GUESTS (2024)

Agnieszka Drewno has a degree in journalism from the University of Warsaw. She has been a professional broadcaster at the Polish National Radio for 20 years. She completed a postgraduate degree in film production at the Łódź Film School and, together with Piotr Kobus, formed the production company Mañana. His films have received several international awards, including the Silver Bear at the Berlinale (United States of Love). He directs the Spanish Film Week in Poland and is also a member of the European Film Academy.

Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, born in Barakaldo, Bizkaia, is a director and scriptwriter. She holds a degree in English Philology from the Deusto University and Audiovisual Communication from the UPV.

She graduated in Film Directing at the ECAM. Her final project was the short film "Clases Particulares" (2005), which won her numerous awards.

She has developed her work as a filmmaker and director in parallel with her work in advertising. In 2012 she founded her own production company: Igloo Films, and has directed campaigns for, among others, Toyota, Coca-Cola, Samsung, Once, Mapfre and BBVA.

Her short films have won a multitude of awards, especially "They Say" (Dicen, 2011), which was selected for more than 160 festivals, receiving 50 awards.

In 2021 she wrote and directed her debut feature film "Cinco Lobitos", winner of numerous awards.

Alexandra was born in Honduras, where she has been an activist since 2005 in the LGBT association ARCOIRIS. She currently lives in Madrid where she continues her work as an activist as part of the trans team of the association Acción Triangulo. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Alexia Muiños Ruiz is a filmmaker, actress and teacher born in La Coruña. She graduated as a director and screenwriter from the CECC school in Barcelona and completed her training in New York. In 2015 she founded her production company Marineda Films. Her films Noche Transfigurada, Asuntos Domésticos, Medianoche, Domingo por la mañana and En RE DO have received international awards. She has worked in multiple positions in the audio-visual industry: as a runner, as actors coach as well as director and producer. She combines her work as an independent director with acting, teaching and feminist activism within the European Women's Audio-visual Network and Dones Visuals, of which she is one of the founding partners.

Producer, journalist and cultural manager, since 2012, she has been focusing her activity in Smiz and Pixel as a producer of fiction and documentary content. She has produced films such as Malpartida Fluxus Village (Best Documentary at the Alcances at the Alcances Festival 2015); Tánger Gool, premiered at the Seminci in Valladolid 2015, or Rebeladas, in co-production with Mexico (financed by IMCINE, ICAA and Ibermedia), of which she is also co-director. Her first feature film as co-producer, La Vida Era Eso, directed by David Martín de los Santos, has been David Martín de los Santos, has been widely screened at national and international festivals.

She is currently preparing the premiere of her first feature film as majority producer, El Aspirante, scheduled for release in October 2024.

Director, screenwriter and producer. Her debut film, Ana de día (2018) participated in more than 30 festivals winning 12 awards that culminated in her nomination for Best New Director at the 2019 Goya Awards as well as as in the CEC Medals. She worked in Pedro Almodóvar’s film Julieta, as assistant, in direction. She has directed 7 short films that have been selected in multiple festivals and made various video creations, also shown in Spanish and International cultural institutions. Her film projects have received grants such as one from the Real Spanish Academy in Rome, the Residencies of the Spanish Film Academy or the Torino Feature Lab. Since 2019 she is a member of the Spanish Film Academy and in 2020, she set up Lasai Producciones, with which she co-produced her new film Nina.

Andreína Monasterio Andrade is a Venezuelan journalist with experience in print and audiovisual media since 2005. She has worked for major media outlets in Venezuela, and after emigrating to Spain in 2014, she became involved in communication and volunteer projects. Co-founder of the Association of Venezuelan Journalists in Spain (Venezuelan Press) and Vice President of Gente Que Comunica, she has worked with Transparency International Spain and continued her training in creative writing. Additionally, she has interviewed Latin American authors and co-hosts the podcast "Mucho que hablar", which discusses the lives of migrants in Spain and around the world.

Anja Salomonowitz has developed her own film language, in which documentary film, feature film and thesis film are combied. People’s real experiences are condensed through artistic alienation. Her hybrid films all follow a strict concept of color.

She is also known for the fact that her films are explicitly political, while expanding the boundaries and possibilities of film in their artistic form. Her films have received international recognition and numerous film awards, and been selected by numerous international film festivals, and are cited in relevant film studies literature.

Anja Salomonowitz studied film in Vienna and Berlin and worked as an assistant to director Ulrich Seidl. She works with students at universities on their films, for example at the Aalto University Helsinki, Department for Film and Television or at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She is a tutor at the Documentary

Academy at the Jihlava International Film Festival, together with the Filipino filmmaker Khavn de La Cruz. She was chairwoman of the Austrian Documentary Film Association and the Austrian Film Directors Association, and from 2014-2017 served on the supervisory board of the Austrian Film Fund. Anja Salomonowitz works as a dramaturge for the Austrian Screenplay Association. She holds master classes on artistic approaches to film.

Anja Salomonowitz lives in Vienna. She is currently working on a film about the Ukrainian activist Inna Shevshenko, the prominent founder of the feminist group FEMEN. The film is an embodiment of FEMEN‘s visual political art and represents a new pop feminism.

Arantxa Echevarría is a director and screenwriter. Her first feature film, “Carmen y Lola”, was nominated for eight Goya Awards in 2019, winning two; Best New Director and Best Supporting Actress for Carolina Yuste. The script was also a finalist for the Julio Alejandro Prize of the General Society of Authors and Publishers (SGAE). In addition, she was selected in 2018 for the Directors' Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Spanish director to be selected for the Fortnight. In 2021 was released her feature film “La Familia Perfecta” (The Perfect Family), a comedy starring Belén Rueda and José Coronado and distributed by Universal and with the participation of Antena 3. The film achieved one of the ten highest box-office revenues of the year and number one on Netflix Spain and number two on Netflix worldwide. She has also directed on television the last chapter of the series “El Cid” and two chapters of “Días mejores”, (When You Least Expect It) both for Amazon Prime.

