By Film Industry Watch and Kosovar Film Industry Insiders

For years, Kosovo’s film sector has celebrated rapid international success. That rise is funded in large part by public money administered by the Kosovo Cinematography Center (KCC). At the same time, DokuFest, the country’s most prominent festival, has evolved beyond curation into training and production through DokuLab.

Taken together, public records show a tight professional network in which festival leaders also appear in KCC decision-making roles while DokuFest-linked filmmakers receive KCC support. None of this is unusual in small markets. The question is transparency: when roles converge inside a publicly funded ecosystem, how are conflicts identified, managed and disclosed? 

Since 2023, Kosovo’s publicly funded film sector has experienced substantial shifts. Under new leadership at the Kosovo Cinematography Center (KCC), the country has issued three major funding cycles: Spring 2024, an unprecedented Feature-Only call in December 2024, and a full Spring 2025 call.

All three took place within a compressed regulatory period and under the same leadership.

Across these cycles, public records show a constellation of relationships between KCC decision-makers, DokuFest/DokuLab leadership, and a group of repeat beneficiaries whose collaborations, training roles, and festival ties significantly overlap.

None of these connections imply wrongdoing. But the patterns raise structural governance questions familiar to FIW readers: issues of transparency, recusal, and the management of alleged or perceived conflicts of interest in public funding. Similar dynamics have surfaced in FIW’s reporting on Greece’s Film Center, the Cannes Factory model, and governance disputes tied to London and Sundance, where reputational damage and creative stagnation often follow opaque decision-making.

1. KCC leadership and DokuFest/DokuLab: overlapping institutional roles:

Based on official KCC publications, DokuFest/DokuLab materials, and training program listings, the following overlaps are publicly documented:

Eroll Bilibani

• Chair of the KCC Board (appointed 2025)
• Long-time DokuFest executive
• Head of DokuLab
• Trainer in multiple DokuLab programs
• Several filmmakers he trained or collaborated with are beneficiaries in the 2024–2025 cycles

Nita Deda

• Member of the KCC Board (appointed 2025)
• Director of DokuFest (2016–2020)
• Co-curator of DokuNights 2025 with filmmaker Leart Rama, a four-time beneficiary
• Former producer of a short film by Rama

Blerta Zeqiri

• Director of KCC (appointed 2023)
• Former DokuLab lecturer whose training cohorts include multiple later KCC-funded filmmakers
• Entered office before the regulatory changes governing the 2024–2025 calls

Veton NurkollarI

• Artistic Director of DokuFest
• Member, KCC Film Certification Board 
• Past juror on KCC feature-film panels
• Professionally overlaps with several funded filmmakers
  

These overlaps do not imply misconduct. However, as FIW has noted in similar cases involving public film bodies problems arise when roles converge without published recusal procedures.

2. Repeat beneficiaries across 2024–2025: a concentrated cluster

Across Spring 2024, the Dec 2024 Feature-Only call, and Spring 2025, KCC’s own lists show that a small, interconnected group of filmmakers appear repeatedly as winners-often in collaboration with each other, often tied to DokuFest/DokuLab, and often working with the same producers, editors, or crew.

Below is a non-exhaustive summary based on public documents.

A. Leart Rama – director/producer

• Spring 2024: Short Film + Post-production
• Dec 2024: Feature Film
• Spring 2025: Feature Documentary
  
  Documented ties:
• DokuLab alumnus → later lecturer
• Seasonal collaborator with DokuFest
• Earlier short produced by Nita Deda (now KCC board member)
• Co-curator of DokuNights 2025 with Deda

B. Samir Karahoda – director/producer

• Spring 2024: Project Development
• Spring 2025: Feature Film
• Spring 2025: Short Film (producer)
  
  Ties:
• Short Film Programmer at DokuFest
• Collaborates repeatedly with beneficiaries in cinematography, editing, and production
• DP or collaborator on multiple cluster films

C. Valmira Hyseni – producer

• Spring 2024: Post-production
• Dec 2024: Feature Film
• Spring 2025: Script Development
  
  Ties:
• Line producer for Karahoda
• Producer for Rama’s Dec 2024 feature
• Production involvement with Gjinovci, Hasanaj and others

