Gioya Tuma-Waku

Gioya Tuma-Waku is an actress based in Los Angeles. She was born in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her love of performance started at an early age and by age 10 she knew that her passion and future lay in Acting. Her performance in the film Pink Lemonade has gotten her a a nomination as Best Actress Semi Finalist for the Olympic Film Festival as well as a nomination for Best Actress for the LA Film Awards. She also won Honorable Mention Actress in in an Indie Film for Pink Lemonade at the Los Angeles Film Awards.

Suzanne Banning

Suzanne Banning is an award-winning artist who is mostly known for her self-portraits. Her medium, among other things, is “Experimental Photography”, as she calls it. She creates her work during performance-like sessions in which she devises an alternative world and plays various roles, drawing inspiration from poetry, novels, movies and a variety of Mythology (including Greek, Roman, & Hawaiian Mythology). During her photo shoots she uses photos and movies to add color and depth, thus creating a sense of space. To fuel herself she uses music, her most important muse being Tori Amos. This way, Banning’s work combines her love for Visual Art, Literature, Film and Music. Her work has been shown in 8 countries around the world in 5 solo shows and 75 group-exhibitions curated by Connie Butler, Dan Cameron, Andrea Karnes, Dominique Molon, Marysol Nieves, James Rondeau, among others. Her work is part of the Permanent Collection of the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi (USA) and has been acquired by 29 Private Collectors.

Khyati Rajvanshi

Khyati Rajvanshi is an Assistant Output Editor and Researcher at New Delhi Television Limited. She helps edit and produce the Prime Time shows in NDTV 24×7. With a degree in Film Studies and Communications (BA Honors Oxford Brookes University) and Masters in Multimedia Journalism (University of Westminster), she is a film buff and loves to critique films.

Keyuri Shah

She is a known Bollywood actress based in Mumbai with around 2 dozen films to her credit. She started as a theater artiste and has done many short films, commercials, fashion modelling for many brands and print shoots. She has acted as a lead actress  in a number of regional language feature films in India.

Scott Blum (Chief of Jury / Judges)

Scott has a passion for enjoying films of all sorts in particular those with “a message that makes him ponder and think”. His involvement in the Hague Global Cinema Festival is as a film-goer and he is mightily impressed by the innovation and the sheer quality of all of the films that are submitted.

Scott has lived and worked overseas, he has travelled extensively, and now resides in the UK where he is enjoying life.

Sunita Rajvanshi

A Mathematician with a degree from IIT, Roorkee, India and a Mixed Media Artist. With a passion for art, she attained a diploma in Fine Arts from Raja Mansingh Tomar Music & Arts University, India and has participated in various art exhibitions across India, Middle East and Europe for charity purposes. She loves to watch all types of films and is a passionate critique. She also believes that movies shape our lives.

Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube : @SunRajArts

Elizabeth Blum

A keen movie goer Elizabeth enjoys many genres especially international films and travel documentaries. She has lived and worked in UK Middle East and Switzerland and loves travel.

Marius Gruson

Marius was born in Germany and is a political science student. He has a lot of interest in exploring different cultures by watching foreign movies. Among his other interests are history, politics, anthropology and travelling.

Shehnaz Djorai

Shehnaz Djorai was born and raised in Suriname. She has recently moved to the Netherlands for a better future for her son. She works at a collection agency in Amsterdam. In her spare time she likes to read, mostly romance, watch movies. She likes mostly Rom-Com’s but also true-stories, and of course Disney movies. I listen to different kinds of music from Suriname songs to Bollywood music to Dutch music.

Hanna Mitra

Hanna is a movie lover. During her working time in the early nineties, she got an exposure to  the art of filmmaking  as a  client of a  film project about HIV positive people living with AIDS. Later she had the opportunity to become a program maker for local television in The Hague. She  joined courses in television programs making in the national studios of the Netherlands, Hilversum where she graduated  in production and editorial. She was  noticed and was asked to do the editorial for a television program on suicide among Hindustani girls in The Netherlands. The program was a hit. She was also made a  program for local television on this subject.  After more then 10 years she got the opportunity to work in The Hague Global Cinema Festival and be one of the judges. “It is really nice to have seen so many people’s work and it was very difficult to select the best of it”, she says.

Peter Scheffer

Peter Scheffer (The Hague, 1980) was from 2011 till 2018 correspondent in Buenos Aires, Argentina and later Berlin, Germany. He wrote feature stories for Dutch daily Trouw, and made news and background reports for RTL, NPO and various other independent media. After doing his bachelor Journalism and Media he started writing as reporter for a local news outlet where he edited videonews. During his stint in South America he discovered his love and passion for film and decided to study cinematography at the Argentine Academy For Film at the motion picture labour union (SICA-APMA). For youth and indie news channel VICE he directed De Tangolijn (2013), a short news documentary about cocaine trafficking on the border between Argentina and Bolivia. The film made headlines and Scheffer was asked to screen the film for members of the U.S. Congress following the illegal drug trade. In 2014 he directed his first non-fiction short Punching Underground, which got selected and curated by American magazine The Atlantic. In 2016 he worked as executive producer on White Walls Say Nothing, a feature lenght non-fiction documentary about urban art movements in Argentina. The film got selected and nominated for an audiance award at the HOT DOCS International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto, Canada. Scheffer moved back to his native The Hague late 2018 and currently works at the University of Applied Sciences Inholland as a spokesman and adviser to the executive board. In July 2019 he got elected president of COC Haaglanden, the offical LGBTQ+ organization and interest group.

