PANELISTS

Linda Hambäck is a Swedish film director and owner of the production company LEE Film. She works mainly with animated films for children and her first highly recognized feature GORDON & PADDY had its world premiere at Berlinale 2018. Now she is finishing her second feature THE APE STAR. Previous films she directed are THE WORLD OF DOLORES AND GUNELLEN and WHAT IF..., which was co-directed with Marika Heidebäck. She has also directed the short documentary FIGHTING SPIRIT. Before her directing debut, she had a long background with producing highly acclaimed shorts.

Venla Hellstedt became a partner in Finnish production company Tuffi Films in 2016. At Tuffi, she has worked on films including STUPID YOUNG HEART, HOBBYHORSE REVOLUTION, GAMES PEOPLE PLAY and the forthcoming SIHJA, THE REBEL FAIRY. She studied literature and film in London and gained an MSc in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has worked in a number of documentary drama and news productions for BBC, ITV, Discovery Channel and YLE. Hellstedt returned to work in her native Helsinki in 2009, after nearly 14 years in the UK, and has worked as a producer in Finnish films and international co-productions since 2010. Venla is a member of the European Film Academy and she has taken part in several international film professionals' courses, such as EAVE Producers' Workshop and Crossing Borders.

Solveig Langeland is managing director of Stuttgart-based film sales company Sola Media, which specialises in family entertainment and animation since 2004. Sola Media’s passionate and experienced team is based in Stuttgart and Munich. We devote a lot of individual attention to our films, developing customized strategies and presenting them prominently at markets and festivals. In cooperation with our distributors, we coordinate release and marketing strategies on a pan-European and global level, often operating in long-term partnerships. In 2019, Sola Media was honored for its accomplishments and won the prestigious Distributor of the Year Award at Cartoon Movie in Bordeaux. Additionally acting as an Executive Producer on titles like DREAMBUILDERS, CAPTAIN SABRETOOTH and THE ELFKINS, Sola Media prides itself to provide a 360° service for its collaborators as a Boutique Agency with a strong setup in film and script development, advice on character design and visuals, financing, matchmaking, marketing and after sales services. In 2020, Sola Media was acquired by Koch Media, an Embracer Group company, with strategic business areas in film, interactive and online entertainment. In times of rapid digital change and economic challenges, Koch Media and Sola Media are well positioned, combining synergy effects and bringing together the world of new technologies and the classical film business. Sola Media remains independent, headed by industry veterans Solveig Langeland & Moritz Peters as Managing Directors.

Maryanne Redpath is Head of the Generation section of the Berlin International Film Festival. She grew up in New Zealand and has been living and working in Berlin since 1985.  She has worked as a multimedia performance artist and a theatre technician, taught drama to people living with disabilities and given art lessons to Aboriginal children and teenagers in Central Australia. She wrote scripts for and directed experimental 8mm and 16mm films and presented an Australian television series about health matters. In 1993, she began working at the Berlinale Kinderfilmfest and in 2008, she was appointed Head of the section, which had been renamed Generation in 2006. Since 2004, she has also been the Berlinale Delegate for Australia and New Zealand. Redpath is a member of the Asian Pacific Film Academy (APSA) and was involved in setting up the inaugural Young Audience Award (YAA) for the European Film Academy. Between 2013 and 2019, she was the head curator of the Berlinale special series NATIVe – A Journey into Indigenous Cinema. In 2018, Redpath worked as mentor for a project on feminist filmmaking in the Asia Pacific region, with support from the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme at the London School of Economics.

Kirstine Vinderskov, Channel Editor at Nordisk Film, has worked in almost all areas of the media industry throughout her career. She has headed the famous children’s brands DR Ramasjang and DR Ultra at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, working with all genres of quality content to a younger audience. Since 2016 she has been a part of the Egmont Corporation, first as development editor in publishing with a focus on building strong IP across media platforms. Alongside this, she hosted a long-running radio-show about parenthood at radio24syv. Today she heads Nordisk Film’s new kids brand Oiii, distributed in partnership with commercial public service broadcasters TV2 Denmark and TV2 Norway as their digital children’s offering. She also oversees the identification and development of potential new kids IP projects in the Nordics.