Jury for the IDFA Competition for Youth Documentary at IDFA 2021
Ulla Haestrup
Ulla Haestrup is an independent consultant working in the Film & Media field with a focus on content for Children and Youth. She works in the development of both fiction, documentary and cross-media universes and also collaborates with festivals and talent development programs within the film industry.
Previously she has been working for 16 years as Program Buyer and Commissioning Editor for Children and Youth at the Danish Public Service Station DR, followed by 5 years as a Documentary Film Commissioner at the Danish Film Institute, up until 2020. In this last position her focus has been on how documentaries can be relevant to a young audience.
Eef Hilgers
Eef Hilgers is a director whose last film #Bullyingstory received a special mention at the Berlinale 2019. The documentary, consisting entirely of webcam footage and screen grabs from the laptop of the film’s main character Rosalie (13), illustrates the consequences of cyberbullying.
Hilgers graduated from the Art Academy St. Joost (Breda, Netherlands) in 2012 with the youth documentary A Girl, You Know, about girls who actively try to shape their identity through YouTube. This was followed by several youth documentaries that focus on the influence of internet and new technologies on teenagers and their behavior, such as My Dearest F#cking Phone (2014) and Shame/Fame (2017), in which Hilgers experiments with methods to bring the online world to life. She also directed documentary youth series including Bikkels (winner of the BANFF Rockie Award for Children’s Non-Fiction) about children who take care of a sick family member, and Just Kids about children’s rights.
Edwin Mingard
Edwin Mingard is a visual artist whose work explores our social relations with one another. His most recent film An Intermission was made over a year and a half with a network of young people experiencing homelessness in Stoke-on-Trent, England. It received the IDFA Best Children’s Documentary Jury Special Mention and was selected by film festivals across Europe. In 2020 he was selected as a Bloomberg New Contemporary, and in 2021 was longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize.
Mingard has a complimentary curatorial and programming practice, and has founded several socially-engaged arts organizations including Deptford Cinema (London) and Satellite, an artist-led production company. He is a Curatorial Advisor for SIDE Gallery (Newcastle Upon Tyne), a Special Advisor for the Independent Film Trust and a mentor for the British Film Institute’s Future Film Academy. His current film (in post-production) explores the impacts of the UK government’s anti-migration policies. It will be released by Chisenhale Gallery in 2022.
