Mediterrane Film Festival Juries

THE FESTIVAL - JURIES

Main Competition Jury

The Mediterrane Film Festival has appointed the first members of the jury for its 2024 edition. The Main Competition Jury spans international award-winning directors, producers, production designers, writers and casting directors who will judge the festival’s In Competition strand of twelve films from across the Mediterranean. The Main Competition Jury will comprise of nine members in total, with further participants to be announced.

Jon S. Baird

United Kingdom

Film Director

Scottish film director Jon S. Baird has previously collaborated with Martin Scorsese, Danny Boyle, Mick Jagger and numerous Academy Award-winning actors. Baird directed ‘Tetris’ starring Taron Egerton for Apple in 2020, and in 2018 he directed ‘Stan & Ollie’; a feature centred on comedy legends Laurel and Hardy, starring Steve Coogan and John C Reilly, for which he won a BAFTA Scotland award for ‘Best Director’.

Margery Simkin

United States

Casting Director

LA-based Casting Director Margery Simkin, is known to have cast such films as ‘Avatar’, ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’, ‘Beverly Hills Cop’, ‘Top Gun’, ‘Brazil’, ‘Field Of Dreams’, ‘Twelve Monkeys’, ‘Erin Brockovich’, ‘Marley & Me’ and ‘Pacific Rim’. During the course of her career, she has given early opportunities to actors including Tom Cruise, Laura Dern, Kevin Bacon, Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Queen Latifah, Natalie Portman and Sam Worthington.

Mario Philip Azzopardi

Malta

Film Director, Producer and Writer

Maltese director, producer and writer Mario Philip Azzopardi is known for the films ‘Savage Messiah’ and the HBO Canada series ‘ZOS: Zone of Separation’. While studying at the University of Malta, Azzopardi directed ‘Il-Gaġġa’, which is considered to be the first full-length feature film made entirely in Maltese.

Nathan Crowley

United Kingdom

Production Designer

Academy Award and BAFTA-nominated English Production Designer Nathan Crowley is best known for his collaborations with Christopher Nolan across titles including ‘The Prestige’, ‘The Dark Knight’, ‘Interstellar’, ‘Batman Begins’ and ‘Dunkirk’. Crowley has also previously been the Designer on four Costume Institutes exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which accompany the annual costume ball. Nathan’s talent was recently showcased in Paul King’s ‘Wonka’ and he recently also completed design on the highly-anticipated ‘Wicked’.

Pedro Luque

Uruguay

Cinematographer

Pedro Luque is the Uruguayan Cinematographer behind 2023’s Oscar and BAFTA-nominated Spanish-language film ‘Society of the Snow’. Known for crafting nerve-wracking scenes in thriller films including the ‘Don’t Breathe’ franchise, Luque is well-regarded as one of the genre’s most talented fresh faces.

Richie Mehta

Canada

Film Director and Writer

Canadian film director and writer Richie Mehta’s first feature film ‘Amal’ won over 30 international awards. In October 2015, Mehta teamed up with Ridley Scott and Google as the director of the crowd-sourced documentary ‘India in a Day’, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. After that, Richie wrote and directed the Netflix series ‘Delhi Crime’, a true-crime drama which won Best Drama Series at the International Emmy Awards. Most recently, Mehta created, wrote, and directed the 8-part Amazon Prime dramatic series ‘Poacher’, a thriller that illustrates the largest wildlife crime investigation in Indian history. The series released in February 2024 to great acclaim.

Tim Miller

United States

Film Director and Producer

Tim Miller is an American film director, best known for his 2016 blockbuster directorial debut, “Deadpool,” and 2019’s “Terminator: Dark Fate.” He began his career as an illustrator, then became a VFX artist and animator, and founded Blur in 1995. The studio quickly grew into a world-renowned CG animation company, creating short stories and cinematic content for the gaming, TV, and film industries. In 2019, Miller and director David Fincher co-created the Blur-produced Netflix animated anthology series “Love, Death & Robots,” which has garnered 13 Emmy Awards and 8 Annie Awards, solidifying Tim’s reputation for innovative storytelling and cutting-edge visuals. Currently, he’s developing multiple TV and film projects using Blur’s unique group of talented artists and filmmakers.