Prize awarded by the JUNIORFEST, registered association:
Golden Clock Hand
Award for lifelong creative contribution to filmmaking for children and young audience.
International Expert Jury awards
the following prizes:
Festival Flap
- Best Feature Film in Children Category (5-11 years of age)
- Best Feature Film in Young Audience Category (12-16 years of age)
- Best Animated Feature Film in Children Category (5-12 years of age)
Festival Jury 2025
International Competition of Live-Action Films for Children Aged 6–9
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Bára Fišerová
Bára was born into an artistic family — her father is a visual artist and her mother a documentary filmmaker. As a child she studied ballet at the preparatory school of the National Theatre, where she also first stood on a stage. The theatre captivated her so much that she went on to study drama acting and became a member of several Prague theatre companies. Ballet also brought her in front of a camera for the first time, at the age of six. After her studies she worked as a stage, film and television actress and has appeared in a number of Czech and foreign films, television productions, fairy tales and series. She also works as a presenter and in dubbing, and writes poetry in her free time. She has published two books, both of which she illustrated herself and one of which she also wrote.
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Chrisa Gkouma
is a screenwriter based in Thessaloniki, Greece. She holds a master's degree in dramatic arts from the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University. She has worked as a director, dramaturge and actress and has taken part in festivals in Greece and across Europe. She has also taught dramatic arts and led a number of educational courses. She holds a second master's degree in screenwriting and has been writing for the studio Funny Tales since 2020. She was part of the programming team for the 4th edition of the Select Respect festival and, since 2020, has been responsible for the programme and coordination of TAF, the Thessaloniki Animation Festival.
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Sophia Bahia
Sophia Bahia holds a bachelor's degree in animation and began her career as a generalist artist before moving into production. Working on both independent short films and large series, she noticed that many creative makers struggle to keep the scope and focus of their projects under control. In response she developed the Gambi system, designed to improve efficiency and collaboration in animation production, especially in teams with limited resources. She has taken part in several talent development and mentoring programmes and became a finalist of the THU Talent League in 2025. Alongside publishing professional articles and a book, she also runs mentoring sessions and workshops on animation. She currently works as an animation producer and continues to develop the Gambi system as part of her master's studies in Digital Creation (EMJM Digicrea).
International Competition of Live-Action Films for Young Audiences Aged 10–14
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Esben Jacobsen
Animation director and writer Esben Toft Jacobsen has a professional background in computer games and has been working as a director and writer of animated films since 2006, when he graduated from film school. He focuses primarily on projects for children and young audiences and has experience in screenwriting, directing and visual design for both animation and live action. Esben is the author and co-author of two animated features: The Great Bear (2011) and Beyond Beyond (2014). He also created the animated television series Kiwi & Strit (2016, three seasons) and Flora & Lars (2024). He contributed to the Netflix live-action series The Rain, where he focused on world-building, research and visual style. He is currently preparing his new animated feature Millie and the Crocodile's Secret.
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Kamil Fila
Kamil Fila (b. 1980, Znojmo) is a Czech film critic, reviewer and teacher. He studied film theory and history at Masaryk University in Brno and has worked in the editorial teams of Cinema, Cinepur, Aktuálně.cz and Respekt. In 2016 he founded his own website Ještě větší kritik, než jsme doufali (An Even Bigger Critic Than We Hoped For) and has been editor-in-chief of Kinobox since 2020. In early 2024 he launched the film podcast Hodný, zlý a kritický (The Good, the Bad and the Critical) together with Alena Julie Novotná; it celebrated its first anniversary with a live event in February 2025. He is a co-author of the Kmeny (Tribes) books, wrote the supplement to David Lynch: Temné stránky duše (David Lynch: The Dark Side of the Soul) and has received the Novinářská křepelka (Journalist's Quail) award (2013) and Genderman of the Year (2018). He also teaches at VOŠP, the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University and FAMU. He publishes under the nickname Tetsuo and is the protagonist of the documentary Síla (The Power, 2021).
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Lucia Kajánková
A Slovak-born screenwriter, dramaturge, director and lecturer at Prague's FAMU. For Czech Television she created and directed the teenage web series TBH as showrunner (Series Mania; winning series at Serial Killer Brno, Finále Plzeň and Marseille WebFest). She co-wrote Alice Nellis's new crime series Mladá krev (Young Blood). She works as a dramaturge on both live-action (Manželé Stodolovi / The Stodola Couple, Úsvit / Dawn) and animated projects (Zuza v zahradách / Zuza in the Gardens, Kafka. In Love, I Died in Irpin) that have been recognised at festivals worldwide. She lives in Prague, likes swimming and travelling to strange places.