D. Ilir Hasanaj – producer/director

• Spring 2024: Feature Documentary
• Spring 2025: Avant-garde Feature Film
  
  Ties:
• Collaboration with Dea Gjinovci
• Member of the same production cluster

E. Dea Gjinovci – director / KCC jury member

• Spring 2024: Feature Documentary
  
  Ties:
• Lecturer at DokuLab
• Juror in 2025 for Short Film & Feature Documentary
• Worked with Karahoda, Hasanaj, and others

F. Edon Rizvanolli – Director/producer

• Spring 2024: Short Documentary
• Spring 2025: Feature Film
  
  Ties:
• DP work by Karahoda
• Film edited by Enis Saraci

G. Enis Saraci – Editor / Director

• Spring 2025: Short Film (director)
  
  Ties:
• Editor for all Karahoda films
• Editor for Rizvanolli
• Lecturer at DokuLab
   

Such concentrated clusters resemble patterns FIW has documented in other countries where mentorship pipelines, festival platforms and public funding bodies merge into a single influence sphere, often reducing diversity of artistic voices.

3. The institutional → beneficiary → collaborator pipeline

Public documents and the Interconnection Matrix provided by sources illustrate a repeating cycle:

1. DokuLab trains filmmakers (often taught by individuals later involved in KCC governance or juries)
2. Filmmakers apply to KCC
3. KCC leadership includes DokuFest/DokuLab executives
4. Filmmakers with prior ties to the festival/lab become repeat beneficiaries
5. Their collaborators (producers, editors, DPs) also become beneficiaries
6. Films are supported or platformed by DokuFest

FIW has reported similar dynamics in other European markets where a “festival–training–funding loop” results in structural barriers for outsiders and lowers creative pluralism-a concern echoed in FIW’s analyses of Cannes Factory, Cannes Critics’ Week pipelines, and several CI-cluster cases in Central Europe.

4. Public posts reinforce the perception of a close ecosystem

Public posts show:

• Nita Deda (KCC board) co-curating DokuNights 2025 with Leart Rama (four-time beneficiary)
• KCC posting promotional content for films made by cluster collaborators
• DokuFest providing support for films whose crew also secured KCC funds
• Overlapping appearances of the same individuals across premieres, labs, workshops, and festival side-events
   

These public interactions do not imply misconduct. However such overlaps can erode public trust even when all actions are lawful.

5. Core governance questions

The concerns raised here are structural, not personal. They reflect patterns FIW has documented across Europe, where revolving doors, lack of recusal transparency, and insular influence networks can contribute to declining industry credibility and narrower artistic output.

Key public-interest questions include:

1. Recusal & disclosure
• Were alleged conflicts of interest recorded when board members or jurors evaluated submissions from collaborators, trainees, or festival colleagues?
• Are recusal logs published?

 2. Transparency of evaluation
• Does KCC publish full applicant lists, jury rosters, scoring sheets, evaluation comments, and rationale for funding decisions?

 3. Cooling-off periods
• Should individuals with active festival, training, or production roles be temporarily restricted from evaluating or awarding funds to recent collaborators?

 4. Institutional firewalls
• What safeguards ensure that festival involvement does not create preferential treatment for certain applicants?

6. What would clarify the situation immediately

To shift discussion from perception to verification, FIW recommends that KCC publish the following for each call (2024–2025):

• Signed conflict-of-interest declarations
• Full juror and committee lists, with appointment dates
• Recusal logs and meeting minutes
• Complete applicant lists
• Scores, comments, and written rationales
• Grant amounts and final decisions
• Annual festival-support contracts, including DokuFest partnerships

Right of Reply

KCC, DokuFest, and all named individuals or companies are invited to reply. FIW will publish corrections, clarifications, or full statements in full or in relevant part. If any information is incomplete or inaccurate, we welcome official documentation and will amend the article promptly.

Share documents securely

FIW accepts confidential submissions, including:

• recusal logs
• jury score sheets
• meeting minutes
• internal correspondence
• festival partnership contracts

Legal Notice:

This article is based solely on publicly available information and documents provided by sources.
It reports verifiable facts and raises questions of alleged structural or perceived conflicts of interest in a publicly funded environment.
No allegation of illegal conduct is made. All persons and institutions are presumed to have acted lawfully and in good faith unless shown otherwise. FIW will update this report if credible corrections or official statements are provided.

Sources:

(All sources are public and were used to verify names, roles, film credits, funding results and institutional links.)

