The Slovakian director Peter Kerekes returned to WEMW as a juror two years after participating in the pitching session in 2016 with the winning project “Wishing on a star” (realized by Erica Barbiani’s Videomante which he co-produced with his Peter Kerekes Film together with the Austrian Mischief): “The market has grown even more in profes- sionalism and reliability”, he comments, “and I am pleased to announce that we will start shooting the documentary on February 1st.”

When East Meets West has always distinguished itself for the importance given, in terms of space and quality, to documentaries.
This has been noted by Simon Ofenloch, also on the jury and attending WEMW for the first time. This is curious because, as the Commissioning Editor of ZDF/ARTE in the drama feature department, by profession Ofenloch mainly deals with drama feature movies: “I have to say that I was particularly impressed by the selection of documentary projects, the relevance of the topics tackled and the ability of the filmmakers to get really close to certain situations and to microcosms that represent universal problems.”

Georges Goldenstern is also attending When East Meets West for the first time in Cinéfondation, the parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival created to support young filmmakers:
“I found a particularly strong selection of projects and I got the chance to meet a lot of new producers. I think that for our work as jurors it is essential to have an idea of the previous work of the filmmakers whose pitches we are going to see. For this reason I carefully looked at all the links that were sent to us: not everybody feels totally at ease making a presentation in front of such a room full of professionals and it is only right that we balance the performance with the curriculum.”