Originally from Grenoble, France, Olivier Bertrand has been passionate about cinema from an early age. He explores with enthusiasm the diversity of genres, eras, and origins, and doesn’t hide his strong appreciation for animated films. Since his teenage years, he has been interested in the performing arts in all their forms. In Dieppe, he curated both live performances and cinema at the Scène Nationale. He further honed his expertise in the performing arts in Paris at the Théâtre de la Bastille and the Cité internationale. In 2015, he crossed the Atlantic to lead La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines in Montreal.

Born in Sainte-Foy in 1957, Thomas Corriveau is a visual artist and filmmaker. Since the 1980s, he has worked in drawing, painting, printmaking and animated film. He regularly exhibits his works in Canada and abroad and has produced fifteen public artworks in Québec. He is an associate professor at the UQAM École des arts visuels et médiatiques, after having been a professor there from 2002 to 2022. Since 2010, he has been fully involved as an independent director of animated films.

John Harbour is a PhD candidate in Literature and Performing and Screen Arts at Université Laval. His research interests focus on Canadian and American animated cinema, pioneering filmmakers, and issues related to intermediality and intertextuality. In addition to working as a videographer for the news program Noovo Info, John Harbour is also an animation filmmaker. His films have been selected at several international festivals, including Fantasia, the Sommets du cinéma d’animation, the Meknès International Animation Film Festival, and Ukraine’s LINOLEUM Festival.

Photographer, art director, and multi-disciplinary artist, Brigitte Henry is an artist’s artist. Known for her unique eye, she has been called on by some of the most notable names in Canadian culture, including visual artist Patrick Bernatchez, musicians Lhasa de Sella and Patrick Watson, and Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin. She is currently partnered with the celebrated stop-motion duo of Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski in Clyde Henry Productions, and acts as the studio’s art director. Together, they’ve created, among others, Gymnasia, a VR experience that premiered at Tribeca in 2019, and the upcoming National Film Board of Canada animation, La jeune fille qui pleurait des perles.

Monique Simard is a producer and cultural manager with a long track record in the field of cultural businesses, particularly in the audiovisual sector. Appointed in 2024 by the Minister of Culture and Communications of Quebec, she is currently co-chair of the Working Group on the Future of Audiovisual (GTAAQ). From 2018 to 2010, she was a member of the Expert Group for the Review of Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislation (Yale Report). She is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Fonds Québecor as well as Chair of the Boards of Directors of the Partenariat du Quartier des Spectacles, the Quartier des Spectacles International and the Vitrine Culturelle. She sits on the boards of the Film Festival “Regards” and the Montreal Book Fair (Le Salon du livre de Montréal).

Monique Simard was a producer at Productions Virage (1998-2008), Executive Director of the French Program at the NFB - National Film Board of Canada (2008-2013) and then President and CEO of SODEC - Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (2014-2018).

Over the years, Monique Simard was notably one of the founders of the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal (RIDM) and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Cinémathèque Québécoise. She has been a member of juries at festivals several times and Honorary President of Sunny Side of the Docs in 2016. In 2017, she was named "Doc Mogul" at the Hot Docs Festival.

She is the recipient of numerous awards and honours including those of the Ordre des Arts et des lettres de la République Française (2017) and the Ordre de Montréal (2023).

After graduating in Film production at UQAM, Jean-Christophe founds h264 in 2015. He then cofounded Plein(s) Écran(s), the world’s first film festival to take place on Facebook. h264 diversified its activities and launched a new aggregation service offer in a will to improve the accessibility and the distribution on digital platforms. 2021 marks a new chapter for h264 by launching into feature film distribution following the acquisition of Fragments, with the aim of offering an innovative distribution model. Finally, h264 rolled out its international sales activities in 2023, supporting the international release of Red Rooms and Humanist Vampire.

Producer and president at Némésis Films, Dominique Dussault has over ten years of experience in film production. Her second fiction feature, Nadia, Butterfly, directed by Pascal Plante, was part of the Official Selection at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, and went on to screen at numerous international festivals, including Busan, Karlovy Vary, and was named to TIFF’s Top 10. Her most recent feature film, Red Rooms (Les chambres rouges), opened the 2023 Fantasia International Film Festival, where it won five awards, including the Cheval Noir for Best Film, and has since been sold in over 80 countries. In animation, she co-wrote and co-produced the short film La grogne, which premiered at the Sommets du cinéma d’animation in 2022 and won the Iris for Best Animated Short at the Gala Québec Cinéma.

Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre is a filmmaker and professor at Université Laval. Internationally recognized for her animated documentary films, she founded her production company in 2004. Her work explores motherhood, artistic creation and feminist struggles. A recipient of numerous awards, including two Jutra Awards and a Canadian Screen Award, she teaches research-creation and leads projects in feminist animation. She wrote the book Women and Animated Film: A Feminist Corpus at the National Film Board of Canada (2024). She is currently developing The Imaginary Museum, a fiction animated feature tracing the history of women through art.

Olivia is 8 years old and loves animals, especially the cute ones. She also loves funny stories and inventions, and to play with her imagination. The best movies are those where she finds a good mix of all these things!

My name is Frida and I'm 6 years old. I love watching movies; Totoro and Wallace and Gromit are my favorites, because they're so funny and full of adventure. I also love ice cream (especially pink!) and vacations. This is my first time on the jury of a film festival, and I'm really looking forward to seeing lots of cool movies!

Victor Grenier is a 7-year-old boy who loves to laugh. He’s passionate about comic books, especially when he’s the one creating them. With his friends, he has started three publishing houses through which he draws and tells his stories. He loves biking and ice cream.

Remi Hayward-Trouvé describes himself as “the electrical science guy”. When he's not taking electronics apart or reading comics, he can often be found helping his mom in the studio or beating his dad at Pokémon. He loves watching movies, especially in theaters. Among his favorites: Win or Lose, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The Bad Guys.

Eliot Shaw Legault doesn't have the head in the clouds. When it's time to imagine a new project, her lips follow her boots! Already bursting with creativity at the age of 6, she spends her days drawing, tinkering and inventing new stories for her comics. A film and video game fanatic, Eliot navigates between real and imaginary worlds, always on the lookout for a secret portal. Curious about technology and attentive to the issues of her time, she's already part of the new generation reinventing the world in her own way.