Meet the CIRCLE 2026 cohort
Rama Abdy (Syria)
Director
Rama Abdi is a Director of Photography, editor, and independent director from Damascus, Syria. She directed her first short documentary Fish Dance in 2022, which premiered at the 7ème Lune festival in Paris. In 2023, she made Biophilia, which won Best Environment and Climate Short Film at Berlin Kiez Film Festival. She is currently working on her first feature, House No. 7.
Sophie Ataya (Germany)
Director
Sophie is a German–Palestinian filmmaker based in Berlin. She holds a degree in Middle Eastern Studies and studied documentary directing at filmArche. From 2015–2017, she led a mobile storytelling project with the Goethe-Institut in Palestine and Lebanon. An alumna of the Atelier Ludwigsburg–Paris programme at La Fémis, Filmakademie, and NFTS, she co-produced Let's Call It Love (Max Ophüls 2025). Her work explores post-migrant identity and belonging. Who We Are is her debut feature documentary.
Sara Geurtsen (Germany)
Producer and writer
Sara Geurtsen is an organizer in the immigrant rights movement with close ties to the community, and over 20 years of experience fighting for migrant rights as well as working in film, studios, film festivals, and television, including managing multinational distribution partnerships at AMC Networks and Discovery. Her documentary, Duke-Carolina: The Blue Blood Rivalry, has been distributed by AMC Networks since 2013. She holds an MBA from Duke University, and multiple degrees from Virginia Tech.
Ida Grøn (Denmark)
Director
Ida Grøn is a Danish documentary filmmaker educated at the National Film and Television School (UK) with a BA in Art History (DK). Working between documentary cinema and film poetry, she explores sensory perception and human connection. Her feature documentary Stay Behind – My Grandfather’s Secret War (CPH:DOX 2017) established her poetic approach. The Kid and the Clown (IDFA, Hot Docs) and War Poem (OFF 2023) screened internationally. She is currently developing two DFI-supported feature documentaries and co-founded Purple Pictures in 2025.
Beatrice Leong (Malaysia)
Director and producer
Beatrice Leong is a Malaysian documentary filmmaker and gender-disability activist working across storytelling, policy and narrative justice. Diagnosed autistic in adulthood after psychiatric and medical injustice, she uses film to reclaim what was silenced and connect with those left out. She serves on the advisory board of the Disability Justice Project. The Myth of Monsters, her first feature documentary, explores motherhoods, silence and what it means to belong.
Diana-Elena Munteanu (Romania)
Director
Diana Elena Munteanu (b. 1989, Brașov, Romania) is a filmmaker working between documentary and fiction. She graduated from UNATC “I.L. Caragiale” in Bucharest and continued her studies at La Fémis in Paris. Her short films have screened at international festivals including Cannes, Entrevues Belfort, Silhouette Paris, Astra Film Festival etc. Through cinema, she explores the intersections of personal memory, social structures and inherited histories. The Digs is her first documentary feature film.
Maja Prettner (Slovenia)
Director
Maja Prettner holds an M.A. in Film Directing from the Ljubljana Academy. She is a Berlinale Talent Campus alumna. Her awarded film Home Sweet Home was followed by documentary feature Woman of God, which premiered at Hot Docs and screened at Torino FF, Trieste FF, Zagrebdox and others, winning the Al Jazeera Documentary Balkan Star Award, FIPRESCI, Best Editing and Audience Awards. She also writes and directs documentary and fiction series for television.
Piano Primrin (Thailand)
Director and writer
Piano Primrin is a Thai documentary filmmaker whose work explores environmental contamination, political activism, and personal experience through observational storytelling. Her short film Mountain of Trash received an Honorable Mention at the IF/Then Global Shorts Pitch at IDFA 2019, while The Cost of Freedom won Best International Short Documentary at the Chain NYC Film Festival in 2023. She is currently developing her first feature documentary, A Journey to the Universe.
Marta Smerechynska (Ukraine)
Director
Marta Smerechynska is a Ukrainian documentary filmmaker educated in KNUTKiT in Kyiv, La Fémis in Paris, and the DocNomads Master’s in Portugal, Hungary, and Belgium. Her films have traveled widely across film festivals, including Visions du Réel, Sarajevo FF, and Docudays UA. Marta`s debut feature follows a reconnection with her nun sister in a remote monastery in the West of Ukraine. Recent works focus on her friends’ frontline experience and displacement caused by the war.
Dea Tcholokava (Georgia)
Director
Dea Tcholokava is a Georgian filmmaker with a background in political science and filmmaking in Georgia and Germany. Her latest short film, What Does the Mud Whisper, has screened at international festivals. She has directed films for the Caucasian media platform Chai Khana, including Traffic Diary and Of Kids and Sea, and worked as an editor and assistant director with filmmakers Lana Gogoberidze, Tato Kotetishvili, and Bakur Bakuradze. In 2025, she became a fellow of the Documenta Archive and Goethe-Institut.
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