17th Hungarian Film Festival, Los Angeles opens on November 2nd and goes on until November 16.
Jury members of the festival to pick the Best Feature Film Award are:
Susan Morgan Cooper
Susan Morgan Cooper is an award winning documentary film Director/Producer.
Her highly acclaimed film, An Unlikely Weapon was about Eddie Adams, the photographer who’s photo Saigon Execution was credited with helping end the Vietnam War .
For Mulberry Child Susan filmed in China. Roger Ebert called the film powerful and touching.
For To the Moon and Back Susan went to Russia to explore the Russian Adoption Ban. The Huff Post called it an evocative expose.
She is set to direct her first narrative feature, East L.A. Kings
Kati Gati
Emmy Nominated for Outstanding Actress, and winner of seven Best Actress awards, a Best Supporting Actress Award and a Best Actress Nominee, Kathleen Gati was born and raised in Canada by Hungarian immigrants and was brought up in an artistic environment. Her father was a symphony conductor and her mother an opera singer, so performing was in her blood. She started acting at the age of three, wrote, directed and starred in her first play at the age of eight. After high school, she moved to New York to pursue her dream, where she studied and performed in dozens of plays both on and Off Broadway, as well as worked in numerous roles on television and in film. Gati was invited to Hungary to be in the feature Goldberg variácók, for which she won the Television and Film Critics Best Supporting Actress award.
Arati Misro
Arati Misro is a founding member of Second Screen, A video mobile application start up. She is also producing two TV shows that addresses Healing in America and women’s contributions in Hollywood and beyond. Her latest film credits which screened in Cannes 2015 are “In Search of America, Inshallah” and “Sunrise” which addresses child trafficking in India. Both have won numerous awards and have been well received. Misro has extensive experience in Film/TV production and indie film distribution & marketing. She has also worked with a mobile application company based in India and the Silicon Valley which exposed her to endless possibilities in content acquisition. Misro has worked for Fox, Discovery, Sony. USA films and CNBC Asia in various capacities. Her extensive experience in sales has taken her to all major international markets such as Cannes, Toronto, AFM and Berlin. Misro also worked with the European Union and the National Film Development Corporation in India which is an educational forum about finance and production based in Berlin entitled Prime Xchange. Misro also serves as an educator for Pinnacle Leadership Development that entails empowering and educating business owners and families in finance to get to their life goals
Misro serves as a Women in Film International Co chair, LA for nearly 11 years where she does extensive programming and mentoring for the International Community in Entertainment. She also serves as a board member for The Caucus foundation and was a committee member of Camp Reel which is an educational program for girls in filmmaking, self- esteem and life skills.
Misro is a proud Native of California. Her passion for filmmaking and storytelling was born during a 6 month stint after college in her ancestral state Orissa, India and extensive travel throughout the country. She felt compelled to document the struggles of women which was recognized by the faculty at the American Film Inst. where she received her MFA in producing with honors. Misro holds an undergrad degree in Cultural Anthropology and Mass Communications from U.C San Diego.
Rachel O’Meara
Rachel O’Meara has been a working actor across film, television and theatre for eighteen years, and is a graduate of London’s Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA). Prior to that, she worked in media with the Saatchi Group in London, S Africa and Dubai, during which time she contributed lifestyle and entertainment articles to numerous magazines, in particular IPC and ITP titles. Rachel also spent years working in Germany, France, Brunei, Nepal and Hong Kong, giving her a first-hand insight to international cinema, and she attends as many different film festivals as she can.Rachel’s selected screen credits include “Mechanic: Resurrection” (Jason Statham, Tommy Lee Jones / Lionsgate), “Training Day” (Bill Paxton / CBS), “Spotless” (Denis Menochet / NETFLIX), “Day Of The Dead” (Millennium Films) to be released Dec 18, “War Inc.” (John Cusack, Marisa Tomei / Millennium Films), “The Experiment” (Adrien Brody, Forest Whitaker), “Until Death” (JC Van Damme), in addition to many indie films and TV series.
Bijan Tehrani
Bijan Tehrani a film director, film critic and writer, works as founder and Editor in Chief of Cinema Without Borders while teaching Language & History of film workshops and organizes film screening events and festivals. Bijan has won several awards in international film festivals and book fairs for his short films and children’s books as in the process of publishing a few new children books and directing two documentary films. Bijan is perusing new ideas for creating an international film community to help distribution of independent international films.