Safdar Zaidi

Safdar Zaidi is an author of 3 novels. He loves to write and travel. He is an ardent film watcher and critique. He lives in The Hague.

Marianna Giacomel (Project Manager)

She was born and lived in Italy where she studied foreign literature. In 2018 she moved to The Hague with her family. Lover of reading, visual arts and music, especially jazz. “Working for The Hague Global Cinema Festival and Alwar International Film Festival gives me the opportunity to combine my passion for films with being part of a team in an environment that highlights the multiculturalism, a characteristic of The Hague, the city where I chose to live and where I want to play an active role.”

Hira Ayman

She holds an MA in English litrature. An ardent viewer of arthouse cinema she occasionally writes reviews on reputable platform on international films. She also writes poetry, short stories and blogs. She believes in humanism ,freedom of expression, showing realism in literature. Her reviews on Cannes film festival movies like Gasper Noa’s Love & Climax have been published.

Anil Ballani

Anil Ballani is a director based in Mumbai, have experience of twenty years in Film and Television. Started his career from Indias Most Wanted, till date directed around 2000 episodes of different genre in TV Media that includes Documentary, Daily Soap, and commercials,…Apart from also directed commercial hit movie Ishq Click and critically acclaimed filmRakhtbeej. His upcoming project is another feature film that will release next year.

Myat Noe

M. Noe is a part-time filmmaker, full time screenplay writer / film critic from Burma. He has served as a jury member in Human Rights Human Dignity International Film Festival.

We are too accustomed to the absurdity of existence that the loss of a universe is not worth taking seriously.

— Yukio Mishima

The tragedy of our world is precisely that nothing any longer is capable of rousing it from its lethargy….In the anaesthesia produced by self-knowledge, life is passing…we are drifting with time and our fight is with shadows.

— Anais Nin

Irfan Jaami

He is a Bollywood Director with around 15 years’ experience of directing over 100 projects of a variety of genres. Projects range from TV commercials , Tele-films , Tele-series , Video spots , Corporate Films, documentaries to independent short films. He has also penned down Lyrics for an international Album ‘ Colours of peace ‘ .

Kamalika (Festival Hostess)

A versatile internationally recognised singer, artist and anchor

She is a creative artist, singer, anchor, performer, actress, model for the last 20 years. Performed on stage and TV shows spanning across music, theatre, debate, quiz, dance, modelling and anchoring shows in various countries. She is a versatile vocal artist of Classical, Bollywood and Western genres of Blues, Jazz, Pop, Soul, Soft Rock. Trained in Indian classical music under Late Vidusi Srimati Shipra Bose, known as Bengal’s Begum Akhtar. Trained in Western vocal music under Teiron Jones. Kamalika has given stellar music performances at various prestigious clubs and events across Kolkata, Muscat, and Bangalore including at Hard Rock Cafe Bangalore with her Blues Jazz band Divergent Notes. She performed in Hindi, Bengali and English for various community cultural programmes in  different countries. Anchored shows for famous Bollywood music directors like Pritam, Shankar Ehsaan Loy, Imran Khan Badshaah, and a number of high profile corporate events while in Oman, Muscat at prestigious venues. She has hosted and performed Bollywood music for international film festivals like Alwar International film festival and many others in Doha, Kolkata, Bangalore, Muscat. She has also written, directed and acted in plays in Bengali, and acted in several other English drama productions. She has also given contemporary dance performances abroad and in India at various cultural events. She also writes poetry and does recitation as part of her other interests as well.

Evgenii Filippov (Project Manager – Online Event)

For me – the person who recently arrived to The Netherlands – it is not only a great opportunity to meet new friends and assimilate into the new culture, but it is also a possibility to learn about modern trends in a global cinema industry. That’s always very exciting. The Global Film Festival will be held in The Hague for the first time. It is my honor to become a part of this historical event.
I’m glad that I’m in the team!

Avnish Rajvanshi

“An Oil/Gas Producer by Profession and A Filmmaker by Passion”

From the oil production fields of Middle East and Europe, Avnish Rajvanshi ventured into the field of filmmaking with his first film ‘The Kingmaker of the Mughal Empire’ which won international awards and accolades. With three more film production projects in the pipeline, he is also organising film festivals in The Netherlands, United States, Malaysia and India. As the Festival Director of this event, his vision is to encourage, identify and showcase talent from the crowd and to support production value over budget.

Additional Background: With a distinguished career behind with majors like Shell International, he holds a Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology IIT(ISM), India, with management certification from Queensland University of Technology, Australia; Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands; Cranfield School of Management, United Kingdom; University of Texas at Austin, United States and Shell Project Academy, The Netherlands.

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