International Competition of Animated Feature Films for Children Aged 14–16
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Barbara Dukas
A director, writer and educator working in theatre, film and cultural management. She has directed more than forty theatre, musical, opera and other productions in Greece and abroad. As artistic director of the Municipal and Regional Theatre of Corfu (2018–2024) she founded the City as a Stage festival and led European cultural projects that brought contemporary artistic work into dialogue with public space and local communities. Her projects have been presented at major international events including the Prague Quadrennial, the open-air festival in Shinjuku and the National Garden in Athens. She has received numerous awards for her work in theatre anthropology and educational methods. In 2023 she published Creating a World, one of the first Greek books to give a systematic account of directing in the performing arts. Barbara wrote and directed the short film Hamamm (2019), which screened at international festivals including Drama, Seoul, Montreal, Tokyo, Rome and San Francisco and received an honourable mention at the Sofia International Film Festival. She also works as a dramaturge and has run the Pitching Lab at the International Short Film Festival in Drama, Greece, since 2014, mentoring young filmmakers in project development and pitching.
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Jana Podskalská
A film journalist and a graduate of the Faculty of Journalism at Charles University. She gained experience in the newsrooms of Mladá fronta and Lidové noviny, among others, and worked for several years with the Miroslav Ondříček Film Academy in Písek. She is a member of the Czech Film Critics' Association, where she served eight years on the executive committee. She currently writes reviews, profiles and interviews for Deník, has long been an external contributor to Czech Radio and sits on the jury of the Czech Film Comedy Festival. She is co-author of the book Moje máma Jana Brejchová (My Mother Jana Brejchová, Universum, 2022).
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Milani Perera
Film journalist, curator and cultural critic Milani Perera brings a distinctive perspective to her work, shaped by her academic background in philosophy and film studies. She holds a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka and a master's in visual culture, literature and film studies from Tallinn University in Estonia. Her work explores the intersections of cinema, culture and identity, with a particular focus on independent world cinema and overlooked stories. She is currently a member of the selection committee of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, one of Northern Europe's leading international festivals, where she is also responsible for the overall programme. She contributes to the International Cinephile Society and founded the film blog Kino Pear, devoted to film criticism and reflection. Through her curatorial and editorial work she supports new voices and advocates for diverse perspectives in the film industry.
Short Films
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Pavla Baštanová
graduated in Classical Animation at the Faculty of Multimedia Communications in Zlín and in the Film and Television Graphics studio at UMPRUM in Prague. She is a professional illustrator and animator. She currently teaches classical printmaking techniques at the Department of Art Education of the Faculty of Education at Palacký University and serves as dramaturge of the LITR book fair. In 2020 Argo published her author's book Mukumú, based on her animated film of the same name (UMPRUM, 2017). She creates animated films, educational videos, idents, visuals, book illustrations and graphics. In 2025 the book Olívie si vyskakuje (Olívie Acts Up; J. A. Pitínský, Větrné mlýny) was published with her illustrations. Her animated film O krávě (About a Cow, Maurfilm, 2023) premiered at the Locarno Film Festival.
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Sébastien Sperer
Sébastien Sperer worked for the Annecy International Animation Film Festival for 25 years, from 1999 to 2024. This “child with endless dreams” moves spontaneously from one role to another — programmer, selector, host, jury member, lecturer and more. Wherever he is, his aim is to open up animation — a medium in which anything is possible — to the widest possible audience; to create a kind of village square where human experience unfolds without filters or limits. With that in mind he created the “WTF” programme in 2017. Fascinated by film's power to bring people together, his guiding motto is: “Promoting intercultural understanding through animated film, dialogue and sharing.” From 2022 to 2025 he also taught the history of animation at Gobelins Annecy.
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Sonora Broka
In addition to her role as artistic director of the Riga International Film Festival (Riga IFF), Sonora Broka is the editor and host of the film programme Piejūras klimats (Coastal Climate) on Latvijas Radio 3 “Klasika” and a regular contributor to the leading Latvian film portal Kinoraksti.lv. Broka is a member of FIPRESCI and the European Film Academy (EFA) and an international voter for the Golden Globes. She currently also works as a fiction film expert at the National Film Centre of Latvia. She has been a member of the selection committee of the European LUX Prize, has sat on juries of various international film festivals for both fiction and documentary films, and served as an expert consultant for the Czech Film Springboard programme at the Finále Plzeň festival.