild Awards, a Peabody Award, an Annie award for best animated short of 2005 (The Fan and the Flower) and an Academy Award nomination for best animated short in 1997 (Redux Riding Hood). He currently lives in Los Angeles near the La Brea Tar Pits, where he spends his free time crafting self-serving bios written in the third person.

Andrew Rodgers Since 2005, Andrew Rodgers has served as the Executive Director of the RiverRun International Film Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Previously he worked as the Publicity Director of the Chicago International Film Festival and the Assistant Manager of Publicity for the Sundance Film Festival. He started his career as a Staff Writer for the Chicago Tribune after graduating from Eastern Illinois University with a degree in Journalism. He also served as a Los Angeles-based writer covering the film industry for the Tribune's entertainment website Zap2it.com. He lives in Winston-Salem, NC, with his wife Iana and dog Harper.

Karina Rotenstein Karina Rotenstein is an independent producer, and film programming and events consultant. Most recently for four years, Ms. Rotenstein served as Programming Manager at Hot Docs in Toronto, North America's largest documentary Festival and Market. Prior to Hot Docs, for five years Ms. Rotenstein programmed dramatic and documentary features, as well as shorts programmes for the Miami International Film Festival, and a programming consultant for the Dominican Republic Global Film Festival, and Jakmèl Film Festival in Haiti. She has served on numerous film festival juries and panels including the Toronto International Film Festival and Canada's Top Ten, the Calgary International Film Festival, Bahamas International Film Festival, and Silverdocs. She is based in Toronto, and is currently an Associate Producer of Yoav Shamir's "10% -What Makes A Hero?" due 2012.

Thanks to our generous sponsor:

Central and Eastern European Film Competiton

Over two decades ago, the Cleveland International Film Festival launched a special focus on films from Central and Eastern Europe, the native lands of many Clevelanders. When we began our series, the world was a very different place: the Berlin Wall was still standing, the U.S.S.R. was still one country, and the Cold War was chilling out. Throughout these past two decades, the films from Central and Eastern Europe have changed dramatically due to filmmakers exerting their rights to make films without government involvement and censorship. We now see films from a plethora of genres, including colorful comedies, slice-of-life sketches, and unusual love stories. The results provide us with a rare and unique look inside the lives of the ordinary as well as the extraordinary.

One thing that has remained the same for the past 22 years is our commitment to bringing some of the most soughtafter films from this area of the world to Cleveland. This year the CIFF is proud to present its ninth Central and Eastern European Film Competition. This competition not only gives recognition to the films coming to us from Central and Eastern Europe, but it also awards one filmmaker a $10,000 cash prize that will be announced at the Closing Night Reception.

Amnesty (ALBANIA)
Back to Your Arms (LITHUANIA, GERMANY, POLAND)
Best Intentions (ROMANIA)
The House (SLOVAKIA, CZECH REPUBLIC)
Leaving (CZECH REPUBLIC)
The Maiden Danced to Death (HUNGARY, CANADA, SLOVENIA)
Rock 'n' Ball (UKRAINE)
Siberia. Monamour (RUSSIA)
Tilt (BULGARIA, GERMANY)
Tomorrow Will Be Better (POLAND, JAPAN)
A Trip (SLOVENIA)

We are honored to have these remarkable jurors join us this year:

Sandra Hebron Sandra Hebron was the Artistic Director of the BFI London Film Festival from 2003-2011, having joined the British Film Institute in 1997 from Manchester's Cornerhouse, where she was Cinemas Director. With over 20 years’ experience of independent film exhibition, she has also worked as a funding officer in film and photography, and has been a board member of numerous arts and cultural organizations. In 2010 she was made a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in recognition of her services to cinema. Currently training as a psychotherapist, she continues to curate, write, and broadcast about cinema.

Roland Rust Roland Rust studied art history and German studies as well as theology. In 1996 he was appointed Artistic Director of the FilmFestival Cottbus – Festival of East European Cinema, becoming its director in 2001, a position he still holds. Since 2003 he has been one of the two coordinators of CentEast – The Alliance of Central and Eastern European Film Festivals. He is a member of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) and the author of various retrospectives, mainly on Central and Eastern European film. He contributed to the Encyclopedia of International Film (Frankfurt/Main, 2002 ff) and has published widely, with numerous articles for newspapers (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung a.o.) and film magazines (film-dienst a.o.).

Joseph Valencic Joseph Valencic is a Cleveland-based writer, historian and filmmaker. As one of the few Americans working in the Slovenian film industry, he has written for directors such as Damjan Kozole, Hanna AW Slak and Metod Pevec. He scripted and narrated Polka! The Movie, a 2011 CIFF selection that was directed by Dušan Moravec for TV Slovenija. He introduced “At the Crossroads,” the retrospective of Slovenian cinema at the Lincoln Center Film Society, and the Kozole series at the Cleveland Cinematheque. As a film historian, he co-authored a biography of Nora Gregor, the Austrian actress who starred in Jean Renoir’s classic, The Rules of the Game. Locally, he has produced and directed TV spots and promotions for clients such as the Cleveland Browns and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum. He is a founding trustee of the National Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame and Museum and served on the Cleveland Bicentennial Commission.

