1/1

BHFF JURY AWARDS

Since 2012, BHFF™ awards BHFF™ Jury Awards to the most outstanding films screened at the BHFF™ and selected by jury members as most outstanding in its categories. Members of the BHFF™ Jury are accomplished and recognized members from Bosnian and American cultural, film and art community who have significantly contributed to the Bosnian-Herzegovinian film industry and culture in general.

BHFF™ jury awards following honors to the most outstanding films:

BHFF™ Jury Award for Best Documentary Film
BHFF™ Jury Award for Best Short Narrative Film
BHFF™ Jury Award for Best Feature Narrative Film

BHFF™ Jury Award for Best Acting Performance

BHFF™ Jury Award for Best Picture

JURY MEMBERS 2023

Meta Mazaj

Senior Lecturer in Cinema Studies at the University of Pennsylvania

Meta Mazaj is a Senior Lecturer in Cinema Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on film history, theory, analysis, and contemporary world cinema. Her writings on critical theory, new European cinema, Eastern European cinema, Slovenian cinema, and contemporary world cinema, have appeared in edited volumes and journals such as Cineaste, Studies in Eastern European Cinema, Transnational Cinemas, and Situations. She is the author of National and Cynicism in the Post 1990s Balkan Cinema (VDM Verlag, 2008), co-author of Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings (with Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White; Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010), and co-author of World Cinema: A Critical Introduction (with Shekhar Deshpande; Routledge, 2018).

Vera Mijojlić

A cultural producer

Vera Mijojlić is a cultural producer who founded the South East European Film Festival, SEEfest (seefilmla.org) in Los Angeles in 2006. She has curated major film retrospectives for the UCLA Film Archive and Austin Film Society, and initiated a national tour of landmark short films with the Los Angeles Filmforum, which was presented at the Pacific Film Archive, Harvard Film Archive, National Gallery of Art, and MoMA. In addition to the 2018 Women in Leadership Award from the City of West Hollywood, she has received multiple recognitions from the State of California, as well as the County and City of Los Angeles. Vera began as a cultural reporter and film critic in Sarajevo, where she was also the location manager for the N.Y.-based Jalbert Productions documentary of the historic 1984 Winter Olympic Games. She holds a degree in journalism from the University of Belgrade, and has a distinguished record in humanitarian work.

Joseph Pierson

A producer and director

Joseph Pierson is a New York based producer and director. He is the president of Cypress Films Inc, a production company he founded in 1987. His most recent film is What’s This Country Called Now?, a short about the Siege of Sarajevo filmed on location in Bosnia and Herzegovina, starring Zrinka Cvitešić and Rade Šerbedžija. The film won the awards for Best Actress, Best Short, and Best of the Festival at the 2020 East Europe International Film Festival; Best Featurette at the 2021 Gold Movie Awards; and Best Short and Best Acting Performance at the 2022 Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film Festival. Joseph’s other producing and directing credits include Pocantico: David Rockefeller Remembers, a short film about Mr. Rockefeller’s ancestral home, and EvenHand, a dramatic feature film shot on location in San Antonio, Texas (Sundance Channel/Arts Alliance).