Jan van Gorkum is a filmmaker and writer. He graduated as a filmmaker from the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU), where he studied Audiovisual Media.
He has directed and written several short films that have been screened at numerous festivals in the Netherlands and abroad and have regularly won awards. He is the founder and festival director of the Zuidelijk Film Festival in Tilburg.
Jan is interested to combine genres, but has a preference for black comedy, thriller, fantasy, and horror. He is currently working on his first feature film, Shiny New World
Zlatelina Tsokova is an animator, illustrator, and filmmaker with a Master’s degree in Animation from MIVC St. Joost in Den Bosch. She specialises in 2D animation, with a style that ranges from edgy, underground aesthetics to playful, child-friendly visuals, always shaped by the tone of the story. As she puts it: “Frame by frame, I play with life to sting your eyes with joy or terror.”
Her graduation film Tech Check is a short animated thriller exploring anxiety spiralling into an apocalypse. Alongside her practice, she wrote her master’s thesis Fear in Motion, focusing on psychological horror in animation and how fear can be visualised through movement. Following her graduation, she was selected for the Next Talent Program, where she is currently developing a new project inspired by folklore horror.
Her work is driven by an interest in the human condition, particularly how inner chaos shapes perception and reality. Drawing inspiration from horror, punk, anime, and philosophy, she explores tension, unease, and the boundaries between internal and external worlds.
She is especially interested in psychological horror as a way to externalise everyday anxieties, creating controlled yet intense emotional rollercoaster. For her, horror reflects what it means to be human and through animation, those fears can be made visible in ways that reality often cannot.
Nina Noël Raaijmakers is a body horror filmmaker who is captivated by the human body: our fleshy shell, a gateway to pleasure and pain. By intertwining social issues such as feminism and female body integrity in her fictional worlds, she tries to put her finger on society’s sore, inflamed spots. Nina was part of the Next talents program between 2023-2024.