Arlette Torres is a Venezuelan actress and model with French roots. Born in Caracas, she trained at the National Theater Company of Venezuela and at the Madrid Film Institute. She has stood out in films such as La Tribu (2018), Liz en septiembre (2014) and Azul y no tan rosa (2011), as well as in TV and streaming series such as Caronte, Servir y proteger, El Embarcadero, HIT, and Señoras del (H)AMPA.

Axa Milá de La Roca De Leça is a journalist and head of communication at Salud Entre Culturas and Acción Triángulo, dedicated to intercultural coexistence and social equity. She has worked as a teacher and photographer, and is a founding partner of Gente Que Comunica, focused on integrating the Hispanic American communities in Spain.

She is a professional journalist by vocation. After changing her career to Marketing, she decided to embrace another of his passions: cinema. For this reason, in 2003 she created the film criticism blog, "Bollacos". As a good culture lover, the seventh art continues to be a constant in Beatriz's day-to-day life, who tries to continue learning, also attending relevant film festivals such as this one.

Benita Navacerrada is the daughter of Facundo Navacerrada Perdiguero, founder of the General Union of Workers (UGT) in San Sebastián de los Reyes in 1936. Her story is linked to the historical memory of Spain, since her father was shot in 1939, during the Francoist repression after the Spanish Civil War. Benita has been a key figure in the preservation of her father's memory and in the fight for justice and recognition of the victims of Franco's repression.

She studied to obtain a Bachelor´s Degree in Cinema and Audiovisual Media at the ESCAC, with a specialization in film screenwriting. After graduating, she got into the master Opera Prima at the ESCAC, dedicated to the development of feature films, and during the first year of it she also got into the Mediaset-Showrunners master, dedicated to fiction series. She combined both master's degrees and as a result wrote two feature films: "Un lugar común", which premiered in 2024. The other one is currently in development under the production company The Mediapro Studios. She has also written a fiction series whose original idea is based on her personal experience of being a showrunner who leads a team of four scriptwriters. She has taught at the ESCAC Scriptwriting in practice, and Script Doctor in the two seasons of the microseries "CCCC Stories". Currently she combines the development of fiction projects with a job as a script analyst.

With a master’s degree in Hispanic Philology, she has worked for more than 20 years as a screenwriter, editor and director, both in the television medium and in the film industry. 

Torres debuted in 2007 with the screenplay of “Amateurs”, selected by the Zabaltegui section of the San Sebastian International Film Festival.

Co-writer and editor of the films “Iceberg” (2011) and Ärtico (2014), she made her directorial debut with “Análisis de Sangre Azul” (2016), with which she participated in the European Seville Film Festival.

Boris Rodolfo Izaguirre Lobo (born on September 28th, 1965, in Caracas) is a Venezuelan journalist, television presenter, screenwriter and writer.  

His career in the media began at the age of 16 at the newspaper El Nacional in Caracas, where he wrote Animal de frivolidades, a social chronicle column.

Since then, he has continuously collaborated with several media (such as the weekly magazine of the Spanish newspaper El País or the cinema magazine Fotogramas). He has a column in the gay magazine Zero and in the women’s magazine Marie Claire, where he writes a regular section called De vuelta al armario (Back to the Closet). He also works on the radio, mainly as a collaborator, in La ventana, hosted 

by Carles Francino at the Cadena SER station. He writes the column La paradoja y el estilo in the Revista del Sábado, a weekend edition from El País newspaper that started in September 2011. Between 2015 and 2018 he worked for Telemundo in Miami. He currently works for the Onda Cero radio station. He hasn’t stopped to work on television since his success in the show Crónicas Marcianas, in 1999. 

As a screenwriter he co-wrote, with José Ignacio Cabrujas, the telenovelas Rubí rebelde and La dama de rosa. After the success of these productions on Spanish Television, he moved to Santiago de Compostela. In Spain, he collaborated on the scripts of TV shows such as Inocente, Inocente and El súper.

He has also written many novels and the successful Zarzuela, Trato de Favor, premiered in 2022.

Caroline Ingvarsson, an award-winning director from Malmö, Sweden, holds a Diploma from Sydney Film School, Australia. Selected as one of six female

Directors for Pure Fiction 2015, and Berlinale Talents in 2016; recipient of 2014 and 2016 Pixel Director Talent Award and 2014 SWEA Los Angeles Film Grant.

BENEATH THE SPACESHIP (2015) was awarded “After Bergman” script award, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival, and had its European premiere at BFI London Film Festival. WE WERE THREE premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2018 and was at a dozen international film festivals.

UNMOORED is her feature debut.

Celia Giraldo (1995), graduated from ESCAC specializing in Film Directing. In her debut feature film, she explores the themes that she already began to develop in her successful short film, also premiered at the D'A Festival, 'Te busco en todos'. 

Celia is part of the team of female directors of the collective feature film 'La filla d'algú', Movistar+ Best Film Award and Silver Biznaga for Best Actress at the Malaga Festival in 2019. 

She has recently co-directed the series led by Aina Clotet and Mar Coll 'Esto no es Suecia', winner of the Prix Europa award for Best Television Series and nominated for the Feroz for Best Comedy Series.

Screenwriter, Director; Vienna, Austria, 1987.

“To look at movies only from a theoretical viewpoint (Theatre, Film and Media Studies in Vienna and Utrecht, The Netherlands) was at some point not enough. In order to learn how to tell stories on my own I studied at the Film Academy Vienna, first Screenwriting (with professor Götz Spielmann), then after two years applied again, this time for Directing (with professors Wolfgang Murnberger and Michael Haneke). Finished both. After several short films, Breaking the ice was my first feature film.  I want to make movies that entertain and move emotionally, shake you up and leave you yearning. I focus on feminist topics as well as on socio-critical and -political topics.”

Screenwriter, director and producer.

