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    • Tehilla Shwartz – Altshuler

    Dr. Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler is a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and head of the institute’s Media Reform Program and Democracy in the Information Age Program.

    Emre Akay

    Film maker - Director, Producer, Screenwriter - AV: The Hunt

    Giorgio Angelini

    Angelini came into film from a longer, multi-faceted career in the creative arts. He started in music, touring in bands, later enrolling for a Masters of Architecture program during the depths of the 2008 real estate crisis, during which the seeds for his directorial debut, OWNED: A Tale of Two Americas began to take shape. Giorgio served as the executive producer for the feature film My Friend Dahmer (2017). Giorgio is the writer and producer for FEELS GOOD MAN.

    Tomer Appelbaum

    Born in 1978, graduated from "Hadassah" college ,working as a photojournalist for "Haareztz" since 2004.

    Boaz Armoni

    Film maker, military horror “Freak Out” (2015), musical comedy “The Electrifiers” (2019)

    Uri Aviv

    Director of the Utopia Festival for Science Fiction and Future Story-telling. As the Promethean Consultancy, program curator, PMO, artistic consultant and producer, writer and speaker on topics of technology and society, science fiction and the future.

    Yoav Avni

    Writer & translator

    Tzlil Avraham

    Journalist, Kan - The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation

    Rina Jean Baroukh

    Literature researcher, writer, translator, editor, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and in the Be'er Sheva Writer's House, Editor of the literary magazine "Speculation".

    Orçun Behram

    Istanbul-born director, cinematographer, and photographer. Behram holds a bachelor's degree in cinema from Columbia College Chicago, has directed a number of short films, "The Antenna" is his feature debut.

    Sarah Blau

    Israeli author and playwright, She won the Levi Eshkol's Prize for Hebrew Literature in 2015.

    Regev Contes

    Director, screenwriter and social activist, Head of the video program in the department of visual communication at Shenkar College.

    Eli Cook

    Senior Lecturer in the General History Department at the University of Haifa in Israel and head of the American Studies Program.

    Jonathan Cuartas

    Film Director, My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To

    Hadas Daniel

    Cinephile, MA student in Cinema Studies. Former manager and curator of “Documentary at Shapira” project.

    Mattie Do

    Utopia 2020 rising star in world genre film-making spotlight, Lao film-maker - Chanthaly, Dearest Sister, The Long Walk.

    Ori Druckman

    Cultural events and exhibition's producer, reporter at Portfolio magazine and a Visual Culture B.A student

    Keren Elazari

    Friendly hacker, cyber security researcher and speaker. Founder of BSidesTLV and the Leading Cyber Ladies movement, avid sci fi reader.

    Liat Elkayam

    Liat Elkayam is an Israeli writer, screen writer, and culture critic for "Haaretz". Elkayam teaches at the culture studies department of "Sapir" college.

    Hadas Erel

    Prof. Hadas Erel, Head of the Human-Robot Interaction research in the media innovation lab at Reichman University.

    Isaac Ezban

    Sci-fi film-maker from Mexico (THE INCIDENT, THE SIMILAR, PARALLEL), co-founder of Red Elephant Films and Autocinema Coyote (Coyote Drive-In)

    Eyal Feder-Levy

    Urban Planner and Software Engineer. I love Cities, People, Technology and areas in which they converge.

    Jeremy Fogel

    Speaker, moderator, podcaster, researcher, philosopher, teacher. Fogel teaches at the Tel Aviv University's department of Jewish philosophy and numerous other institutes, alongside being academic director of Alma, cultural and intellectual center for Hebrew culture.

    Doron Friedman

    Friedman is an Associate Prof. in the Sammy Ofer School of Communications and the head of the Advanced Reality Lab.

    Future of Life Institute

    Steering transformative technology towards benefiting life and away from extreme large-scale risks.

    Eitan Gafny

    Film director who pioneered Hebrew Horror. He's also a published author and a nice person in general, with a terrible fear of cockroaches.

    Olga Gershenson

    Professor of Jewish Studies and Near Eastern Studies and Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

    Gali Golan

    Amateur lecturer with academic pretensions on all things SF and Fantasy, for over 20 years.

    Prof. Elana Gomel

    Prof. Gomel teaches in the Department of English Literature and American Studies at the Tel Aviv University with research specializations in science fiction and fantasy, narrative science, Dickens, Victorian culture and Post-humanism. Alongside her research and teaching, Prof. Gomel is also a published author of science fiction and fantasy texts and novels.

