Anna Schimrigk, born in Berlin in 1992, is an actress, screenwriter, and director. After studying acting at the Konrad Wolf Film University, she was nominated for the Studio Hamburg Award in the category “Best young Actress” in 2018 and has since appeared in numerous film and television productions.

As a screenwriter, she was awarded a scholarship from the Roger Willemsen Foundation in 2022, was part of the writing team for the series “Maxton Hall” (Amazon Prime), and was the creator and head writer of the ZDF neo series “BFF – Best Family Forever.” As part of her bachelor's thesis, Schimrigk wrote and directed her first play “Vier Frauen und ein Bernd” in 2015. This was followed by further productions at the Maxim Gorki Theater, Tik Berlin, and the Überzwerg children's and youth theater in Saarbrücken, among others. She made her first short film, “Bianca Fucks Fear,” in 2023 as part of the Hmt-Kurzfilme Rostock under the patronage of Andreas Dresen.

Steven Yates is a British film critic and journalist based in Berlin.

He writes for a variety of websites and hard copy publications globally and has been a member of FIPRESCI since 2001, attending numerous film festivals as a jury member in Europe and globally. He has worked for film festivals in the past, including London and Edinburgh, as well as being an assistant programmer for National Schools Film Week in the UK.

Presently he is part of the selection team for the Kendal Mountain Film Festival, also in the UK.