Meet The Programmers

Helene Stergiopoulou
Helene Stergiopoulou is a writer, film producer, and cultural worker working across film programming, development and production incorporating sustainability-driven practices. With an academic background in Political, Social, and Cultural Sciences, she approaches cinema as both an artistic and social medium. With over a decade of experience in international film production, festivals, and cultural events, she brings a multidisciplinary perspective that bridges storytelling, curation, and audience engagement. She has contributed to numerous films, TV series, commercials, Drama and Anafi International Film Festivals, with a focus on creating meaningful cinematic experiences that resonate across cultures.
An alumna of the Torino Green Film Lab and holds a certification in Circular Economy, actively advocating for environmentally conscious practices within the audiovisual sector. At Anafi Film Festival, she curates film programmes that explore the relationship between landscape, memory, and identity, often highlighting stories where nature becomes an intrinsic narrative force rather than a backdrop.
Artistically she explores intimate narratives inspired by memory, identity, minorities and the ways belonging and the self is constantly negotiated and expressed, seeking to create films that are both grounded and deeply evocative. Visually she is inspired by poetic realism — open landscapes, tactile textures, long takes, clouds, animals, and nature — gravitating towards an aesthetic of empathy, emotional sincerity, quiet tension and understated humour.

Tassos Mallios
Tassos Mallios is a festival worker and film curator based between Athens and Amsterdam and Athens. Prompted by his academic background in international politics and film theory, his work focuses primarily on themes of neocolonialism, counter-archiving, intersectionality, queerness and militantism - primarily across the short film format. He works in the programme and industry departments of several leading film festivals such as International FIlm Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and its Hubert Bals Fund (HBF), International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (TiDF), Drama International Short Film Festival (DISFF), Leiden Shorts and European Short Pitch. Moreover, he has collaborated with the content cluster of the European Commission's Creative Europe MEDIA Programme on SLATE, MINISLATE and CODEV initiatives. Last but not least, he has participated in several international talent development and professional training programmes, including Locarno Pro U30, the Thessaloniki Locarno Industry Academy, and the TSFM "What's The Story?" workshop at the International Short Film Festival of Cyprus. He has directed two student short films and is currently developing his upcoming short documentary.

Sarnt Utamachote
Sarnt Utamachote is a Southeast Asian nonbinary filmmaker and curator based in Berlin. Their work explores migration, community, archives, and queerness across film, visual art, and writing. Their ongoing exhibition In Nobody's Service has been presented at Galerie Wedding Berlin (2024), Thailand Biennale in Phuket (2025), and Goethe-Institut Southeast Asia's Dealing In Distance (2026), as well as a publication with the same name (BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE Publishing 2026). They co-curated Young Birds From Strange Mountains exhibition at the Schwules Museum Berlin (2025). Their short film I don't want to be just a memory (2024) premiered at the 74th Berlinale Forum Expanded. As part of founding team of Sinema Transtopia, they curate film programs such as The past is not another country, in collaboration with the German Film Museum Frankfurt, focusing on alternative approaches to film archives, notions of exile, diasporic communities, and political urgencies. Sarnt works as a film programmer for XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin, who celebrates the 20th anniversary in 2026, and Short Film Festival Hamburg, and is invited as guest programmer for CinemAsia Amsterdam and Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage 2026. They have also served as a jury member for festivals including Fantouche, MIX Copenhagen, and the London Short Film Festival. They are currently a fellow resident at Braunschweig Projects of HBK (2026–27).
Guest Curators

Raisa Desypri
Raisa is a transdisciplinary curator, artist, and researcher working across embodied curating, critical spatial practices, and community engagement. Her practice explores space, memory, and emotion through curatorial mediation, focusing on how public space fosters cultural and artistic commons.
She is part of various cultural projects, including the One Year Lease Residency, and is the founder of ASTRO, a creative archive and research collective.
Raisa holds a BA in History of Art and Visual Culture and an MA with distinction in Digital Media and Visual Anthropology from Goldsmiths College. She has curated several exhibitions in Athens, London, and Berlin, including Our Journey Continued, funded by the National Lottery Community Fund and Comic Relief. Other exhibitions have featured in 48H Neukölln, VORSPIEL Festival, and Transmediale’s event series.
Born in 1992, she lives and works between London and Berlin.

Katerina Markoulaki
Based in Athens, she studied Political Science (BA, National Kapodestrian University of Athens) and Documentary Film (MA, Aegean University). Her work have been included in the programming of several film festivals in Greece and abroad: Syros International film Festival, , In situ realities: Eleusina Cultural Capital of Europe 2023, Chania International Film Festival , Vizantrop Engaged Ethnographic Film Festival, Mimesis doc Film Festival, Balkan Can Kino Film Symposium, State of Concept, El paso, το οχτώ/ Εight. Her film Homage to summer, has been awarded with the best Intercultural Cinema Award, at the Video Poetry Symposium (USA) 2020. She took part in Jihlava International Documentary Festival Academy 2025.
While working on film and visual arts, she also collaborates with institutes, museums and artists- run spaces, around Greece, on educational seminars and workshops on observational and essay film-making. (Iliopoulos Museum, Vorres Museum, Anafif, Ntizeza community space, Little Islands Residency, Anoixta Pania Contemporary Art festival) She is proudly member of cinema collective OXTHES (ATH) and ASTRO creative archive and cultural research collective (GE/UK/GR)