She studied analogue photography and film photography. She also studied dramatic art at the Corazza Studio and Recabarren Studio and screenwriting at the Script Factory in Madrid. She has carried out several audiovisual projects for the SZ Foundation - Residencia de Artistas (Madrid). Between 2018 and 2019 she wrote and directed three short films: Package (5 nominations at La Jolla International Fashion Film Festival, 2019 and Best Creative Concept Award, 2019); Workingay (a vindication of the LGTBI collective, premiered at FITUR 2019 and chosen for the Official Selection at the Faenz Video Art Exhibition, 2020 in Bogotá; and Transición (a tribute to International Women's Day) which premiered at the Sala Equis in Madrid and was selected in more than ten festivals. It won the Best Actress Award for its leading actress, María Barranco. In 2022 she wrote and directed a short film and a documentary, both shot in Paraguay. (Y) Agua en Guarani, Best Short Film Award at the Aqua Film Festival in Rome and screened at various international festivals, including the Oakville Film Festival (Ontario). It has been premiered in Spain at the Alicante International Film Festival. Her latest work is the short documentary Emilio Barreto angeles y demonios, a co-production between Paraguay and Spain, about the life of Paraguayan actor Emilio Barreto who was imprisoned for twelve years during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. It had its world premiere at the Krakow Festival, 2024. She is currently working on a new documentary project.

Cristina Hernández Martín (1979, Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca) has been appointed Director of the Women’s Institute by Royal Decree 751/2024, dated July 23 (BOE 24/07/2024). She holds a degree in Sociology from the University of Salamanca and a Master of Arts (Refugee Studies Program) from the University of East London.

A specialist in public policies on gender equality and gender-based violence, she has worked as an advisor for NGOs, public entities, and political organizations, and has been an Associate Professor at the University of Salamanca, where she taught courses on the Sociology of Gender Relations and the Sociology of Social Movements.

She was responsible for Training at the 016 Service for Information and Advice on gender-based violence. She has also worked as an advisor on gender equality for the Socialist Parliamentary Group and the Federal Executive Committee of the PSOE. She served as spokesperson and councilor for the City Council of Ciudad Rodrigo (Salamanca) and was a fellow at the Women’s Institute.

Until her current appointment, she worked as an advisor in the Office of the Minister of the Presidency, Justice, and Relations with Parliament.

(Dr. Álvarez)
Doctor of Public Health, Sociologist, and Science Communicator specializing in health.

Since 2017, she has led the audiovisual production company 'La Doctora Álvarez,' where she directs and produces scientific documentaries, primarily in the field of health.

Debra Zimmerman is the Executive Director of Women Make Movies, a NY non-profit social enterprise that supports women filmmakers with distribution and production assistance.  For the last 20 years filmmakers from WMM’s programs have won or been nominated for Academy Awards. She is in great demand around the world as a speaker, panelist and mentor. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including NYWIFT’s Changemaker Award and Hot Doc’s Doc Mogul Award and is a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences.

ELISABETH SCHARANG lives and works in Vienna as a director, screenwriter, journalist and radio presenter. She is self-taught in her profession and has been working as a freelance feature and documentary film director since 2001, mainly for cinema productions. The cinema documentary OCTOPUS ALARM celebrated its world premiere at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival and is still one of the most relevant documentaries on the subject of intersexuality. MY DEAR REPUBLIC was successfully screened in competition in the documentary section in Karlovy Vary; it reopens a piece of Austrian contemporary history through the cinematic encounter with Nazi euthanasia survivor Friedrich Zawrel. After IN ANOTHER LIFETIME, in 2015 JACK was the director‘s second feature film to celebrate its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival on the Grande Piazza; it was shown shortly afterwards at the Toronto Film Festival. Filming for the feature film WALD, loosely based on Doris Knecht‘s bestseller, took place in autumn 2021. Elisabeth Scharang is currently working on a documentary film about structural violence against women and the reasons for femicides. For #HowToStopFemicides she is shooting in over ten countries, featuring activists and experts.

Elisabeth Scharang is active in film politics at FC-Gloria and in the collective dieRegisseur*innen and supports women in the field of film directing and screenwriting as a mentor.

Elena García is an Afrofeminist and anti-racist activist, with a degree in Philosophy and Social and Cultural Anthropology from the Complutense University of Madrid. She has a master’s degree in Cooperation from the Carlos III University and a specialization in Gender in Cooperation from the University of Cordoba. She has worked in Ghana, Colombia, Senegal and Equatorial Guinea. She is co-founder of the Madrid Institute of Anthropology (IMA) and collaborates in El Salto with the section "En el margen", where she interviews leaders of the anti-racist and racialized people movements fight.

Gabriella (Ella) Hochleitner is an independent documentary filmmaker for more than 25 years. After her studies in photography at the Istituto Europeo di Design and the Istituto Superiore di Fotografia in Rome, she got a university degree in filmmaking at the artschool Fachhochschule für Fotographie und Film in Dortmund, Germany. TROG is her 12th feature length documentary, TROG is also the 3rd part of her own family saga. Ella’s a mother of three girls.

Emmanuelle Devos studied several courses at the Florent school, with teachers such as François Florent, Pierre Roman, and Francis Huster, who would later direct her in Corneille's El Cid at the Renaud-Barrault theater. She then enrolled at FÉMIS, where she met, among others, Arnaud Desplechin, who would become her favored director. It was Louis-Do de Lencquesaing who gave her the opportunity to return to the stage with Schnitzler's Anatole.

Throughout her career, she alternated between film and theater, collaborating with directors like Jacques Audiard (winning the César Award for Best Actress in Sur mes lèvres), Sophie Fillières, Jérôme Bonnell, Alain Resnais, Xavier Giannoli (César Award for Best Supporting Actress in À l'origine), Martin Provost, Marco Bellocchio, Tonie Marshall, Philippe Faucon, Antoine de Bary, Grégory Magne, Claire Simon, Nicolas Bedos, Joachim Lombard, Anne Fontaine, and others.

On television, following the success of the first season of BRI last year, Emmanuelle returned in the spring for the filming of the second season.

In theater, she has worked with directors such as Gilles Cohen, Frédéric Bellier-Garcia, Hélène Vincent, Bernard Murat, Christophe Honoré, the collective Les Possédés (with whom she performed Platonov, a role that earned her the Molière Award for Best Actress in a Public Theater Production in 2015), Yasmina Reza, and more recently, David Clavel for L’heure bleue.

