Golden Key

Guangli Liu graduated from Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains in 2020. Passionate about image-making, he has developed an art practice around painting, video art, 3D animation, and virtual reality. His works attempt to question how the digital medium fits into contemporary storytelling and the reconstruction of our collective memory. 2021 he won the prize Golden Nica at Ars Electronica and Golden Key Award for best short film at Kassel Dokfest.

Ata Mehrad was born in Iran in 1989. His artistic path started with music. Attending the university was the next step for him in advancing his artistic path: In 2006, he started acting in a theater and 2009 he directed his first play. Finally, he was introduced to documentary film and entered the world of cinema in 2014. Currently he is working as a director, editor and producer in this field. Also, he has launched Artunity in 2018, an online platform for promoting the works of a new generation of artists. His film Faryad ro be bad (Shouting at the Wind) was the opening film of Kassel Dokfest 2019.

Johanna Süß, born 1979 in Frankfurt, is festival director of the LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International. She studied politics, art history and theater, film and media studies in Mainz and Frankfurt. In addition to independent cultural projects such as the Freiluftkino Frankfurt, she is responsible for the Initiative Zukunft Deutscher Film and has been involved in the board of the Hessian Film and Cinema Office since 2014. She is also active in the Initiative Hessen Film and the Working Group of Film Festivals in Germany.

Dr. Susanne Völker has been head of the cultural department of the city of Kassel since 2017. Previously, the art historian and cultural manager worked as curator and director for several museums and since 2012 was as founding director entrusted with the project management for the GRIMMWELT Kassel. Susanne Völker studied art history, philosophy, law and museum management in Hamburg and Vienna and did her PhD in cultural studies on UNESCO World Document Heritage in cultural education.

Florian Wüst is a Berlin based film curator. He has curated film programs and exhibitions for international art institutions and festivals, like most recently the IMPAKT Festival 2022 in Utrecht, together with Erik Bünger. From 2016 to 2020 Wüst was the film and video curator of transmediale. He is co-founder of the Berlin Journals on the history and present state of the city, an ongoing series of publications that address the social, cultural, and econimic changes in Berlin and other cities.