Jury

Giacomo Abbruzzese

(1983, Taranto, Southern Italy). He lives and works between Italy and France. As a director, he was awarded at many international festivals including Berlinale, MoMA’s New Directors New Films, Hong Kong, Guadalajara, Istanbul, Melbourne, Clermont-Ferrand, Viennale, and Sarajevo. His films were broadcast on such networks as Canal+, Arte, France3, France2, Sky Art, and SVT. A former artist in residence at Cannes’ Cinéfondation, in 2022 he was nominated for the César Awards with his documentary America. His first feature film, Disco Boy, won the Silver Bear at the Berlinale and has been released in more than 35 countries. This edition of Bafici presents a focus of his work.

Verónica Chen

She was born in Argentina and grew up in Texas, USA. She studied Classical Literature at the UBA and graduated as a film director at ENERC. She directed the feature films Smokers Only (2001), Agua (2006, awarded at many international festivals and winner of the Youth Award at the Locarno Festival), A Sentimental Journey (Bafici 10), Rabbit Woman (2013), Rosita (2017), High Tide (2021, screened at Sundance and winner of the Special Jury Award at the Sitges Festival), and Los terrenos (Bafici 23, screened at the Malaga Festival and the Cinemateca Uruguay Festival).

Jorge de Carvalho

Founder, director and teacher at KINO-DOC, a documentary film school based in Lisbon, Portugal. As a filmmaker, he has directed and produced many films. He often writes articles on moving images and is a cinema program curator at the University of Porto. His documentary Ospina Cali Colombia is screened in the section Cinema on Cinema at this year’s festival.

Mariana Travacio

(1967, Rosario, Argentina). She spent her childhood in Brazil and currently lives in Buenos Aires. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Buenos Aires, where she taught Forensic Psychology. She has a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero and is a French and Portuguese translator. She wrote the books of short stories Cotidiano (2015), Cenizas de carnaval (2018), Figuras infinitas (2021) and Me verás caer (2023), as well as the novels Como si existiese el perdón (2016) and Quebrada (2022). She has been translated into English, French, German, Swedish, Basque, Italian and Portuguese.

Néstor Frenkel

The director, screenwriter, editor and producer of numerous feature documentaries in co-authorship with Sofía Mora. He directed the documentaries Construcción de una ciudad (Bafici 08), Amateur (Bafici 11), The Great Pretender (Bafici 13) and Los visionadores (Bafici 21), among others. Retrospective exhibits of his work have been held at the Cinemateca de Montevideo in 2011, MARFICI 2012 (Argentina), FIACID 2014 (Peru), FIDOCS 2014 (Chile) and on Argentine Public Television in 2016. In 2021, he received the Konex Award as one of the five outstanding documentary filmmakers of the decade. At this year’s Bafici, he presents After ‘Un buen día’.

Annie Karlsson

She’s a programmer for Göteborg Film Festival since 2015. Her main focus as a programmer and coordinator for Nordic Film Lab is on Nordic films as well as new Nordic talent. She also has a special interest in LGBTQ cinema, and when she is not selecting films, she is a writer for arthouse streaming service Draken Film. She has a background as a project manager at Doc Lounge, an organization that creates special screenings of documentary films in off-cinema settings.

Laura Nevole

She is an actress, playwright (EMAD), psychology graduate (UBA), theater director, and teacher of acting and dramatic writing (UBA/UNA). In film she starred, among others, in Lucía Seles’ Terminal Young (Bafici 23), winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the festival, Lucía Seles’ Smog en tu corazón (Bafici 22), winner of the Best Ensemble Cast Award, and  Gonzalo García-Pelayo’s Nail Parlour, which is screened at this year’s festival. In 2022, she was part of the Lucía Seles theatrical retrospective at Teatro Sarmiento, and the Lucía Seles film retrospective at the Leopoldo Lugones theater.

Valentina Otormin Dall’Oglio

She was born in Uruguay and lives between Paris and Montevideo. She has been collaborating with several festivals for seven years, contributing to their programming from a political and social perspective. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Literature, with a Master’s in Political Science, and currently works as a programmer at the Biarritz Amérique Latine Festival and at the Uruguay International Film Festival, and as coordinator of the ArteKino European Film Festival, organized by Arte France Cinéma. She was a juror at several international festivals.

Rodrigo Areias

He graduated in Sound and Image at the School of Arts in Porto. He also did a Film undergrad at NYU’s Tisch School of Arts, at Eurodoc and at the Venice Biennale College production training programs. He has developed creative works in the area of auteur cinema, video-art and music videos. He has produced films both by newcomers and veterans such as Jean-Luc Godard, Aki Kaurismaki and Manoel de Oliveira, with whom he won many international awards like San Sebastián Golden Shell. This year’s festival presents a focus on his work as a director, featuring the world premiere of his latest film, A Stone Dreams to Blossom.

Alberto Gracia

(1978, Ferrol, Spain). He studied at the University of Vigo and lives in Madrid. His work is mainly audiovisual, but he has also made installation, sculpture and painting exhibits. He directed two short films and the feature films The Fifth Gospel of Kaspar Hauser (2013), winner of the Fipresci Award at the Rotterdam Festival, and Wandering Star (2018), winner of the Deluxe New Waves Award at the Seville European Film Festival and the Best Film Award at the Dock of the Bay Festival in Donosti. His third feature, The Rim, is part of the International Competition at this year’s festival.

Fred Riedel

He began his career as a film producer working with Keith Griffiths and Simon Field, winners of the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2010, on television documentaries for Channel 4 London and the BBC. He produced a variety of projects for Nickelodeon, Gray Advertising, Bell Atlantic and Ann Taylor, among others. He directed the feature documentaries Hello Hello Hello Hello: Lee Ranaldo, Electric Trim (Bafici 18), No Compromise When It’s Time to Die (Bafici 22), and Ken Jacobs – From Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art, which is screened at this year’s festival.

Gustavo Sala

(1973, Mar del Plata, Argentina). He is an illustrator, cartoonist, musician and podcaster. He has collaborated for media such as Rolling Stone, Página/12, Barcelona, Orsai, Fierro, Los Inrockuptibles and Mongolia (Spain). He has published more than twenty books, including Buenos Aires en pelotas, Viva la caca, Cómo ser un zombie and Bife Angosto (volumes 1 to 5), among others. He has collaborated as a comedian on radio and hosts the podcast Sonido Bragueta alongside writer and comedian Ignacio Alcuri. He is the vocalist and lyricist of electropop duo Fiambre Moderno, along with Juampi Malvasio.