JURY DUTY
Join us at the Sydney Underground Film Festival's Awards Ceremony on Sunday 15th September, at 6:30pm, just before our epic closing night film, SCALA!!! This is your chance to celebrate the daring and innovative voices that have defined this year's festival. Awards will be presented by Andrew Leavold on behalf of the jury.
Don't forget: you can also make your voice heard by voting in our Audience Choice Awards in person at the festival!
MEET THE 2024 JURY
Amiel Courtin-Wilson
Alexandra Fredricks
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Andrew Leavold
Nadine Whitney
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Joshua Belinfante
One of the most influential Australian directors of his generation, Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s films have screened at Sundance, Cannes and his first two narrative features premiered at Venice (HAIL, 2011 and RUIN which won the Special Jury Prize in 2013). His feature documentary work includes CHASING BUDDHA and BASTARDY which won the Australian Directors' Guild Award for Best Documentary in 2009.
Amiel is also a visual artist and his moving image work has shown at Museums including The Whitney (THE SILENT EYE, 2016) as well as winning the National Portrait Museum Moving Image portrait Prize (CHARLES, 2016). Amiel recently co-produced and co-wrote the narrative feature WARM BLOOD and was an Executive Producer on STRANGE COLOURS (Venice, 2017) FRIENDS AND STRANGERS (Rotterdam 2021), SONG OF ALL ENDS (Rotterdam 2024) and FLATHEAD (Winner Jury Prize Rotterdam, 2024).
Most recently Amiel directed and produced the feature documentary MAN ON EARTH which won Best Documentary at the 2023 Film Critics Circle Awards and he is currently completing a feature doc about actor Caleb Landry Jones.
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Enthusiastic about functioning as a bridge between creators, industry, and audiences — Alexandra Fredricks handles Non-Theatrical Distribution and International Sales at Oscilloscope Laboratories. She has over 15 years of international experience in film exhibition organizations and festivals in New York, Qatar, Canada, Australia and The Netherlands; and regularly serves on festival Jury and Screening Committees.
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Andrew Leavold is a Queensland-based filmmaker, SUFF alumnus (The Search For Weng Weng, Pub: The Movie), writer, B-film historian, former Trash Video owner, failed musician, and currently on a Film Safari around all corners of the globe, starting with a Ghanaian midget kung fu remake of The Harder They Come...
Nadine Whitney is an film critic who works at the intersection of consumer reviews and academic writing. She is the co-chair of The Australian Film Critics Association, a Rotten Tomatoes accredited critic, a Golden Globes Voter, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, GALECA, and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.
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Dr Joshua Belinfante is a Sydney-based Australian Polish filmmaker and SUFF alumni who has created short films, music videos, stop motion animations and feature documentaries. Joshua has crewed on TV series for Discovery, Nat Geo, SBS, Channel 9 & ABC. Joshua’s debut feature documentary about people striving to be the world’s best at their passions, ‘The World’s Best Film’ was screened at over 20 film festivals including SUFF and premiered on SBS between 2021-2023. Joshua runs the boutique production company Finesilver Media with recent clients including Genesys Cloud, Camus Cognac, Seiko, Adobe, and Sonos. Joshua has taught filmmaking since 2011 at many universities; NIDA, USYD, UON, UTS, ACIJ, NYFA Sydney & Gold Coast, SFS, SAS, JMC and Excelsia College.... And obsessed with underground cinema, Svankmajer and Jodorowsky!​​​​