Producer.

Born in Segovia, she is the executive producer of El Deseo. Throughout her more than thirty-year career, she has produced every film by acclaimed director Pedro Almodóvar since Matador in 1986. Her long career as a producer also includes collaborations with other notable Ibero-American filmmakers such as Guillermo del Toro (The Devil's Backbone, 2001), Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me, 2003), Paul Leduc (Cobrador. In God We Trust, 2007), Lucrecia Martel (The Headless Woman, 2008 and Zama, 2018), Diego Galán (Con la pata quebrada, 2013), Damián Szifron (Wild Tales, 2013) and Pablo Trapero (The Clan, 2015). Her work has been recognized on numerous occasions at the Goya Awards and at the Oscars. In 2015, she was honoured in Segovia, her hometown, within the framework of the European Film Festival and in 2018 she received the National Film Award. She is an active member of the Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and of the American Film Academy. Recently, she has work in 2024, Pedro Almodóvar's latest film, The Room Next Door and in Ramón y Ramón by Salvador del Solar, co-produced with Peru.  After by Oliver Laxe's is in post-production and, she has a couple of other ongoing projects.

Eva Hernández is a researcher and lecturer in film analysis at the Complutense University of Madrid. A double graduate in Journalism and Audiovisual Communication, Eva has dedicated herself to the study of cultural products with a special focus on the female and homosexual position in film. She has made numerous contributions as author, editor and coordinator to books exploring current issues in communication. With a strong interest in the use of social networks and new technologies from a psychoanalytical approach. Coordinator of several cultural events in the field of communication such as the H Congress.

Eva Llorach is an actress, graduated from the ESAD in Murcia, who won in 2019 the most relevant awards in Spanish cinema, including the Goya for Best New Actress, for her character in the feature film Quién te cantará. During her career she has participated in TV series such as "El cuerpo en llamas", "Élite" and "Los pacientes del Doctor García". She has also a career in Cinema, working in films such as "Jaula" and "Disco, Ibiza, Locomía", international projects such as the Argentine feature film "Ámame" with Leonardo Sbaraglia. She has worked as well in the Theatre productions "Atraco, paliza y muerte en Agbanaspäch" and "Taxi girl" for the Centro Dramático Nacional. She has participated in the film"Un lugar común", Celia Giraldo's debut film, currently on the billboard, and in the films "El instinto", directed by Juan Albarracín who recently premiered at the Abycine Festival, and in "Islas" by Marina Seresesky.

Fernanda Carvalho is an audiovisual producer with a degree in journalism. In 2023 she released the documentary about Pride Positivo, "Soy Visible", currently available on the Filmin platform. Previously, she made "De si, Tirou", a documentary made in Brazil about suicide, with which she was a finalist in the Délio Rocha journalism award in 2017. He currently produces audiovisual documentaries, marketing, education and journalism pieces. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Graduate of the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (Film Training Center). Her short film De este mundo received the award for Best Short Film at the Guanajuato Film Festival and the CANACINE Award in 2011. Her thesis short film, 400 maletas, was selected and awarded at various film festivals and forums. Notable among them is its selection for the Editing Studio at Berlinale Talents 2013. In 2015, it was nominated for the Ariel Award for Best Fiction Short Film and for the Student Oscar in the foreign category.

In 2014, together with other filmmakers, she founded the company EnAguas Cine, which developed and produced the feature film Los días más oscuros de nosotras, directed by Astrid Rondero. This project received funding and support from FONCA, IMCINE, the Gabriel Figueroa Film Fund, the Script Station at Berlinale Talents, the Tribeca Film Institute, the Women in Film Finishing Fund, among others. The film premiered at the Los Cabos International Film Festival, where it received a special mention from the jury.

Fernanda also collaborates with Chulada Films, producing Dalia Reyes' second documentary feature, Ráfagas Serranas.

In 2020, she premiered her debut feature Sin Señas Particulares, which won the Audience Award and Best Screenplay in the World Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival. It also won the Horizontes Latinos Award and the Spanish Cooperation Award at the San Sebastián Film Festival, and was nominated and won the Ariel Award in 2021 for Best Director.

In 2024, she returns to the Sundance Film Festival to present Sujo, co-directed with Astrid Rondero, this time winning the award for Best International Film.

Deputy Director General of Promotion of the Film and Audiovisual Industry at the ICAA since April of this year. I hold a degree in Law and Business Administration and Management, and I have been a member of the Senior Corps of Civil Administrators of the State since 2016. Before joining the ICAA, I worked as Chief of Staff for the Directorate General of Cultural Industries and Intellectual Property at the Ministry of Culture, and previously held various positions at the Spanish Data Protection Agency. I hold a Master’s in Intellectual Property from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and have professional experience in the publishing sector and in advertising self-regulation.

Human Rights activist, Director of the Pedro Zerolo Cinematheque, and head of the Health team at Acción Triángulo. He coordinates intervention and support programs for HIV+ migrants, rapid HIV testing services, and psychosocial intervention and support for MSM and transgender women. In response to the social emergency caused by COVID-19, he launched the campaign #SolidarityIsNotCancelled, and since 2007, has led cooperation projects related to HIV and transgender women in various Latin American countries.

Fina Torres is a Venezuelan director and producer. She studied design, photography and journalism in Venezuela before moving to Paris, where she earned a doctorate in cinematography at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (IDHEC). In 1985, he won the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and twelve other international awards for his debut feature Oriana. Subsequently, he co-wrote, produced and directed the comedy Celestial Clockwork in 1993, winning four international awards. He also directed the romantic comedy Woman on Top for Fox, nominated for Best Director at the 2001 Alma Festival.

