JURIES AND AWARDS

The Official Awards of Giornate degli Autori
Awarding the winner of the best film in competition with the GdA Director’s Award will be the jury headed by Norwegian writer and director Dag Johan Haugerud, winner of the Golden Bear at the 2025 Berlinale and whose breakout film, Barn, premiered at Giornate 2019. By his side, the Italian producer of Vermiglio, Francesca Andreoli; the Franco-Palestinian filmmaker Lina Soualem (a Giornate alumna with Bye Bye Tiberias); New York’s MoMA film curator Josh Siegel; and Tunisian cinematographer Sofian El Fani (La vie d’Adèle, Timbuktu).
The award carries a cash prize of €20,000, to be split equally between the filmmaker and the film’s international distributor, who agrees to use the sum received to promote the winning film internationally.

The People’s Choice Award for the films in the Official Selection.

The Europa Cinemas Label, awarded to films produced and co-produced in Europe. The Label was created by a network of high-caliber European exhibitors, with the support of the EU’s MEDIA Programme. It consists of a financial contribution towards distribution and promotion, as well as a guarantee for the winning film that it will be shown in the cinemas belonging to the network.

All the films participating in the Days are also in the running for the parallel awards, with a ceremony due to take place on the last day of the Festival.

First films are eligible for the “Luigi De Laurentiis Award” Lion of the Future, granting 100.000 USD.

GdA Director’s Award Jury
Dag Johan Haugerud trained to be a librarian and then graduated with a degree in film studies from Stockholm University. He also studied Dramaturgy at the University of Oslo and Creative Writing at Telemark University College. He has worked as a journalist and dramatist for various dance and theater companies. He has also published four novels, Noe med natur (1999), Den som er veldig sterk, må også være veldig snill (2002), Hva jeg betyr (2011) and Enkle atonale stykker for barn (2016). He made his debut as a film director with the short 16 Living Clichés in 1998. I Belong (2012), Haugerud’s feature film debut, was awarded the Norwegian Critics’ Prize and four Norwegian Amanda awards. In 2019 he directed Barn, screened at Giornate degli Autori. Between 2024 and 2025, he released the trilogy: Sex (Berlinale, Panorama section), Love (in competition at Venice International Film Festival) and Dreams (Golden Bear at Berlinale).

Francesca Andreoli is a producer and partner in the production house Cinedora, along with Leonardo Guerra Seragnoli, Maura Delpero, and Santiago Fondevila. After a lengthy stint at the Cineteca di Bologna, she headed the Bologna Film Commission and worked for the production company Tempesta, helping to make films by directors such as Alice Rohrwacher and Leonard Di Costanzo. She is an active member of ACE Producers. Her recent efforts include: Vermiglio by Maura Delpero, Silver Lion at Venice 2024; ‘Ndrangheta WWMafia (Disney+), 6 Donne by Vincenzo Marra (Rai), Per Lucio by Pietro Marcello (Berlinale 2021), Palazzo di giustizia by Chiara Bellosi (Berlinale 2020), Lazzaro felice (Cannes 2018), L’Intrusa (Cannes 2017), Pawn Street (Venice 2016), Fraulein – Una fiaba d’inverno (Busan 2016), Asino vola (Locarno 2015), and Le meraviglie (Grand Prix, Cannes 2014)

Josh Siegel is a curator in MoMA’s Department of Film. He has organized more than 150 film, media, and gallery exhibitions, many of which have appeared on Best of the Year lists in the New York Times, Artforum, Film Comment, Cahiers du cinéma, and the New Yorker. He serves on the selection committees of the annual festivals New Directors/New Films and Doc Fortnight, and he is the founding director of To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, which in 2025 received New York Film Critics Circle and National Society of Film Critics awards on its 20th anniversary. Siegel is the co-editor and author of Frederick Wiseman and Modern Contemporary: Art at MoMA since 1980, and the monographs Baby, It’s Cold Outside: A History of Finnish Cinema, and The Łodź Film School of Poland: 50 Years. He has acquired more than 1,000 films and media installations for MoMA’s collection, including major collections of Robert Frank, Frederick Wiseman, Jack Smith, Errol Morris, Ingmar Bergman, Kelly Reichardt, Tissa David, Jem Cohen, Lucy Raven, and Peter Hutton.

Lina Soualem is a French-Palestinian-Algerian filmmaker and actress, born and based in Paris. After studying History and Political Science at La Sorbonne University, Lina worked as a programmer for the International Human Rights Film Festival in Buenos Aires. Soualem’s debut feature documentary Their Algeria premiered in Visions du Réel 2020 and received several awards. Her second feature length documentary, Bye Bye Tiberias, premiered in 2023 in Giornate degli Autori and received several awards. Bye Bye Tiberias was chosen to represent Palestine at the Oscars 2024, was nominated as Best Documentary at the 2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards, at the European Film Awards 2024 and at the 2025 César in France. Soualem acted in four feature films directed by Hafsia Herzi, Hiam Abbass, Rayhana and Cédric Kahn. She also contributed to the writing of the TV series OUSSEKINE directed by Antoine Chevrollier (2020, Disney+).

Sofian El Fani is a Tunisian cinematographer. His best-known credits include: Blue Is The Warmest Colour (2013), Timbuktu (2014), and It Must Be Heaven (2019). He has received many awards for his work, among them the Best Cinematography Award for Timbuktu at the 2015 Césars.

Label Europa Cinemas Jury
Manuel Asín (Cine Estudio del Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain)
Simon Blaas (Cinema Middelburg, Middelburg, The Netherlands)
Ivan Frenguelli (PostModernissimo, Perugia, Italy)
Signe-Annie Lindstedt (Zita Folkets Bio, Stockholm, Sweden)