    Yonatan Gotlib

    Writer/director, social media influencer with over 20K followers, news anchor at Ynet, founder of Cinema Limbo, television actor.

    Eran Hadas

    Poet, programmer and media artist. Co-founder of the Digital Media track at Tel Aviv University and lecturer there, at the School of Visual Theatre Jerusalem, and in other frameworks.

    Evyatar Halimi

    Comedian, Screenplay Writer, Actor, Video Editor, Standup Comic.

    Amir Harash

    Amir Harash is a novelist, scribe, and literary scholar. Author of the books "Bronze – Canaanite Fantasy" (2019) and "Horror in West Rishon" (2023).

    Ido Hartogsohn

    Blogger, artist, faculty member at Bar Ilan University, journalist at Haaretz newspaper.

    Tsila Hassine

    Hassine is an artist, lecturer and researcher. Her creative work was exhibited at the Jerusalem Science Museum, the Tel-Aviv Center for Contemporary Art, the Berlin Transmediale, Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), Gasworks (London), Maxxi, the Venice Biennale, and more. As of 2019 She is the founder and CEO of the early stage ArtUp “Shmoogle: Search Different, Think Different."

    Bar Hayun

    Content Expert at the Israel Space Agency, lecturer, and creator and host of the podcasts “Kol Hayekum” (for ISA) and “Space Agent” (for KAN).

    Itamar Heifetz

    Artist, graphic designer, typographer, with expertise in typographic and calligraphic design, alongside design for the arts & culture worlds.

    Noah Hutton

    Director of documentary and narrative films, including Lapsis (2021) and In Silico (2021).

    Arthur Jones

    FEELS GOOD MAN is Jones’s directorial debut, but he’s uniquely suited to tell the story. He’s a cartoonist who came up in the same indie comics scene as the film’s subject, Matt Furie, and has art directed animation and motion graphics for journalists and documentary filmmakers, working with ¬companies including The New York Times, VICE and The Center for Investigative Reporting.

    Ofek Kehila

    Scholar of Spanish and Latin American literature. His fields of expertise are Spanish Golden Age literature and contemporary Latin American literature.

    Eli Keller

    Architect, architectural historian and researcher. In his work, Eli explores the historical and conceptual relationships between technological advancements and speculative, utopian and dystopian architectural imaginations.

    Shani Kiniso

    Film critic, researcher and curator. Kiniso is from Kibbutz Be'eri, after surviving the October 7th massacre he published the article "For Unimaginable Cinema – A Call to Israeli Filmmakers" in which he detailed the ways in which Israeli cinema should respond to the events of that day. Kiniso co-founded the Israeli "Unimaginable Cinema Project", and is co-founder of the "Trashtalk" podcast, alongside Gili Porat.

    Ziv Kitaro

    Game Creator, Writer, Devoted Sci-Fi lover, Creative Director at Funfacters.

    Jonathan Kopievker

    Cultural researcher, content editor, and film critic at Portfolio Magazine. Has lived and breathed cinema from a young age and lives as someone who writes to find meaning.

    Robert D. Krzykowski

    Writer, producer, director, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot.

    Eden Kupermintz

    Program curator, speaker and music & culture journalist, programmer for Utopia, the Tel-Aviv International Festival for Science Fiction and Fantastic Film, editor-in-chief of Heavy Blog is Heavy, web developer and scifi enthusiast.

    Boaz Lavie

    Lavie is an Israeli author and playwright, game designer and entrepreneur. His play “Nephilim” (created with Yonatan Levi) premiered at The Israel Arts Festival in Jerusalem. “The Divine”, a graphic novel (created with illustrators Asaf and Tomer Hanuka) became a New York Times bestseller, was a Hugo Award Nominee and won the International Manga Award and.

    Emanuel Yitzchak Levi

    Poet and musician ("Emmanuel and the Yearnings"). His debut poetry book (“The Sun Sings to Melchior”, Hava La’or Publishing, 2020) has awarded him the Minister of Culture's Prize for Poets in their Early Career.

    Didi Lubetzky

    Annick Mahnert

    Producer, Festival Programmer and Acquisitions Consultant ,Mahnert opened her independent company Screen Division in 2013, working as a freelance producer, acquisitions consultant and festival programmer. She is a programmer at the Sitges Fantastic Film Festival, Head of Programming at Fantastic Fest in Austin and since April 2020 also the Executive Director at the Frontières Co-Production Market, the leading industry initiative for genre film professionals.