Award-winning director, screenwriter and producer Harriet Marin Jones grew up in several countries in Europe. After studying at Loyola University Chicago and American University in Washington, D.C., where she earned a bachelor's degree in visual media and was voted valedictorian of the department, she went on to earn a master's degree in film studies at New York University. During her studies, Jones wrote and directed a dozen short films that won numerous awards. He began his career as an assistant director on feature films in the United States and France, and simultaneously began evaluating scripts for two major French television networks. Marin Jones has written and directed two high-budget short films, followed by her first feature film, distributed by Gaumont. In addition, she has worked as a script doctor, written two novels, directed a play by Ray Cooney, and co-produced and directed a pilot for France 2. In 2008, she founded her own film and television company, Abelart Productions. In 2017, he created and launched two online course platforms, with over 70,000 students enrolled. Marin Jones has two children, lives in Paris, has travelled to over 100 countries and has just finished her third novel. "KING OF KINGS: Chasing Edward Jones is her first documentary.

Austrian Film Institute / Gender*Diversity*Inclusion

Iris Zappe-Heller joint the Austrian Film Institute in 1993. 

She took over the Austrian representation at the Board of Eurimages from 1997 to 2021. 

In 2011 she became deputy to the Director of the Film Institute. 

In 2013 she installed the department for Gender*Diversity*Inclusion within the Film Institute, taking a package of measures as Gender Incentive, Gender Budgeting, Gender Reports, ProPro, Script competition... In this function she represented Austria in Eurimages’ Gender Equality Working Group that she has chaired from 2016 to 2021. She joined the EFAD’s Gender Inclusion Working Group in 2018, where she took over the chair in 2021. In 2015 she has been the Austrian expert of the Sarajevo Conference Declaration and therefore actively involved in the drawing up of the European Council’s Recommendation on Gender Equality. 

In 2023 she was appointed Deputy Director of the Film Institute.

Doctor, sexologist, sex therapist and sexuality education educator.

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José Manuel López-Agulló holds a PhD in Artistic, Literary, and Cultural Studies from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and a Master's in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture from the Universidad Complutense. He is an Associate Professor teaching the courses Theory of Communication and The Digital Society and the principal investigator of the group Profiles and Strategies of Commercial Communication (PECC) at ESIC University. He is an expert in Textual Analysis in the audiovisual, cinematic, and advertising fields, based on semiotic and psychoanalytic studies.

Juan Carlos Lossada is a Venezuelan cultural manager, film producer and researcher with 30 years of experience in Ibero-American cinema. He was Executive Secretary of Ibero-American Cinematography and presided over the Venezuelan film institute, where he created the Fund for the Financing and Promotion of Cinema (Fonprocine). He has produced and co-produced 37 audiovisual works, selected and awarded at international festivals such as Cairo, Montreal, Tallinn and Biarritz. He is the founder and director of the production company Films Austères. Lossada holds a degree in International Studies, a Masters in International Business and in Writing and Analysis for Film and Television.

Juana Macías is a director, screenwriter, and producer born in Madrid in 1971. She is known for directing films such as Fuimos Canciones (2021), Bajo el mismo techo (2019), Embarazados (2016), and Planes para mañana, which earned her a Goya nomination for Best New Director in 2010. She has directed the series Las Abogadas (2024) and Madres (2019-2020), as well as several documentaries and short films, including Siete cafés por semana (1999), which won the Goya Award for Best Short Film in 2000.

After a Master in management at ESCP BS and a research paper on the representation of women in Studio Ghibli animated films, Lise Perottet joined the Lab Femmes de Cinéma team in October 2021. She is currently the Lab's General Coordinator.

Laura Hojman has a degree in Art History and develops her career as a scriptwriter, documentary maker and producer at the helm of Summer Films. In 2018 she made her directing debut with “Tierras Solares”, a feature-length documentary inspired by the work of Rubén Darío that premiered at the Seminci in Valladolid and had an interesting tour of festivals. In 2020 she saw the light of her second work: “Antonio Machado. The blue days”, a new documentary film with great acclaim by critics and the public that won 6 ASECAN Andalusian Cinema Awards and a nomination for the Forqué Awards, among other recognitions.

She studied playwriting at the Instituto Superior de Arte de Cuba (ISA). She moved to Madrid in 2000, where she worked teaching acting workshops. In 2009, she completed a Master's in Creativity and Television Screenwriting at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in collaboration with Globomedia. In 2018, after her youngest son was diagnosed with autism, she decided to fully immerse herself in understanding this neurodevelopmental condition and pursued a postgraduate degree in autism. She also created an audiovisual creation workshop for primary school children. Código Marcos is her directorial debut, a project she has been working on since 2018, after years of documenting her family's life through their relationship with ASD. She is currently working on the pilot for a podcast called "MMM: Mujer, madre y migrante" (Woman, Mother, and Migrant), a space to share the specific experiences of these three social conditions that affect a group of underrepresented women—women who need someone to give them a voice.

Linda D'Ambrosio (Caracas, 1962) has a degree in Education and a Master's degree in Art, mention in Aesthetics, as well as postgraduate studies in Cultural Management and Socio-educational Projects. She was a professor of graphic design in Caracas and coordinator of the Centro de Arte Crisol. Author of several books, she has written for the Suplemento Cultural de Últimas Noticias and currently collaborates with El Universal. Since 2017, she has been organising events in Spain to highlight Venezuelan talent abroad. She is a member of Venezuelan Press. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Luisa Estévez Born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1959, she is a feminist lawyer with a law degree from the University of La Laguna, where she was a colleague and friend of Pedro Zerolo. With more than 30 years of experience, she shared 15 years of professional practice with Zerolo. She participated in the drafting of the first Unions of De Facto laws for same-sex couples. She currently runs the law firm Estévez-abogadas, specialising in family law and violence against women. She is a founding trustee of the Pedro Zerolo Foundation and supervises legal practices.

Born in Madrid, she is a producer, director and scriptwriter, with a degree in Fine Arts with a specialisation in Audiovisuals from the Complutense University. Her passion for documentary film allows her to address current issues with a unique cinematic style, using this genre to deconstruct stereotypes and give a voice to the voiceless. He founded the production company Objetivo Family Films in 2014, focusing on film as a tool for social communication. In 2021, he participated in SEMINCI with his feature film El sueño del oro negro.

