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Yorkshire-born Clio Barnard is an award-winning artist and filmmaker whose work has been displayed in international film festivals and art galleries such as the Tate Modern and New York's MoMA. Barnard won widespread critical acclaim and multiple awards for her debut 'The Arbor' (2010) and was described as a significant new voice in British cinema for 'The Selfish Giant' (2013).

Bernardo Bertolucci was born in Parma in 1941. In 1961, he served as Pier Paolo Pasolini's first assistant director for 'Accattone'. The scandalous 'Last Tango in Paris' (1972) marked the beginning of a great success which continued with the historical epic 'The Last Emperor' (1987), winner of 9 Oscars. He has received a Cannes Palme d'Or d'Honneur, and full retrospectives at the BFI and New York's MoMA.

Catherine Breillat was born in France in 1948. She became famous not only for her distinctively personal films exploring issues of sexuality, gender conflict and sibling rivalry, but also for her best-selling novels. She has been the subject of controversy for her explicit depictions of sexuality and violence. Breillat's films are shown worldwide and have earned her numerous awards.

Born in New York but moving to Tel Aviv aged one, Rama Burshtein joined Orthodox Judaism at 25 and has since forged a fascinating career as a filmmaker studying the mechanics and relations within this community. Originally part of a collective of Orthodox Jewish women filmmakers who funded, produced, directed and wrote films for themselves, Burshtein spent 15 years working on her first feature 'Fill the Void' (2012). Like her subsequent feature 'Through the Wall', 'Fill the Void' unfolds around a wedding. But that's where any similarity between the films end. Her debut is a serious drama that plays out as an existential inquiry into the nature of human relationships. 'Through the Wall', by marked contrast, is a comedy that details the doubts and dramas that surround the lead-up to a wedding.

Born in 1957, Steve Buscemi worked as a New York firefighter before his breakout film role in Quentin Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs' (1992) as the criminal Mr. Pink. With his thin, weedy frame and bulging eyes, he often plays sleazy or mentally unstable characters, and thus became a favourite choice for many directors such as the Coen brothers and Jim Jarmusch. Buscemi's directorial debut was in 1996 with 'Trees Lounge'.