President’s Letter
In September 2024, at Tirana International Film Festival, I was grateful and honored to have been elected President of the ICDA. I have big shoes to fill, following in the footsteps of Timka Grin (2020-2024), founder Beatrice Kruger (2018-2020), and founder Debbie McWilliams, who served as our first President when we were still under the auspices of European Film Promotion through 2018.
ICDA has made great strides in recent years, in terms of initiatives, partnerships, outreach and education. We now have members as far afield as Japan, South Africa, Argentina, India, North America and Australia, as well as a robust membership across most countries of Europe.
We are eager to bring together the world’s top casting experts to share resources, set professional standards, and raise awareness of our crucial role as heads of department. As we await the world’s first Academy Award for Best Casting—to be granted at last in 2026—ICDA will continue to advocate for casting directors, whose creative contributions to the art of filmmaking should not be underestimated.
Lana Veenker
President of the ICDA
2024-2026 Board of Directors
ICDA’s 2024-2026 Board of Directors was elected in September 2024, with Lana Veenker (USA) taking on the role of President, Jeremy Zimmermann (UK) as Secretary and Sofia Dimopoulou (Greece) as Treasurer. Advisory Board Members are Piotr Bartuszek (Poland), Mawuko Kuadzi (Ghana), Jemima McWilliams (UK), Donna Morong (USA), Anders Nygaard (Denmark) and Kolade Shasi (Nigeria/ UK) – in alphabetical order by last name.
From top left to right: Lana Veenker, Jemima McWilliams, Jeremy Zimmermann, Sofia Dimopoulou, Mawuko Kuadzi, Donna Morong, Anders Nygaard, Kolade Shasi and Piotr Partuszek,
Co-Founder’s Letter
When three individual Casting Directors from Spain, the UK and Italy were invited to speak about Casting at a Forum in Germany in 1994, little did we know that this would be the first step to what was to become the International Casting Directors Association (ICDA).
Photo 4: The New Faces workshop at the first European casting meeting. Left to right: Olle Westholm, Beatrice Kruger, Thomas Biehl, Jeanette Snik, Debbie McWilliams and Camilla-Valentine Isola.
All photos © Uwe Völkner/Fotoagentur FOX
Today, the overall ICDA goal continues to be what our colleagues in the US and UK have worked so hard to achieve: the recognition of the Casting Director as a Head of Department. Just as is the Costume Designer, the Director of Photography and the Art Director.
In order to achieve this goal, we need to be aware of and respect all our different cultures and histories, and how they may have conditioned us. This is an opportunity that you don’t get in an organisation that operates on a national level – to discover, grow together, make decisions and share responsibilities. And thereby to develop our very own ICDA identity: open, respectful and keen to collaborate with other countries and associations.
We look forward to working with you!
Beatrice Kruger
ICDA President 2018-2020
ICDA – the story so far
In 1994 film critic, former CEO of the NRW Film Foundation and later Director of the Berlin International Film Festival, Dieter Kosslick, invited international Casting Directors Debbie McWilliams (UK), Camilla Valentine Isola (ES) and Beatrice Kruger (IT) to the Media Forum in Cologne to speak about casting. The very first step towards what was later to become the International Casting Directors Association was taken.
Since then, we remained in touch, shared our experiences of casting in various countries, helped each other and started collaborating on co-productions.
Photo: Harald Fuhr / EFP / European Shooting Stars
As the Internet was not yet established, we met at the Berlin International Film Festival every year, in particular for the European Shooting Stars Awards, and this also started attracting more and more casting director colleagues from other countries.
In 2016, we decided to create an Award for Excellence in Casting, presented for the first time at the Locarno Film Festival.
Read more about the ICDA’s Award for Excellence in Casting
In the meantime, we also became independent of the EFP and officially founded the International Casting Directors Network (ICDN) as an international non-profit organisation based in Berlin in 2019. This then became the International Casting Directors Association (ICDA) on 1st January 2023.
We have a truly international board, currently consisting of 11 members. Our main focus is always to make our profession known in each of our members’ countries and promote the advantages of collaborating with a Casting Director to their respective directors and producers at film and TV festivals, film schools, theatre academies and industry events.
And now is a good moment for our profession, thanks to a few very important events, such as the recognition of a Casting Directors Branch at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, casting director Kim Taylor-Coleman becoming Vice President and Chair of the Equity and Inclusion Committee of the Board of Governors Elect at the Academy, the BAFTA for Best Casting, and the Academy Award for Best Casting to be awarded in 2026.
As always, casting is both a blessing and at times a slightly more challenging blessing.
There is still a lot to do and together we can do it – step by step!