Mar Coll (Barcelona 1981) is a filmmaker and resides in Barcelona. Her first film, Tres dies amb la família (2009), premiered at the Málaga Film Festival, where it won three Biznagas, and earned her three Gaudí Awards and the Goya for Best New Director.

In 2013, she released her second feature film, Tots volem el millor per a ella, which opened the Valladolid Seminci, where Nora Navas won the Silver Spike for Best Actress. This role also brought Navas other accolades, including the Gaudí Award for Best Leading Actress and a Goya nomination.

In television fiction, her credits include the miniseries Matar al padre (2017) for Movistar+, which was selected for the prestigious Series Mania festival, and Esto no es Suecia (2023), co-directed with Aina Clotet, which won the Prix Europa and was selected for this year’s edition of Canneseries.

She is currently awaiting the release of her third feature film, Salve María (2024), an adaptation of Katixa Agirre’s book Las madres no, produced by Escándalo Films and Elastica Films, and selected for the official section of the prestigious Locarno International Festival.

She combines her work as a director and screenwriter with teaching at the ESCAC film school. She has also served as a project advisor for initiatives such as NOKA (a mentoring program for female filmmakers promoted by Tabakalera), La Incubadora (a feature film development program by ECAM), the script workshop at Europa Creativa Desk MEDIA Euskadi, and the Spanish Film Academy’s residency program, among others.

She is a Producer and Executive Producer, born in Uruguay. She graduated from the EMAD and studied Cinema at the EICTV (Cuba). Her first film as a producer was Pablo Dotto's debut film "The Airship", the first Uruguayan film to participate in the 1994 Cannes International Film Festival Critics' Week.  Her credits include more than 150 films as a producer and executive producer, among others: "The Secret in Their Eyes" by Juan José Campanella, winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, "The Last Circus" (Silver Lion at Venice 2010), "Tetro" by Francis Ford Coppola and "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" by Terry Gilliam. In 2017 the series "Cuatro estaciones en la Habana" received the Platinum Award for Best Ibero-American miniseries. Between 2019 and 2021 she worked as an executive producer in the documentary miniseries "Who killed María Marta?" and "The Photographer and the Postman: The Crime of Cabezas" both on Netflix. In 2021 she premiered the series "Ana Tramel. El juego". The series "Detective Touré" started to be broadcast on RTVE this year.

She is currently working on several feature films and series projects.

Marta Nieto (1982) is one of the great Spanish actresses. She has received many awards for her performance in the film Madre by Rodrigo Sorogoyen. 

Among these awards are the Venice Lion for Best Actress in the Horizons section at the Venice International Film Festival; the Golden Giraldillo for Best Actress at the Seville European Film Festival and the Forqué Award for Best Female Performance. This work also earned her a nomination for the Goya Awards for Best Actress. She has worked in TV series, films and plays.

Her last theatrical performance, still on tour, La Infamia, earned her the 2023 Max Theater Award for Best Actress.

She has recently starred in several feature films in France: Tropique and Visions; and in Spain: La Manzana de Oro, Verano en Rojo and ¡Salta!

Many new performance challenges await her in the  next present and future. Her debut as a director, La mitad de Ana, 2024, is her first feature film as a director, in partnership with TVE, and produced by Elastica Films (María Zamora).

Marta Pérez Adroher has a degree in Psychology and is a specialist in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She is an expert in psychoanalysis and culture. She is currently coordinator of the psychotherapy programme at FUNDHOS aimed at people at risk of social exclusion and is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She is also dedicated to the academic field, she is a PhD student, her thesis is about the ethics of psychoanalysis. She has published several works on human rights, feminism and migration.

Belgian Filmmaker, born in 1981. Michèle graduated in film directing from IAD (Institut des Arts de Diffusion), then spent ten years writing and directing videoclips, commercials, web content and cartoons. Having acquired all-round experience in film making, she concentrates on her own projects. 

After her short film July 96 which traveled the world’s festivals such as Palm Spring Festival, Cinema Jove, Lublin Film Festival, Moscow Film Festival,...

The Lost Children is her first feature film. 

She is also the showrunner of a drama series of 8x52’(Arcanes) for Belgian broadcaster RTBF, which she will direct as of August 2023.

Nadine Naous was born in Beirut to a Palestinian mother and a Lebanese father. After studying literature and film, she began her artistic career with installations, super-8 films, videos, sound installations and photographs. He has written and directed four films that have been screened and awarded at several international festivals: Chacun sa Palestine, Clichés, Home Sweet Home, Au Kiosque Citoyens! Navigating between Beirut and Paris in fiction and documentary, she collaborated on several projects as a scriptwriter, dialogue adaptor and actress: Sudan remember us by Hind Meddeb, Bye Bye Tiberias by Lina Soualem, Sous le ciel d'Alice by Chloé Mazlo, Insyriated by Philippe Van leuw, Inheritance by Hiam Abbass, among others. In 2022, he co-produced Rakan Mayassi's latest short film, The key, with First Sight films. She is currently developing two projects as a writer and director, while working as a consultant for emerging European and Arab directors.

Nina Paola Marin Diaz, born in Valledupar in 1982, Master in Dramatic Art, studies in Direction and Production of Video Cinema and TV at the Universidad Europea del Atlántico, advanced in script and direction of actors with the Meisner technique at the ECTV - San Antonio de los Baños / Cuba and Lawyer, mother of 3 children, with a career of more than 20 years, Her creative process has been influenced by Gabriel García Márquez, Juan Rulfo, Federico García Lorca and Isabel Allende. As for cinema, she is an admirer of Jane Campion, Francis Ford Coppola and Andréi Tarkovsky. Tierra Quebrá is her debut feature, Soy Múcura (second feature film to be released soon), plus 11 short films.

Writer and film critic, she has worked in positions of responsibility at international festivals such as San Sebastian Festival and the Berlinale. She has been an uninterrupted film critic in different media since 1984. In 2010 she started a film blog where she writes regularly every week. In 2023, together with Marta Armengou, she launched a new film platform called Filmtopia, dedicated exclusively to films made by women. She has taught film criticism at the ESCAC. In 2016 she received the Alfonso Sánchez Communication Award from the Spanish Film Academy and the Simone de Beauvoir Award from the ZINEMAKUMEAK GARA! Festival of films directed by women. In June 2023, she was appointed Honorary Member of the Catalan Film Academy.

