Elena Fanailova — poet, translator, journalist. Born in Voronezh, she graduated from the Voronezh Medical Institute and earned a degree in journalism from Voronezh State University. She worked for six years as a doctor at Voronezh Regional Hospital. In 1995 she became a correspondent for Radio Svoboda, and has lived and worked in Moscow since the late nineties. She has contributed verse and literary reviews to Znamya, the New Literary Review, Critical Mass, Mitin Journal, and other publications. She has also translated the verses of Serhiy Zhadan from Ukrainian. She received the Andrei Bely Prize in 1999 and the Moscow Count Prize in 2003.Her poetry is characterized by its harsh outlook and precise language. During the early 2000s it came to be representative of the new Russian literary preoccupation with the theme of citizenship and the problems of personal historical memory and historical self-image.

Alexey Malobrodsky — Theater manager and producer. Worked in the literary department of the theaters of Krasnodar and Barnaul;Executive Director of the festival and the Golden Mask Award and the Moscow Easter Festival;Deputy Chairman of the Union of Theatre Union of Russia;Director of the film company "Tema production";director of the Moscow theaters – Novy Drama, School of Dramatic Art, Gogol Center;And also at various times – a janitor, a watchman, a driver of cleaning machines of the Moscow metro, an individual entrepreneur, the head of several small enterprises, served in the army, was in prison.Together with director Kirill Serebrenikov and other defendants, he was convicted in a high-profile "theatrical case"He wrote the book " The investigation will understand. Chronicles of Theatrical case" (AST, 2020)As an author and producer, he released a documentary film "The Kremlin Man" (directed by A. Khanyutin)

Elena Lukyanova — doctor of legal sciences. 1984-2013 – teaching Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Law of Lomonosov Moscow State University. Till august 2020 - Professor of Department of Constitutional and Municipal Law at the Faculty of Law of National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow). Now – Professor and co-rector of Brīvā Universitāte (Latvija).2010-2014 – member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation. From 2011 to the present day – Director of the Institute of Law Enforcement Effectiveness Monitoring. Member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Federal Chamber of Lawyers of Russia.Laureate of the Moscow Helsinki group prize for research in the field of human rights.Executive Director of the international film Festival "New Cinema. XXI century" 2002-2006

Dimitry Muratov — Dimitry Muratov graduated from Samara State University in 1983. He first worked in a factory and then for Volzhskiy Komsomolets newspaper. In 1987 he was invited to work for Komsomolskaya Pravda in Moscow where he became the department editor and member of the editorial board. In 1993 he was one of the journalists who left Komsomolskaya Pravda to create Novaya gazeta, and since 1995 he has been its Editor-in-Chief.He has worked in all the hot spots - Afghanistan, Nagorniy Karabakh, Chechnya, and received numerous awards. He is also a 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Ally Derks / Tiina Lokk — Since 2017 she works in Berlin as curator of the documentary program of BUFA. She has served as founder and director of the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA), and has been a jury member at numerous film festivals including Sundance, Hotdocs, Silverdocs and Nordisk. She has received numerous awards for her work, including from DocAviv in Tel Aviv and the Hot Docs Doc Mogul award. The French government honored her with the title of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2015. Studied Dutch literature, cinema and theater at the University of Utrecht.///Tiina Lokk is an Estonian filmmaker, script doctor, producer, and teacher of film for more than 25 years in different universities and film schools. She graduated from the Moscow Film Institute (VGIK) with a degree in film theory and criticism. Since 1997 she has been the founder and director of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, accredited by FIAPF since 2014 as an A class festival in line with festivals like Venice, Locarno, Karlovy Vary, Cannes and Berlin; numbering 15 in this category.. She also has been a screenwriter and a member of the editorial board and art council of Tallinnfilm for a decade. She is a member of the European Film Academy since 1997.

Viktor Erofeev — Russian writer, literary critic, and radio and TV presenter. He graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, and continued with postgraduate studies at the Institute of World Literature. A Candidate of Philology, he lectures widely at universities all over the world. He publishes actively in Russian and foreign media (The New Yorker, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, etc.). Viktor Erofeev's novel The Russian Beauty has been translated into more than twenty languages and is an international bestseller.The Ripol-Classic publishing house has published 14 books by the author in the EROFEEV collection: stories, novels and essays. Laureate of the V. V. Nabokov Prize, the Gogol Prize and the National Literary Prize of Serbia, he is a Cavalier of the French Order of Arts and Letters and holds the Order of the Legion of Honour, as well as the highest Polish order of the Commander's Cross of Merit.

Jerzy Sladkowski — Jerzy produced and directed over 50 films, mainly documentaries, from locations all over the world, with a primary focus on the human condition. People facing dramatic changes, fighting for survival, as well as individuals just trying to live a decent life in an increasingly difficult environment, are the heroes of most of his films. From 1972 until 1982 worked as a reporter, producer and director for TVP (Polish television). In 1982, he emigrated to Sweden. Since 1983 he is a freelancer for Swedish Television, the Swedish Film Institute, Finnish, Danish and Norwegian TV stations as well as Polish Television and the Polish Film Institute PISF. He regularly cooperates with the Franco-German TV network Arte and the German ZDF.

Peter Gottschalk — Born in 1952 on a farm in Germany. Since 1984 editor, author, producer, presenter for ZDF, DFF (former GDR), ORB, Bayerischer Rundfunk. As of 1996 producer/commissioning editor in the Connaissance-unit, ARTE G.E.I.E., Strasbourg (France). Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Mittweida (Germany).

Simone Baumann — Simone Baumann has worked in film production for more than 25 years and has produced many documentaries and feature films. Until March 2019, she was the head of the documentary department of Saxonia Entertainment GmbH. From 1997-2010, she was Managing Director of the independent production company LE VISION. She is an experienced co-producer, and one of Europe's leading experts on Russia, the former Eastern bloc, and their audio-visual markets. In April 2019, Simone Baumann was appointed as the Managing Director of German Films – the German film promotion organization. She has been working as the GERMAN FILMS Eastern Europe representative since 2005. She also supervised numerous feature film productions in the former Soviet Union as an executive producer and consultant.