• KCC official funding results (Spring 2024)
• KCC Feature-Only call results (Dec 2024)
• KCC funding results (Spring 2025)
• Interconnection Matrix (DokuFest/KCC links)
• DokuFest “People” pages & DokuLab training program listings
• Public Instagram posts documenting DokuNights co-curation
• KCC Facebook communications regarding film premieres and festival support
• Public statements, festival credits, and press releases

FIW prior reports on:

• Greece Film Center conflicts & payment delays
• Cannes Factory structural overlaps
• Cannes Critics’ Week influence networks
• London Film Festival governance concerns
• Sundance selection pipeline dynamics
  

The post Inside Kosovo’s Film Funding Loop: The Same People Train, Curate, Judge – and Win first appeared on Film Industry Watch.

The Israeli film industry likes to talk about diversity, bold voices and creative risk. On paper, it is a vibrant scene. In reality, it is a tiny, self-reinforcing circuit of insiders who teach one another, fund one another, program one another, and then review one another’s work in the press.

Two recent reviews in the mainstream outlet Ynet, both written by the same critic and both praising films by his own colleagues at Tel Aviv University’s film department, reveal just how tight and self-referential that loop has become.

This is not an isolated anecdote. It fits neatly into decades-long pattern that FIW has already documented in detail in our report “ISRAEL: Decades Long Alleged Corruption at the Rabinowitz & Gesher Film Funds”: alleged revolving doors, readers who are also beneficiaries rotating between the two, overlapping festival juries and filmmakers, and public money circulating inside the same small circle of people. What we’re seeing now with academic critics and their colleagues is simply another branch of the same tree.

Case 1: “Nana Dauri” – the review that quietly admits the conflict, but only at the end of the review

The first example is “Nana Dauri” (“נאנדאורי”), directed by Eti Tsiko. Tsiko is a faculty member at the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University. The critic who reviewed her film on Ynet, Shmulik Duvdevani, is also a faculty member at that same film school. He gives the film a glowing four-star review.

Buried towards the end of the piece he adds a casual aside: a brief “גילוי נאות” (“disclosure”) that they are colleagues at the university. For most readers, it’s a throwaway line. For anyone who cares about governance, it’s a red flag. A meaningful disclosure would be:

• placed at the top of the article, not hidden in the body towards the end of the review and
• ideally explaining why the critic chose to review a colleague’s film in the first place.

That doesn’t happen here. The conflict is “technically” acknowledged, but practically neutralized. Worse, this is not the only overlap. According to the Jerusalem Film Festival’s own publications, Tsiko also serves on the festival’s International Programming Committee. In other words, she is a gatekeeper at one of Israel’s major festivals, where her own films (in plural) compete and win.

Taken together – the hidden-in-plain-sight disclosure, the shared academic affiliation, the glowing review, and the programming role at the same festival where the film is rewarded – the structure is hard to ignore. This is not an open field, it’s a closed loop.

Case 2: “Kvish HaSArgeL” – when there isn’t even a disclosure

If the first case could be dismissed as a one-off lapse, the second one makes that impossible. On 2 February 2025, Ynet published another raving, four-star review by the same critic, Shmulik Duvdevani. This time, the subject was “Kvish HaSargel” (“כביש הסרגל”), a feature by Maya Dreifuss. Dreifuss is also a filmmaker and also a faculty member in the same Tel Aviv University film department. In this review, there is no disclosure at all. No mention of the fact that critic and director share the same institutional home. No hint that the review is of a colleague’s film. To the reader, it appears as purely independent judgment. To anyone looking at the structure, it is anything but.

When a critic reviews one colleague and buries the conflict in the end of the text, then reviews another colleague from the same department with no disclosure whatsoever – and both reviews are emphatically positive – what you have is not a coincidence. You have a pattern. And that pattern sits in a broader ecosystem FIW has already chronicled: a system where the same small number of people cycle through roles as project readers, fund beneficiaries, festival jurors, programmers, union heads who receive funding as directors, fund CEOs handing money to business partners, and now academic reviewers. It is an ecosystem designed to reward people already inside it.

