Kumjana Novak

Filmmaker, Audio-visual artist. Film Curator. Researcher. Originally born in Yugoslavia, Kumjana has worked in the field of film and arts since 2006.

Her formal education combines international relations, cultural and social research studies in Sofia, Sarajevo, Bologna and Amsterdam. In 2006 she co-founded the Pravo Ljudski Film Festival in Sarajevo, and acts as its chief curator and director. She was also leading the Film Department of the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Skopje from 2018 to 2021. As an author, her research lays between cinema and contemporary video art, often exploring how moving images address identities, memories and the collective self. Her last film Disturbed Earth (co-directed with G.C. Candi) has been nominated for Best Eastern European feature-length documentary by the Institute of Documentary Film in Prague. Her new audio-visual project traces women’s experiences of violence in wartime in former Yugoslavia and has been awarded with an art grant by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.

Currently she is an associated professor at Master of Film of the Netherlands Film Academy, while pursuing her PhD in Contemporary Arts and Media in Belgrade. Kumjana currently lives between Sarajevo and Skopje, North Macedonia.