AAFF Announces Jurors for the 64th Festival
- Ann Arbor Film Festival
- 8 minutes ago
- 2 min read
February 12, 2026
Left To Right: Sabine Gruffat, Elysa Wendi, and Jeremy Speed Schwartz
The Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF), the oldest experimental film festival in the world, is proud to announce the jurors for its 64th edition: Sabine Gruffat, Elysa Wendi, and Jeremy Speed Schwartz.
Together, this year’s jurors will confer nearly $40,000 in awards to filmmakers participating in the festival’s competitive programs. Throughout the festival, they will view all films in competition alongside audiences, engaging closely with the breadth of contemporary experimental cinema on screen.
In addition to their juror duties, each juror will present a free public program at the Michigan Theater Screening Room, offering festivalgoers a chance to encounter their work and curatorial perspectives more directly.
Sabine Gruffat
French-American artist Sabine Gruffat works across experimental, animation, and essay forms, with projects spanning single-channel films, installations, and performances. Born in Bangkok and now based in Marseille, France, her work examines the social and political implications of media, technology, globalization, and capitalism. Gruffat’s films have screened internationally at MoMA Documentary Fortnight, Cinéma du Réel, the Viennale, Transmediale, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival, among many others. She is also the co-founder and co-programmer of the Cosmic Rays Film Festival.
A program of Gruffat’s films, Beyond Resolution, will screen Wednesday, March 25 at 3:00 PM at the Michigan Theater Screening Room.
Elysa Wendi
Elysa Wendi is a filmmaker and artist-curator based between Hong Kong and Singapore. Her practice explores memory, movement, and auto-fiction through hybrid documentary, audiovisual essays, and choreographic film. Her work has received awards including Best Experimental Film at the South Taiwan Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Hong Kong ArtHouse Film Festival, and her recent film Room 404 screened in the Forum Expanded section of the 74th Berlinale. Wendi is the co-founder of Cinemovement and currently serves as festival curator for Jumping Frames—Hong Kong International Movement-image Festival.
Wendi will present Hybrid Motion, a curated program of collaborative dance films by artists from Singapore and Hong Kong, on Thursday, March 26 at 3:00 PM at the Michigan Theater Screening Room.
Jeremy Speed Schwartz
Animator, interactive artist, and historian Jeremy Speed Schwartz works at the intersection of abstraction, personal narrative, and playful engagements with science and mythology. A founding member of the League of Imaginary Scientists, his work has been presented at Sundance Film Festival, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and the Science Gallery, and has screened widely at animation and experimental film festivals worldwide. He is the co-author of the forthcoming A New History of Animation and an assistant professor of animation at Kennesaw State University.
Speed Schwartz will present Directions and Abstractions, a curated program featuring his own films alongside works by other artists whose practices resonate with his, on Friday, March 27 at 1:00 PM at the Michigan Theater Screening Room.
All juror programs are free and open to the public.
Passes for the 64th Ann Arbor Film Festival are on sale now at a discounted rate through February 28—check back on March 1 for the full festival lineup and get ready to grab tickets.
