Thanks to the support of Acción Cultural Española from the PICE Visitantes program, this year we can count on SEMILLERU Lab with:
Mentor
Nina Frese
She worked and lived in Germany, the United Kingdom and for more than a decade in Spain. From 2008 to 2013, defying the economic crisis, she founded and directed Flux Film in Seville. She produced success at festivals Sobre Ruedas by O. Clemente and El Orden de las Cosas de los hermanos Esteban Alenda, nominated for the Goya Awards. She was a producer at Pandora Film from 2014 to 2021. Her most recent project include Proxima de Alice Winocour, awarded with the Special Jury Prize at the IFF in San Sebastián 2019 and the Special Mention at the IFF in Toronto, The Middle Man by Bent Hamer released at TIFF 2021 and Memory of Water by Saara Saarela, in post. In 2022 she founded Wunderlust in Cologne and she is a member of EWA, EAVE and ACE.
Mentor
Analía G. Alonso
She has a degree in Journalism, with a master’s degree in Executive Production through the MPXA, University of A. Coruña. She has experience in different areas of the audiovisual.
In 2014 she founded the production company Y la nave va in 2014, and since then she combines her work developing and managing her own film projects with other development and production tasks for different production companies. In recent years,
her experience has also focused on the field of festivals (OUFF, Ourense International Film Festival, Festival de Cans) and in 2021 she assumed the management of Proxecta, Galician Coordinator of Film Festivals.
Among her latest works are the casting of the film “Matira” by Álvaro Gago, the executive production of the feature film “Así llegó la noche” by Ángel Santos (in development) and the short film “Así vendrá la noche” by the same director. She has also distributed the feature films “9 fugas” by Fon Cortizo and “A Virxe Roxa” by Marcos Nine.
She co-directed the production of “O que arde” by Oliver Laxe, produced by Miramemira, a company for which she currently works coordinating film projects such as “Sica” by Carla Subirana, “O corno do centeo” by Jaione Camborda or “San Simón” by Miguel A. Delgado.
Mentor
Roger Koza
Film critic in the newspaper La Voz del Interior, he publishes regularly in Ñ magazine and on the online site Con los ojos abiertos, of which he is editor. He hosts the television program El cinematógrafo (National University of Córdoba) and is a presenter on Filmoteca (Argentine Public Television).
Since 2006 he has been a programmer for the Showcase section of the Hamburg International Film Festival, and since 2018 he has been a programmer for Viennale in Austria. He has artistically directed the Cosquín International Independent Film Festival since 2014 and since 2018, the legendary Doc Buenos Aires.
He has published essays and reviews in books and collective catalogs translated into Japanese, English, Portuguese and French.
Mentor
Lorena Morín
Lorena Morín, 1973, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. She resides in Berlin.
She has been part of the team at the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival since 2001, where she carried out a large part of the main functions of the event, being a responsible party in the consolidation of the current identity and ideology of the Festival.
Since 2017 she has directed MECAS, International Almost Made Film Market, a program dedicated to the industry within the Festival. She combines the coordination of MECAS with the international distribution of author films with the Croatian sales agency Split Screen.
She has participated in the program for the development of co-productions between Europe and Latin America PUENTES of EAVE, has been a jury in the Catapulta laboratory of the Ficunam Film Festival (2020), PushPlay of FICXPro in Gijón (2018), Fidocs in Santiago, Chile (2022).
She is a photographer and is preparing her second exhibition in Berlin and a book that will be published by the publishing house Comisura (ES) with her images and texts by the Latin American writer Mario Bellatín.
Post-production Jury
Milja Mikkola
Since 2005 she has been a part of the legendary Arctic Circle Midnight Sun Film Festival, where he currently holds the position of Programming Manager. She is also a member of the Cinema Orion programming collective in Helsinki and co-director of the Viva Erotica Helsinki Film Festival, which celebrates the history of sex on the big screen. Milja studied Film Theory at Brunel University in London and Visual Journalism at the University of Tampere in Finland. Fully trained as an analog projectionist decades ago, her celluloid roots are embedded in the world of film.
