KESANG TSETEN
In the 17 years he turned filmmaker, Kesang Tseten’s documentaries have won several awards in film festivals in Nepal and been screened in interna- tional film festivals such as the Inter- national Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam, Leipzig International Documentary Festival, Yamagata, Thessa- loniki, Krakow, Viennale, the Margaret Mead Film festival. ‘On the road with the red god: Machhendranath’, ‘We Corner People’, ‘Who will be a Gurkha’ and his trilogy of films on Nepali mi- grant workers in the Gulf have won wide recognition.
His most recent works are ‘Men at Work’, ‘Castaway Man’ and ‘Hospital’ and a film on the Langtang community in the aftermath of the 2015 quake is in progress. Tseten has been recipi- ent of grants from Busan, IDFA and the Sundance Institute. He also wrote the original screenplay for the feature ‘Mukundo’, which was awarded best script in Nepal, and was Nepal’s entry to the academy awards, and ‘KARMA’. Before filmmaking Tseten wrote and edited and was associate editor of Himal Magazine in its early years. He is a graduate of Dr Graham’s School in India and Amherst College and Co- lumbia University in the US.
TASHI GYELTSHEN
worked as a journalist before delving into filmmaking. He is a self-taught filmmaker. He wrote and directed his first short ‘Girl With a Red Sky’ in 2008. His third short, ‘The Red Door’, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2014), the Netherlands, and was also an official selec- tion at the Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland, Hongkong Inter- national Film Festival, Honkong, Jaipur International Film Festival, India and few other festivals around the world.
He attended 19. Internationale Kurz- filmtage Winterthur, Switzerland in 2015 as a panel member in the discussion program, Land im Fokus: Bhutan/Nepal where two of his shorts were also screened.
Tashi’s debut feature project ‘The Red Phallus’ was selected for Open Doors Hub programme in Festival del film Locarno 2016 and won a production grant award of Swiss Francs 20,000. The film will be shot in the beginning of 2017.
Tashi also won the National Quiz Championship in 2008 and Best Screenplay Award at the Bhutan’s National Film Awards in 2009. He writes frequently for newspapers and magazines.
SOPHIE BOURDON
is the new Head of the section Open Doors at Festival del film Locarno, which consists in two main activities: a coproduction Hub presenting 8 proj- ects from the highlighted region to European and international decision makers and a 5-day Lab targeted at the new generation of producers and filmmakers producers from the cho- sen countries. The regional focus in 2016, and also for 2017 & 2018, will be South Asian countries including Bhutan.
Sophie has a 25-year experience in the European and international film industry, mostly in international sales, co-productions, festivals and training. Among other responsibilities, she had been Chief Executive of the Eu- ropean organisation ACE – Ateliers du Cinéma Européen, for 11 years during which she supported 200 or so independent producers through the creation of the ACE Network, de- signed workshops and seminars and contributed to open up the doors of ACE to non-EU producers and build bridges with other continents. Prior to ACE, she was Director of International Sales at MK2, the Paris based pro- duction-distribution-sales company.