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Michele Assante
Born in 1992, Michele Assante’s first animated short “The Room” has received several national awards and commendations. He has a degree in classical literature and completed the foundation course in film directing at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC) in Rome. As a film journalist and radio writer, Michele is a recipient of the Best National College Radio Format award. He is currently taking an MA in animation at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples. In 2018, he began developing “Taleraiders” with Fabiana Fiengo, a cartoonist and concept artist at the Sergio Bonelli Editore comic book publishing house. The project was selected for Cartoon Media Springboard. Michele is now working at Mad Entertainment as 3D Generalist Artist.

Michele Assante & Fabiana Fiengo
Animator & Journalist
Coen Balkestein
With Knisper we connect and help cultivate the ideas of young and inspiring storytellers. Our main activities revolve around producing short animated films and commercials. Our next step is to produce an animated series.
In 2018, I graduated with a BA (With Honours) in animation. I have been selected as a Young Talent at Cartoon Movie 2019 as well as at Cartoon Springboard 2018. In addition, I won the Dutch Film Producer Award in 2018. Recently completed work includes “Speedy the Turtle”, “Relentless” and “Elayne & Mr. Grin” with the animated series “Mystery Delivery” and the projects “Wingman”, “Marc & the Fish” and “Extreme Badminton”, all in development.

Piotr Chmielewski
Piotr Chmielewski is an autodidact in animation, a PhD student in economics and holds a master’s degree in African studies. For the past several years, he has worked as a freelancer and creator of stop-motion animations for various NGOs in Poland and abroad. His favourite techniques are puppet and cut-out animation. He is a participant of Animation Sans Frontiéres 2018-19. His idea for the short film “Crab” has already received several awards including a Special Mention at the Visegrad Animation Forum, the Animation Sans Frontiéres Scholarship, the Piotr Kubiak Sound Studio Special Award, the Dragon Frame Award at the Animarkt Stop Motion Forum and the Ale kino+ Special Award.

Piotr Chmielewski & Julie Peitersen
DirectorJessica Drechsler
Director Jessica Drechsler was born in 1988 and studied communication design at the Design School Munich. She graduated in 2013 with the music video “Miles to Go” by the band Stateless. She then worked as a graphic artist before taking up studies at the Animation Institute of the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in 2014. Nina Schwarz is an animation and effects producer. She spent a year studying independent movie production at The New School in New York before starting to deepen her producer skills at the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg in 2014. Since she has always loved animated movies, she decided to specialise in the field of animation and VFX production.

Johannes Dreibach
Johannes Dreibach studied multimedia production and initially gained experience in live-action filmmaking, particularly in the field of production design. He then began focusing increasingly on animation and directed his first stop-motion short. Igor Medvedev holds a BA in communication design and has worked as a freelance animator and designer, chiefly in advertising. His first 2D short film earned him a We Love Design award. He is interested in art direction and blending different animation and illustration styles and techniques. Johannes and Igor met at the Film University Konrad Wolf in Babelsberg where they started working together and developing animated series – a field in which they both intend to work in the future.

Johannes Dreibach & Igor Medvedev
DirectorFabiana Fiengo
Born in 1992, Michele Assante’s first animated short “The Room” has received several national awards and commendations. He has a degree in classical literature and completed the foundation course in film directing at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC) in Rome. As a film journalist and radio writer, Michele is a recipient of the Best National College Radio Format award. He is currently taking an MA in animation at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples. In 2018, he began developing “Taleraiders” with Fabiana Fiengo, a cartoonist and concept artist at the Sergio Bonelli Editore comic book publishing house. The project was selected for Cartoon Media Springboard. Michele is now working at Mad Entertainment as 3D Generalist Artist.

Michele Assante & Fabiana Fiengo
Cartoonist & Concept ArtistIgal Kohen
Reynard is an anthropomorphic fox and trickster figure in allegorical German, French and English fables. In 2014, Katharina Weser and Georg Neubert joined the Atelier Ludwigsburg-Paris programme for young European producers and the idea for the Reynard Films production company was born. In January 2016, Reynard Films moved to Leipzig. The company specialises in short and feature-length films and web series and undertakes service productions in the MDM (Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung) funding region as well as producing its own projects. With the fox in its logo, Reynard Films is particularly interested in telling stories from the world of fairy tales, diving deep into surreal and magical kingdoms that can only exist in films and giving viewers time off from reality – which has been the task of the movies ever since day one.

Reynard Films
ProducerIgor Medvedev
Johannes Dreibach studied multimedia production and initially gained experience in live-action filmmaking, particularly in the field of production design. He then began focusing increasingly on animation and directed his first stop-motion short. Igor Medvedev holds a BA in communication design and has worked as a freelance animator and designer, chiefly in advertising. His first 2D short film earned him a We Love Design award. He is interested in art direction and blending different animation and illustration styles and techniques. Johannes and Igor met at the Film University Konrad Wolf in Babelsberg where they started working together and developing animated series – a field in which they both intend to work in the future.

Johannes Dreibach & Igor Medvedev
DirectorLaura Messner
Eliza: 9 years of diverse experience in animation - from directing stop-motion commercials to VFX for movies. Born in Poland, has lived in 11 cities from Norway to Mexico. MA in Hispanic Literature and March 2019 Diploma in Animation at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. Mum of the coolest kid - the 2-year-old Kuba.
Laura: Theater, media and film studies at the University of Vienna. After her Bachelor graduation from University Laura worked in a production company of the advertisement agency BBDO in Dusseldorf. Since 2017 she studies at the Filmacademy Baden-Wuerttemberg to become an Animation and Effects Producer.

Eliza Plocieniak-Alvarez & Laura Messner
ProducerMaria Virginia Moratti
Maria Virginia Moratti is an Italian animation director, artist and architect. She has a BA in architecture from the IUAV University of Venice and a BA in animation from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Eperimental Cinematography Center) in Turin. She graduated in 2018 with the film “The Eel – L’Anguilla”, upon which she worked as concept artist, animator and producer. She then started developing “Fili”, a short animated documentary about immigration, alongside studying Arabic and cultural anthropology at the University of Turin. She is currently taking an MA in immigration at the Ca’ Foscari Challenge School in Venice.
