Crew

Peter studied animation at the Film and Television Faculty, the Academy of Performing Arts (FTF VŠMU) in Bratislava. As part of the Erasmus programme, he studied at the Animation Film department at the RITCS in Brussels. He is the director and author of several short films and music videos, and his films Bird of Prey and tWINs have won many awards at international film festivals. After graduating in 2013, he founded his own production company and animation studio plutoon and began working on his debut feature film Journey to Yourland. In addition to working on films, his studio also produces television content, commercials, illustrations, and short films by other authors.

Katarzyna was born in Kłodzko, Poland, and studied at the Wajda School of Film. She is the director and author of film scripts and other literary forms, of which she has published two novels and one collection of poetry. Her films have been screened at many festivals around the world. Her films DEER BOY and FIGURE were selected for the competition section of the Sundance Festival. She is an alumna of Berlinale Talents, European Short Pitch (Grand Prix), and Torino Script Lab 2018 (special mention at the TFL Pitching Forum) and received a scholarship from the Polish Film Institute. She currently lives in Brussels and enjoys long walks.

Peter holds a degree from the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts - FAMU in Prague, Department of Production, and the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. He has worked in various areas of audiovisual - as a production manager, as a creative television producer, and as an independent film producer. He currently works as a producer for BFILM, a company based in Bratislava and Prague, where he produced the successful animated films Pandas (2013), awarded at the Cannes Film Festival and Annecy, Nina (2014), Stabilita (2015), and co-produced the Gottland documentary series (2014). In 2017, his feature film Filthy (directed by Tereza Nvotová), which premiered at the Rotterdam Festival and won several awards, including the Czech Film Critics Award 2017 and the Czech Lion for Best Editing, appeared in cinemas. As a co-producer, he participated in the short-animated film Untravel (2018), screened at the Berlin and Annecy festivals, as well as the German-Slovak film Freedom (directed by Jan Speckenbach), which was screened at the Locarno festival, and many others. In 2019, he presented the animated films The Kite at the Berlinale and SH_T HAPPENS in Venice and Sundance. In 2021, his films Martin and the Magical Forest premiered at the BUFF festival in Malmö and the co-production film My Sunny Maad at the Annecy festival. In 2018, he was selected among 20 European producers in the prestigious Producer on the Move programme. In addition to working as a producer, he teaches at the Department of Animated Film, FAMU in Prague, and also collaborates with the MIDPOINT Institute. He is a member of the Slovak Film and Television Academy (SFTA) and the European Film Academy.

Martin Hasák is a Slovak music composer specializing in music production for film, television, and theatre performances. He has been working as a composer since 2004 and produced music for five feature films and many television films, series, and theatrical productions. As part of his work, he has long been involved in animated films and many of his compositions are for children.

Petr Horák is a producer and director of animated films, a 3D specialist, and the owner and founder of Alkay Animation Prague studio. Since 1999, when he founded the studio, he has been continuously engaged in the production, directing, and production of short, feature, student, and professional animated films, series, television commercials, and other formats. The most well-known projects of the Alkay studio include the films My Sunny Maad, Lucky Four Serving the King, Great Adventure of the Lucky Four, and The Oddsockeaters. Many of the projects that Petr Horák worked on were awarded at international festivals.

Barbora Červenková studied dramatics at Charles University in Prague. At the beginning of her professional career, she worked for various theatres as a script editor. Later, she began to focus on film production and as a script editor and production manager she worked on several productions (Holiday Films, Jakubisko Film, Bio Illusion…). She has been working at the Alkay studio since 2019 and is in charge of managing and organizing all animated projects and coordinating the entire team of animators. In addition, as a freelancer, she also engages in other activities, whether authorial (dramaturgy, screenwriting) or production and administrative.

Josef Kasal is dedicated to CGI film and television production, especially in the field of character and models setup, retopology, and special effects, and also has professional experience with programming (Python, Maya MEL). Since 1994 he has been working at various companies, whether in the field of IT support and programming (AB Comp, AW Graph, CAD Studio) or in the field of film and television production, visual effects, and animation (Mirage, Eallin, Incognito, Alkay Animation Prague).

Radek Růžička has been involved in animation and animated films for more than 35 years. He started as an animator and layoutist in cartoons in the Bratři v Triku, Frame, and Animax studios and has been working in the Alkay Animation Prague studio since 2004. There, he specializes in 3D CGI, as well as 2D cartoons and series as a storyboard artist, layoutist, and animator (films The Oddsockeaters, Great Adventure of the Lucky Four, Lucky Four Serving the King, the series Three Piglets).

Václav Krejčí graduated in Film and Television Graphics - Studio Work from the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague. He graduated in 1999 with the authorial animated film In the Forest (V lese). After graduating, he worked as an animator, storyboard artist, and background designer for film studios, and designed props for film and theatre production. He likes to spend his time with painting, occasionally designs and makes dolls and collaborates on various animated projects. Since 2017 he has been working as a background artist for animated films at the Alkay Animation Prague studio.

Nero Demaerschalk is a 3D generalist and modeler and was the modeling supervisor for Journey to Yourland film. Nero has led the team in the Czech studio Alkay, where a large part of the models and textures were created. In addition to his creative work, his role was also the technical and communication connection between the Czech and Belgian studios and communication with the film's director.

Miguel Guerrero is a director and VFX artist and, in addition to his own filmmaking, he works for the post-production studio The Pack in Brussels. In the Journey to Yourland project, he started as a layout supervisor. During this period, Miguel and the film director set the language of the camera in our film and its overall rhythm. Miguel's work then continued at a later stage of production when he collaborated on the lighting of some sequences and compositing.

Douglas Boswell is a freelance editor from Belgium. He is one of the three editors of the Journey to Yourland film and worked on creation of the animatic – in this phase Douglas and the director shortened the film by 20 minutes, put reference music into the animatic and set the overall rhythm that we followed during production.

Alex Gaudiano is a compositing, VFX and 3D artist who has worked in several European countries and for various studios, as well as freelance, and currently lives and works in Portugal. As the finalizing supervisor of the Journey to Yourland film, he was in charge of a team of artists who, with the help of the Unity game engine, gave our project its final form – they took care of lighting, special effects, depth of field and were responsible for the final form of each shot in the pre-grading stage.

Jan Hameeuw is the owner and director of The Pack studio in Brussels. The Pack brings together several companies and organizations that work in different areas of audio-visual production. Jan is one of the producers of Journey to Yourland, but he also held other positions. He is one of the film's editors and a VFX supervisor. Jan also came up with the idea of using the Unity game engine in the production of the film, and his company developed the pipeline of our project.

Barbora Budinská produces animated films, videos and other animated content and is a co-owner of the plutoon animation studio operating in Bratislava. She is the creative and executive producer of Journey to Yourland and is also a co-author of the screenplay.

Céline works as an editor and post-producer in Brussels, Belgium. As production manager on Yourland, I was responsible for managing the day-to-day production and crew. I worked closely with the associate producers, the production manager of partner studio and the director while overseeing the schedules, deliverables and cost report to ensure the efficient completion of production. Smooth communication and organisation were my two key skills for this project.