In February 2023, lecture at the Ibiza Independent Film Festival on women in film, entitled "Una ola que viene de lejos" ("A wave that comes from afar"), in which the role of female film pioneers is vindicated.

In October 2023 she gave a lecture entitled "Todas las Alices" ("All the Alices") at the Zinemakumeak gara! in Bilbao, about Alice Guy.

She is the author of some thirty books on film, including the first one written about Pedro Almodóvar in 1988, and a book of conversations with the actress Maribel Verdú in 2012.

Patricia Ortega Born in Venezuela in 1977, she holds a degree in Social Communication and graduated from the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños (Cuba) and the FILMAKADEMIE in Ludwisburg (Germany) in documentary directing. She has directed, written and produced numerous short films and documentaries, but her debut feature Yo, Imposible (2018) catapulted her to recognition. Distributed by HBO in the United States, it won the Espiga Arcoiris at Seminci 2018 and was shortlisted for the 2020 Oscars for Venezuela.

Director, screenwriter and producer. She studied Film Directing at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (EICTV), and holds a degree in Theatre Directing from the Instituto Superior de Arte, in Cuba. She has produced and directed several creative documentaries as well as working as an editor on other productions. Her first film, A media voz (2019), co-directed with Heidi Hassan, won the Best Documentary Award at the International Documentary Film Festival (Amsterdam), Best Documentary Direction at the Malaga Film Festival and the Audience Award at DocumentaMadrid, among other important recognitions. She recently founded Free Hundred Media, an audiovisual production company where she develops documentaries and a virtual reality project. In 2024, she was selected for Berlinale Talents. Hay algo en el silencio will be her third feature film.

Born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1981, she started writing when she was a teenager. She trained as an actress in 2006 and as a Gestalt therapist in 2014. She has been writing comedy monologues since 2015, using comedy to make social issues visible and denounce them, especially women's issues. In 2019 she created the theatre project "Mujeres Diosas y Modernas" and in 2021 she filmed the short documentary "Isleteñas", focused on trans women. Currently, she combines theatre and film to make female and LGTBIQ+ realities visible, promoting spaces for transformation.

Paula Ortiz, film director and screenwriter with a PhD in Art History, graduated in 2002 with a degree in Hispanic Philology from the University of Zaragoza and completed a Master's Degree in Writing for Film and Television at the UAB (2003). He also trained in film directing at the Department of Film and TV at the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (2006 and 2007). He also studied for a master's degree in screenwriting and literary theory at UCLA (2008 and 2009), the leading film school in Los Angeles.

Madrid. Director, producer and co-screenwriter of the documentary short films "Confluencias" (Goya Award 1999 for Best Documentary Short Film), "Positivo" and "Ventanas" (Nominated for the Goya Award 2000 and 2017, respectively in the same category). Director of the documentary "Este" included in the feature film "Cuatro puntos cardinales" (2002). From 2003 to 2019 she has been responsible for the film department of the Community of Madrid. She has coordinated festivals such as Short Film Week and Animadrid, professional meetings, workshops and various film events. She writes narrative and blogs (www.lacalledelavida.com).

Pilar Palomero, a graduate in Hispanic Philology and Cinematography, has developed an outstanding career in film, starting with her award-winning short film Niño Balcón in 2009. In 2013, she was selected by Béla Tarr to participate in his film.factory project, which boosted her career. In 2020, her debut feature Las Niñas triumphed at the Malaga Film Festival and won 4 Goya Awards, including Best Film and Best New Director. His next film, La Maternal (2022), was acclaimed at San Sebastian, winning awards and multiple nominations. His third feature film, Los Destellos, has been presented at the same festival.

He is a director and screenwriter. Almost seven years ago he created the web page "Entrefocos.es", a film and news magazine where, as a critic, he uploads his own videos on recent films, series and plays with his own reviews. His channel is also dedicated to classic and cult movies. Last year he premiered the short film "La tarta de cumpleaños" and this year he plans his come back to the theater with a play entitled "Jodida Navidad".

Freelance curator, author, art historian and - beyond that - a tireless promoter of unjustly forgotten Austrian women artists. Sabine Fellner has curated extraordinary events worldwide that deal with women as well as with socio-politically topical issues, such as motherhood, ageing in our society, childhood or the current ecological crisis. She curated with "City of Women. Women Artists in Vienna from 1900 to 1938 "and "Appearance of Women. Künstlerinnen in Linz 1851-1950" (Women Artists in Linz 1851-1950), focusing on one hundred years of creative work by emancipated women who actively helped to shape the art scene. Making the work of these women visible corrects and expands the local art historiography.

Sandra Romero (Écija, 1993) spent her childhood between the countryside and the village. Years later she moved to the Andalusian capital and studied journalism at the University of Seville. She continued her training with a diploma in film directing at the ECAM, with a scholarship from Movistar plus+.

At the school she made the short film Una habitación propia (2019), premiered at the Seville European Film Festival.  Her second short film, Por donde pasa el silencio (2020), participated in festivals such as Medina del Campo, the Seville Festival and the Malaga Festival, where it received a Silver Biznaga for Best Director. It won the Distribution Award at the Semana del Cortometraje de la Comunidad de Madrid and was acquired by Movistar plus+. His third short film, El perro de un torero, premiered at Seminci and auteur film festivals such as Curtocircuito and D'A.

Por donde pasa el silencio is his first feature film. The project has participated with the project in the CIMA Impulsa Development Labs (2020), Film Academy Residency (2021/2022), Film Academy Summer Campus (2022) and Berlinale Talents Script Station (2022). With the participation of RTVE, Canal Sur, Filmin. Winner of the work in progress in the Final Cut of D'A 2024 and selected for its premiere in Nuevos Directores/ New Directors at the San Sebastian International Film Festival 2024.