Presented with the generous support of George Gund III and Lara Lee

Greg Gund Memorial Standing Up Film Competition

Our Standing Up Film Competition is a tribute to Greg Gund. Greg's friends and family described him as "intensely creative and talented, and wholly without pretension." For five years Greg lived in Playa Negro near Tamarindo, Costa Rica where he immersed himself by becoming part of the local community. As much as he deeply loved his home there, Greg was also an extensive world traveler with an adventurous spirit and an insatiable curiosity about different cultures and people. He lived by this Mahatma Gandhi quote inscribed in his passport: "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." Greg died at the age of 32 in a small plane crash off the Pacific Coast on July 16, 2005.

Our Standing Up program includes "films with a conscience." These films especially celebrate social justice and activism. Through the films, Standing Up honors Greg Gund—as well as others with a different view of the world in which we live—and the continual fight to make it a better world. Based on audience vote, the winner of this competition's $5,000 cash prize will be announced at the Closing Night Reception.

A Lot Like You (USA, TANZANIA)
Bidder 70 (Work in Progress) (USA)
Bill W. (USA)
Brooklyn Castle (USA)
Cape Spin: An American Power Struggle (USA)
Caris' Peace (USA)
Colour Me (CANADA)
Detropia (USA)
Dirty Energy (USA)
Family Portrait in Black and White (UKRAINE, CANADA)
Finding North (USA)
A Force of Nature (USA)
Give Up Tomorrow (USA, UNITED KINGDOM)
Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? (USA)
I Am Eleven (AUSTRALIA)
I Want My Name Back (USA)
The Invisible War (USA)
The Island President (USA, MALDIVES)
Love Free or Die (USA)
The Mexican Suitcase (MEXICO, SPAIN)
Nicky's Family (CZECH REPUBLIC, SLOVAKIA)
Of Two Minds (USA)
Payback (CANADA, USA, ALBANIA)
People of a Feather (CANADA)
A People Uncounted (CANADA)
The Rescuers (USA)
The Second Execution of Romell Broom (GERMANY, USA)
Unfinished Spaces (USA, CUBA)
Up Heartbreak Hill (USA)
Vito (USA)
Where Dreams Don't Fade (USA, KENYA)
Who Cares About Kelsey? (USA)
You've Been Trumped (UNITED KINGDOM)

Thanks to our generous sponsor:

The Roxanne T. Mueller Audience Choice Award for Best Film

Roxanne T. Mueller served as the film critic at The Plain Dealer from 1983 until 1988 when she lost a six-month battle with cancer at the age of 36. Mueller was a strong supporter of the Festival and, through her writing, helped to raise the general level of film appreciation in Cleveland. She was an exceptionally engaging writer who managed to weave personal insights into her film reviews, whether she was covering popular Hollywood fare or sophisticated foreign cinema. In its 12th year, the CIFF established the Roxanne T. Mueller Audience Choice Award for Best Film to help bring this important Festival friend back into focus a bit each year. Festival patrons rate each film they see and the most popular film is announced at our Closing Night Reception.

Thanks to our generous sponsor:

Independent Shorts Jury Awards Program

The shorts are screened and the filmmakers are recognized during this special program. Each award is accompanied with a $1,000 cash prize.

Best Animated Short Film Award *
sponsored by Reminger Co., L.P.A.

Best Documentary Short Film Award
sponsored by Jules and Fran Belkin

Best International Short Film Award
sponsored by MP Star Financial, Inc.

Angelica Pozo a New York City native, born of Cuban and Puerto Rican parents – has lived in Cleveland since 1984. She moved here from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she received her Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan and became involved with the Ann Arbor Film Festival as a screener and later as a trustee. Now as a full-time, self-employed ceramic artist, Angelica divides her time between public art, tile and sculptural studio work, writing how-to books, and teaching workshops on tile making and architectural ceramics. She often works in the schools as an artist/teacher and serves as an artist-in-residence on large tile/mosaic projects in school and community settings. Angelica’s work has been exhibited widely and can be seen online at www.angelicapozo.com.

M.L. Schultze M.L. Schultze has been news director at WKSU public radio since July 2007. The station covers 22 counties in Northeast Ohio, gives special emphasis to its political, environmental, education and arts coverage, and has been named the best news operation in Ohio by both the Associated Press and Society of Professional Journalists. Before joining WKSU, Schultze spent 25 years at The Repository in Stark County, the last nine as managing editor. She headed up major investigative and enterprise projects and the Associated Press repeatedly named it the best newspaper in its circulation category in the state. Schultze graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in magazine journalism and political science. Her husband, Richard Senften, teaches journalism at Kent State University. They have two children and two grandchildren.

Eric Wobser Eric Wobser is the Executive Director of Ohio City Incorporated, a community development corporation responsible for the preservation, promotion and development of the historic Ohio City neighborhood. He is also a board member of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, Downtown Cleveland Alliance and the Ohio CDC Association. Prior to his role at Ohio City Incorporated, Eric served as the Special Projects Manager to Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson. Eric lives in Ohio City with his wife Jen, son Perry and Basset Hound Clementine.