The Israeli Film Club, Where Only Members are allowed In

From funds to festivals to film schools, the Israeli film industry operates as one small club. In our long-form investigation “ISRAEL: Decades Long Alleged Corruption at the Rabinowitz & Gesher Film Funds”, FIW documented:

• alleged revolving doors between film funds and the Israeli Film Council,
• readers who simultaneously evaluated scripts and received financing from the same funds,
• festival jurors whose own films were in competition at those festivals,
• fund CEOs and artistic directors allegedly intervening in funding rounds,
• and a disproportionate share of public money flowing to a small cluster of producers and companies.
• That report showed how public film funds can become self-serving machines: a handful of decision-makers allegedly shaping what gets made, who gets financed, and who gets shut out – year after year.
  
  Now add to this:
• university departments where key faculty direct films,
• critics at major outlets who are drawn from the same departments,
• faculty who sit on festival programming or guest roles,
• and those festivals serving as the main platform for “serious” Israeli cinema.

What we see now with Tel Aviv University, Ynet, and the Jerusalem Film Festival is the same logic in a different corner of the system. The critic doesn’t just happen to like two films. He is embedded in the same institutional network as their directors. One of those directors is also a programmer at a major festival. That festival, like others, has a documented history of overlapping jurors and filmmakers, including one who has been mentioned on the site multiple times in relation to other conflicts of interests. The funds feeding the industry have documented allegations of revolving doors between evaluators and beneficiaries.

At some point, we should stop calling this “unfortunate optics” and start calling it what it structurally is: a closed, self-congratulatory circle of a small group constantly validating, rewarding and amplifying one another, while presenting the result as objective merit and open competition.

What this means for anyone outside the circle

For filmmakers who did not study in the “right” school (there are only two of them), did not pass through the “right” labs, did not work for the funds, did not intern at the festivals, and do not share offices or corridors with the critics – in other words, not part of the circle – the message is clear: you are not really part of Israeli cinema’s inner ring. If you are an outsider – someone who didn’t pass through this network of film schools, funds, festivals, and media – your chances of breaking in are tiny. You are competing not just with other films, but with an entire web of institutional loyalties and mutual dependencies. And as our readers from Israel have told us repeatedly, this does not just shape who gets reviews or festival slots – it shapes who gets money, who gets distribution, who gets prizes, and ultimately, who gets to have a career.

Why disclosure and recusal are the absolute minimum

This is why disclosure is not a technicality. It is the bare minimum of honesty. A critic must tell readers when:

• they review a colleague’s work,
• they share an employer or department,
• they’ve worked with the filmmaker in another capacity.

A festival must tell audiences when:

• programmers have films in competition,
• jurors are connected to participating films,
• funders and decision-makers hold overlapping institutional roles.

Public funds must be transparent about:

• who reads,
• who decides,
• who sits on councils,
• and who receives the money.

Israel’s film ecosystem consistently fails on multiple points. The two Ynet reviews are simply the most visible, easy-to-understand examples.

Israel’s film institutions could take immediate steps to restore trust:

• Require prominent disclosures in all reviews where critic and filmmaker share an institutional home.
• Prohibit festival programmers from participating in competitions where their own films are present, or require full removal and transparent recusal.
• Publish the names and roles of festival committees, funds’ readers, and council members, along with their industry connections.
• Establish term limits and cooling-off periods for key roles in film funds and councils, as FIW has already recommended in relation to the Rabinowitz and Gesher funds.
• Treat conflicts of interest as a design problem, not an inconvenience.

None of this would prevent good films from being made. It would simply let audiences believe that when a film is praised or funded, it is because of what is on the screen – not who the director shares a coffee machine, a classroom, or a committee with.

Right of Reply

Tel Aviv University, Ynet, the Jerusalem Film Festival, the Rabinowitz Foundation, the Gesher Fund, and the individuals named in this article are invited to respond. FIW will publish clarifications or statements in full or in relevant part. All information in this report is based solely on publicly available records and materials submitted by readers. No allegation of unlawful conduct is made. All parties are presumed to have acted in good faith unless proven otherwise.

Share Information Securely – Confidential Submissions Are Welcome

FIW relies on filmmakers, insiders, students, and cultural workers who are willing to share what institutions prefer to keep quiet. If you have information about:

• undisclosed overlaps,
• film fund practices,
• festival juries and programming,
• academic–industry ties,
• or any other structural issues in Israeli cinema,
  

we encourage you to contact us – anonymously if necessary. We do not collect IP addresses or technical identifiers. You can submit securely at: https://filmindustrywatch.org/contact/

The post Friends Reviewing Friends: Conflicts of Interest in Israeli press & Cinema first appeared on Film Industry Watch.