Jury #3
Michael Karen
Michael Karen is a versatile film and TV director who successfully combines genres such as comedy, adventure, drama and horror. His best-known works include the comedies „Agent Ranjid rettet die Welt“ and „Erkan & Stefan – Der Tod kommt krass“. He also attracted attention with the horror slasher „Flashback – Mörderische Ferien“ (released last year for the first time on Blu-ray as Director’s Cut) and the adventure film “The Girl with the Indian Emerald”.
Karen impresses with his sense of visual dynamics and the combination of humorous elements with suspense and drama.
In recent years he has worked mainly for German television and, among other things, helped initiate the successful ZDF series “Frühling”.
Ivo Scheloske
Ivo was still very young when he was born in 1971. Much too early, he got access to the then-popular pulp novels through irresponsible family members and quickly fell for the drug called ‘horror’. An addiction that would influence his career choice years later when he joined the independent label Anolis Entertainment as a product manager in 2001, where he still works today.
In 2019, his addiction reached its peak when he produced the anthology DEATHCEMBER together with Dominic Saxl and Frank Vogt, which was funded largely by Hessenfilm.
Since 2020, he has been treating himself by doing photo shoots with models, the results of which are presented with insane success on Instagram (his account has an incredible number of 105 followers).
Support his healing process, it only costs you the push of a button.
Dominic Saxl
Dominic Saxl is a freelance creative, journalist and filmmaker. He has been writing for DEADLINE – Das Filmmagazin, donor of the Deadline_Award and Deadline_Audience Award, for 15 years, making him something of a natural born jury member. When the Frankfurt am Main-based communication scientist isn’t watching or shooting short films, he occupies himself with horror in all media and manifestations. In this respect, it is probably no coincidence that he developed and produced the perfect cross between the two, together with Ivo Scheloske and Frank Vogt in 2019: the Christmas horror short film anthology DEATHCEMBER, which was shown at over 35 film festivals worldwide and won various awards. Prior to this, he ran a horror and underground film club in Frankfurt for a number of years and has been on festival juries several times, including at the NIFFF in Neuchâtel and the Hard:Line festival in Regensburg.