Post-production Jury
LUCERO GARZÓN
A Mexican living in Paris since 2000, Lucero Garzón has worked in different sectors of the film industry for more than 18 years. She was Pyramide’s international sales director, responsible for exporting more than 100 films. In 2017 she founded LUZ VERDE, a Latin American film production company. Associate producer of La novia del desierto by Cecilia Atan and Valeria Pivato (Cannes Un Certain Regard 2017), Los Débiles, by Raul Rico and Eduardo Giralt Brun (Berlín Forum 2018), co-produced Jesús López by Maximiliano Schonfeld (San Sebastián 2021). She is currently working together with Bikini films in the co-production of Ofelia, the new film by Juan Pablo Félix. Garzón has coordinated the BAL-LAB co-production meetings at the Biarritz Amérique Latine Festival since 2018.
Post-production Jury
DARIA VOUMARD
Graduate in Media Management, she began her career in the field of communications and worked as a journalist, before continuing her career at the Locarno Film Festival, where she has worked for the industry center Locarno Pro for 5 years, now as Industry Director. She is responsible for coordinating industry activities and, in particular, the First Look works in progress section and the Heritage Online classic films database.
Post-production Jury
CHRISTOPHE MERCIER
Christophe Mercier worked between March 2006 and August 2019 at the London headquarters of the company 20th Century Fox International as vice president of Fox Searchlight Europe. In this position, he devised the release strategies for the EMEA region for titles such as Birdman, The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside.
Between 2004 and 2006, Christophe worked for Warner Bros. Picturs In’l as Vice President Specialty Films, responsible for Warner Independent Pictures (WIP) films, among them including March of the Penguins.
Between 2003 and 2004, Christophe led the acquisition of and distribution activities of five major European independent distributors from the pan-European company Indie Circle, based in Paris. During its first year, Indie Circle acquired five titles, including the successful author film Osama and the Spanish film Te doy mis ojos, as well as the Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film Paradise Now.
Since 1997, Christophe has had the opportunity to strengthen his knowledge of the international film market from his position in London as director of international distribution for the company Universal Pictures Int’l, formerly known as PolyGram Films Int’l. During this time, he oversaw the distribution and commercialization of films to more than 60 regions. These films include the hits of the company Working Title Billy Elliot and Bridget Jones’ Diary, as well as Being John Malkovich and O Brother! in the early 2000s.
Currently, he works as an international film consultant in distribution and marketing, after two years guest programming the Edinburgh International Film Festival and searching for English-language films for the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, he is co-programmer of the Dinard British Film Festival, contributing to the programming of the Luxembourg City Film Festival and advises the Irish film institution Screen Ireland for some of its films in terms of festival positioning strategy, among other film consultancies.
Development Jury
MARIANO LLINÁS
Mariano Llinás was born in Buenos Aires in 1975. He is a film director. Together with Laura Citarella, Alejo Moguillansky and Agustín Mendilaharzu, he founded, in 2003, the independent organization El Pampero Cine, responsible to date for more than twenty films. He has also learned the trade of professional screenwriting, with which he supports his increasingly demanding lifestyle. He lives and works in the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. He is the father of a young son.
Development Jury
GLENDA BALUCANI
She was born in Italy and currently lives and works between Portugal, Italy and Switzerland. She has a degree in Art History, Cinema and Theater from the University of Siena. She is a member of the II Sorpasso Association, organizer of the Italian Film Festival in Lisbon and promoter of the Filmin Portugal VoD platform. She has collaborated with the Doclisboa International Film Festival since 2013 and is co-founder of Arché, a film project development laboratory of Apordoc – The Portuguese Documentary Association. Since 2019 she is coordinator of Doclisboa’s industry program, Nebulae. Since the beginning of 2022 she has been a part of the Itineranze.Doc project, a traveling project development workshop of which she is co-founder, programer and coordinator. She is mainly dedicated to the development and internationalization of films and collaborates and participates annually in various project development laboratories and workshops.
Development Jury
ELODIE MELLADO
Trained in Audiovisual Communication at Rovira i Virgili University, she has worked since 2012 on the Catalan VoD platform, Filmin, where she is editorial coordinator and programmer. She is also responsible for the FilminKIDS section. Since 2020, she has also programmed at the REC, Tarragona International Film Festival and in 2022 she joins the team at the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Film Festival in the Panorama Spain section.