Mod­er­a­tors & Chairpersons

Span­ish jour­nal­ist Rocio Ayu­so has been around the world, from Spain to Lon­don and Los Ange­les work­ing for Agen­cia EFE, Canal +, Fotogra­mas or Grupo Prisa. She cur­rent­ly writes for El Pais and Audio­vi­su­al 451 cov­er­ing enter­tain­ment and film indus­try. Author of sev­er­al books, she has also worked as pro­duc­er in ​“The Miss­ing Lynx” and ​“Extra­or­di­nary Tales”. Award­ed with the Inter­na­tion­al Media Award, she has served as juror or speak­er in Film Fes­ti­vals like Stuttgart, Ani­mayo, BIAF, BAM Talks or Annecy. She is also mem­ber of the Gold­en Globes and Pre­mios Plati­no. Ayu­so is grad­u­at­ed with a BA in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, an MA in Jour­nal­ism and a Doc­tor­ate in Psychology.

John Lomas-Bul­li­vant is the founder of Kick­back Media, a chil­dren’s and YA sto­ry­world pro­duc­er. Kick­back Media devel­ops high con­cept, genre based sto­ry­worlds for ani­ma­tion, live action and pub­lish­ing. Kick­backs first sto­ry­world, the ​“21% Mon­ster” tril­o­gy, writ­ten by PJ Can­ning, was pub­lished in July 2022.

Mar­ti­na Peš­taj is a media psy­chol­o­gist work­ing at the inter­sec­tion of children’s media, psy­chol­o­gy, and cul­ture. As Head of Children’s and Youth Pro­gramme at RTV Sloveni­ja, she is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in how dig­i­tal con­tent shapes young audi­ences, and she brings her psy­cho­log­i­cal exper­tise to cul­tur­al and arts edu­ca­tion projects in film, ani­ma­tion, and the­atre for chil­dren and youth.

Clé­mence is a free­lance film pro­gram­mer, cura­tor, and men­tor spe­cial­iz­ing in ani­ma­tion. With a back­ground in audio­vi­su­al footage preser­va­tion from INA and pro­duc­tion man­age­ment from Gob­elins, she has spent the past 15 years explor­ing the indus­try from mul­ti­ple angles. She has guid­ed emerg­ing tal­ents as a men­tor for CEE and inde­pen­dent­ly pro­duced the pod­cast Ani­ma­tion Hot­line. Deeply involved in the glob­al ani­ma­tion scene, she has con­tributed to major events (OIAF, FMX, Annecy), and more recent­ly, was the artis­tic direc­tor of the French Ani­ma­tion Film Fes­ti­val. She also man­aged the NiNoKo artist res­i­den­cy for The Ani­ma­tion Work­shop and curat­ed the World Expo Ani­ma­tion Res­i­den­cy in Osaka. 

Christophe launched and head­ed few kids chan­nels in Europe for CANAL+, CLT, Dis­ney & Nick­elodeon. He con­sult­ed for EBU, Ubisoft, Mage­lis a.o. and curates (CAR­TOON, APDs & Ven­tana Sur). He writes kids books, TV series (“Ella, Oscar & Hoo”) and movies and co-found­ed Godo Films (“Team Nuggets”, ​“Fleak” & ​“Alpha Two’s Dream Journey”).