    Noa Manheim

    Editor of prose and screenplay, essayist and cultural critic, recipient of the 2021 Israel Minister of Culture's Award for Editing. Head of the Hebrew Literature Department, Kinneret-Zmora-Dvir publishing.

    Natalie Marcus

    Award-winning director and screenwriter. Creator of "The Jews Are Coming" (Hayehudim Ba'im), an Israeli satirical television series. Writer on numerous successful TV shows, such as "Fauda" and "Tehran".

    Tal Sara Meiri

    Artistic director and film curator., Music, film and culture researcher, DJ and actress.

    Romi Mikulinsky

    Researcher of Digital Culture and Design-led Innovation

    Nadav Neuman

    A writer focused on the surprising connections between strange things - technology, psychedelia, science fiction, mysticism and esoterica, cute animals and strange peoples.

    Amos Noy

    Poet and cultural researcher. Research fellow at the Center for Folklore Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, a master’s in computer science, and a PhD in folklore and folk culture from the Hebrew University.

    Yuval Ofer

    Producer, content writer and curator, DJ and activist. Former journalist and news-editor. Ofer is a member of the Utopia magazine editorial board and an artistic consultant for the film festival.

    Keren Omry

    Science Fiction scholar in the English Department, University of Haifa.

    Chris Oosterom

    Director, the Imagine Film Festival in Amsterdam

    Zoe Polanski

    Zoe Polanski is a composer, sound artist, producer, and guitar player. Her music travels between the worlds of ambient, electronica, and post-rock.

    Mayan Rogel

    Mayan Rogel is an Author, screenwriter and story-hacker, podcaster and narrative expert. Rogel is a mom and a martial arts expert.

    Gili Ron

    Israeli architect based in Berlin. Ron practices computational design, design-research and writes about digital culture in architecture.

    Shelagh Rowan-Legg

    writer, filmmaker, artistic programmer and genre film expert

    Yoni Salmon

    Yoni Salmon, owner of the veteran animation blog "Shulyat Hakosem", lecturer, illustrator, animation director and project manager at TMC Animation Studio.

    Dana Schweppe

    International Programming Team, Utopia 2021. MA in literature, researching Hebrew literature in America, interested in Jewish dystopian writing and genre films.

    Yanai Sened

    Yanai Sened is an (ex) Programmer, (ex) Teacher, and philosophy PhD candidate, Fordham University, New York City.

    Neta Shenitzer

    Film maker and a writer.

    Maritte Sørensen

    Festival Director of the Lund Fantastic Film Festival. Maritte loves everything violent, but also everything cute. You have to take the good with the bad. Keep it balanced!

    Amital Stern

    Amital Stern writes film, theater and other texts. She teaches experimental writing workshops.

    Ant Timpson

    Timpson has worked in every facet of the film industry; from managing an arthouse, distribution and programming, creating film events, producing television and feature films, operating government film funds and mentoring many filmmakers. For his multi-faceted and long-running film & media entrepreneurship he was the inaugural recipient of New Zealand’s Art Entrepreneur Award and is a Board member of the New Zealand Film Commission. His annual film competition 48HOURS with Peter Jackson as mentor began in 2003. After producing numerous genre films, Come to Daddy (Tribeca 2019), starring Elijah Wood, was his directorial debut.

    Pablo Utin

    Film Scholar and critic, Author of 3 books on Israeli Cinema and has a passion for teleporting which he can't currently pursue for lack of proper technology.

    Gil Vesely

    Film-maker - editor and director

    Jehudit Weinberger Basha

    International Emmy-nominated senior producer and journalist, creating impactful investigations and documentaries for “UVDA” with Ilana Dayan and leading global media projects.

    Oded Wolkstein

    Translator, lecturer, editor, and here and there also a writer. I served as an editor at Keter Publishing, and currently I am also chief editor at the Institute for Translation.

    Liam Young

    Young is an architect who operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures. He is founder of the urban futures think tank Tomorrows Thoughts' Today (TTT), exploring the possibilities of fantastic, perverse and imaginary urbanisms.

    Mushon Zer-Aviv

    Designer and educator in Shenkar College, GA member of A Land For All

    Oren Zuckerman

    HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) researcher and designer, Reichman University’s Sammy Ofer School of Communications, Head of HCI MA program, Director of miLAB.

    Yair Lipshitz

    Researcher of the interface between theatre, performance, and Jewish religious tradition. Recently, he has also been exploring the connections between theatre, role-playing games, and fantasy.