In 2023/2024 he is in charge of directing three episodes of the series Los años nuevos, created by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Paula Fabra and Sara Cano, a Movistarplus+ original in collaboration with Caballo Films and in association with Arte France, which has its premiere in 2024 in the Official Selection of the Venice International Film Festival.

Since the beginning of her career, Sonia Méndez has covered various areas of the audiovisual industry: direction, scriptwriting, acting and production. She has directed, written the scripts and produced the short films: Perversa Lola, Leo y Mario (se dejan), Café-Bar Santos Peluquería, Ei, Guapa, for the collective feature film Visións, Las Damas Negras and Conversación con una mujer muerta. The latter were awarded, among many others, the Mestre Mateo Award for Best Short Film in 2011 and 2012. She also created, co-wrote the screenplay and acted in the web series Angélica y Roberta, Mestre Mateo award for Best Web Series in 2012. In 2019 she directed and wrote the Gala Ceremony of the Galician audiovisual awards and the promotional material of Viajeros Del Futuro for the CRTVG. She has worked as an actress in various TV series such as Serramoura, Os Atlánticos or Terras de Miranda for the CRTVG, Cuéntame for TVE, and El Vecino for Netflix, and in feature films such as Olvido y Leon y Rafael, both by Xavier Bermúdez, El Sexo de los Ángeles by Xavier Villaverde and Por mí y por todos mis compañeros by Judas Diz. She has hosted the TV show Galicia de 20 a 20 from Voz Audiovisual for CRTVG. Since 2014 she conceives and directs the Carballo Interplay Digital Content Festival, the first festival of web series and digital content in the country. 

In 2018 she founded the audiovisual production company Cósmica Producións together with Nati Juncal Portas. With Cósmica she has directed and written the series Antes de Perder for Playz-RTVE, which was also awarded the Mestre Mateo Award for Best Web Series in 2020. Her feature documentary A Poeta Analfabeta, about the Galician poet, feminist and activist Luz Fandiño, premiered at the Santiago de Compostela Cineuropa, and won the Best Director Award at the Mostra Internacional de Cinema Etnográfico (MICE). It has also been nominated for Best Documentary at the upcoming Mestre Awards Mateo from the Galician Audiovisual Academy. She is Vice-President of the Galician Audiovisual Academy and a member of the Galician Directors Association (CREA). She has been distinguished with the Women in Focus award from the Women Filmmakers Association (CIMA) and the Provincial Council of Pontevedra.

Stefania Pitscheider Soraperra holds the position of Director of the Women's Museum in Hittisau since 2009. She has worked at the Museum of Art History in Vienna, at the Kunsthalle Wien, at the She dhalle in St. Pölten, as well as at the Cooperations Cultural Center in Wiltz (Luxembourg). As an art historian, exhibition curator and cultural manager, her interest focuses on political-social and feminist issues. She is a member of the WochenKlausur group of artists, from where she has carried out multiple projects halfway between art and social policy for the contemporary art festival Steirischen Herbst, the Shedhalle in Zürich and the Venice Biennale. She is a member of the board of directors of ICOM Austria and IAWN (International Association of Women's Museums), as well as a correspondent for EMYA (the European Museum of the Year Award). She hails from South Tyrol and her mother tongue is Rhaeto-Romance Ladin.

The Women's Museum in Hittisau, Austria, is the country's first and only women's museum. It is also the only one in the world located in a rural environment. Since 2000, the museum has hosted historical-cultural exhibitions on topics of relevance to women. The projects are participatory in nature and focus on working with women living in the region: 25 women between the ages of 17 and 75, with academic backgrounds of all kinds and from various countries, who participate intensively in the museum's activity. In 2017, the museum was awarded the Austrian Museum Prize, and in 2021, it received a special mention from the European Museum of the Year Award.

She is the creator of the blogs "Claqueta, Luces y Acción" and "Fotografía y Lugares". Since she was very young, she became passionate about cinema and photography. She has been a jury member of Blogos de Oro for six years, and in two editions of the Films by Women Festival. In 2020 she made her first short film "Alcor 2030" for a competition during confinement. Three photographs from her were selected by PhotoEspaña for the #desdemibalcon contest. She co-created the CortoCoslada Children's and Youth Festival for the FAMPA Coslada. She is also a founder of Formagesting and of the Community of Female Inspiring Leaders. She is entrepreneurial, curious and active by nature.

Violeta Ibarra, communicologist and co-founder of Plumaje, a non-profit organisation in Arizona, USA.

Thomas Kloiber, born in 1972 Graz/Austria, studied catholic theology at the University of Vienna and at the Facultad de Teología del Norte de España Burgos. Before he joined the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs in 2008, he worked as high school teacher for religion and as educational trainer for students of catholic theology. He worked from 2003 to 2006 as General Secretary of the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe. As employee of the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs he served at the Austrian Embassies in Washington D.C. and in Moscow as well as at the Cultural Forums in Tehran and Bucharest. Since 2022, he has headed the unit exhibitions and new media at the Directorate General International Cultural Relations at the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria. As of 2023, he is deputy director of the Department for Cultural and Scientific Events Abroad. He has been in charge of implementing the Foreign Ministry’s women’s promotion and network programme "Calliope. Join the Dots" since 2022.

Ulrike Kofler was born in 1974 in Innsbruck, Austria and is an Austrian film editor, director and screenwriter. In 1997, she graduated in photography at the „Höhere Graphische Lehranstalt“ in Vienna. Afterwards, she studied film editing at the Film Academy Vienna. 

Between 2008 and 2012, Kofler successfully completed the postgraduate studies

Film and TV at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Her graduation film WIR FLIEGEN (2012), which she wrote and directed, was awarded with several awards. She is also responsible for numerous video installations for theatrical performances. Her feature film debut as a writer and director WHAT WE WANTED (2019) was chosen by the Professional Association of Film and Music Austria as the Austrian entry for the Academy Awards 2021. As an editor, she has worked on films by directors such as Josef Hader and Michael Kreihsl. 

She shares a long-lasting partnership with Marie Kreutzer, most recently Ulrike Kofler edited Kreutzer’s historical drama CORSAGE (2022).