2025 COMPETITION SELECTION COMMITTEE
BEAST’s 2025 Open Call is closed. The festival presents this year’s Competition Selection Committee:
ALEXANDRU PONORAN
A core member of the BEAST IFF team since its first edition in 2017, Alexandru is the eye behind the festival’s aftermovies and trailers, capturing the pulse of each edition. A film school graduate from Romania and now a Lisbon-based freelance video editor, he excitedly joins the selection committee for the first time, bringing his cinematic sensibility to this year’s fiction lineup.
CÁTIA RODRIGUES
Cátia Rodrigues (Porto, 1995) is a film programmer, critic, and philosophy teacher. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Artistic Studies at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Nova University of Lisbon. Cátia holds a degree in Philosophy from the University of Porto (2020) and a Master’s in Aesthetics and Artistic Studies (2023), with a dissertation titled The Gesture of Showing in Abbas Kiarostami: An Analysis Based on Wittgenstein and Agamben. She works as a film programmer for the Curtas Vila do Conde IFF and BEAST IFF and has been curating the Mostra de Primeiras Curtas at Livraria Térmita (Porto) since 2021. Additionally, she is a member of the editorial board of La Furia Umana, a journal dedicated to cinema theory and history. She was also an editor for the site Krino Ifilnova. She has published in À Pala de Walsh, Krino Ifilnova, La Furia Umana, Aniki – Revista Portuguesa da Imagem em Movimento, among others.
LEANDER MERESAAR
Leander Meresaar (Estonia) is an Animator and film maker.
BIANCA STANEA
Bianca Stanea (Romania) is a cultural manager, activist, and artist currently based between Porto, Berlin, and Bucharest. She is involved with OKNA – Espaço Cultural and BEAST – International Film Festival, mostly immersed in the chaos of event production. She is particularly drawn to the intersection of documentary film and visual arts as a way of exploring social issues. She also writes poetry and personal essays—intimate windows into nostalgia, longing, and the strange beauty of growing up in the messy 2000s.
RITA MARINHO
Rita Marinho (Portugal) is a curator and producer of cultural events. She has a degree in Art History from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto and a master’s degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto in Art Studies – Museological and Curatorial Studies. In 2018/2019 she did an internship at the FBAUP Museum where she curated and assembled exhibitions, as well as researched the Museum’s own collection, focussing on its female artists. Her areas of study focus mainly on the relationship between social minorities (specifically women and members of the LGBTQ+ community) and the fields of artistic production, art history and exhibition curation.
ANDREI ALECSANDRU
Andrei Alecsandru (Romania) is a multidisciplinary visual artist with an education in Graphics, operating in the fields of printmaking, experimental graphics and paper production, video-art, sound and alternative photographic processes, among others. Currently, he is a lecturer in Graphic Arts, part-time curator and graphic designer. He is part of various cultural projects teams, ranging from visual arts, performance and film.
EMA LAVRADOR
Ema Lavrador (Portugal) is an artist and researcher based in Porto. She holds a master’s degree specializing in Computer Animation from the School of Arts of Universidade Católica Portuguesa. In both her research and artistic practice she explores different media, working mainly with photography, live-action and animation cinema.
MONA SHIRIN
Shirin is a Romanian DJ based in Lisbon who loves bringing energy and joy to the dancefloor. Her sound blends acid-psychedelic grooves and uplifting tech-house beats.
