09 · 01 · 11

Daniela Michel to be on jury at San Sebastián

Clara Sánchez/Translated by Cindy Hawes

The San Sebastián Festival is traditionally one of the most important for Latin American cinema.  Horizontes Latinos offers a selection of films from Latin America -- unreleased in Spain -- that compete for the Premio Horizontes award of 35,000 euros. The prize is designed to promote the distribution of feature films that are totally or partially produced in Latin America, directed by Latin American filmmakers, or that address themes relevant to Latin American communities in other parts of the world.

The Horizontes Latinos jury will be headed by Argentine director Juan Diego Botto, with the participation of Daniela Michel and Javier Martín, program director at the Forum des Images in Paris.

This is Michel's second time as a jury member in an international festival this year. The first was for the Un Certain Regard section of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Three Mexican films will compete in the Horizontes Latinos section:  Entre la noche y el día by Bernardo Arellano - winner of the Best Short Documentary at FICM 2008 for Zoogocho -, Miss Bala by Gerardo Naranjo, and Asalto al cine by Iria Gómez.??

Other films in the section include: Abrir puertas y ventanas by Milagros Mumenthaler (Argentina-Switzerland); Las acacias by Pablo Giorgelli (Argentina-Spain); Anónimo de Renato Pérez (Chile); Bonsái by Cristián Jiménez (Chile-France-Argentina-Portugal); Girimunho (Remolino) by Helvécio Marins Jr. and Clarissa Campolina (Brazil-Spain-Germany); Historias que só existem quando lembradas by Julia Murat (Brazil-Argentina-France); Pescador by Sebasián Sebastián Cordero (Ecuador-Colombia); Porfirio by Alejandro Landes (Colombia-Spain-Argentina-Uruguay-France); Todos tus muertos by Carlos Moreno and Alonso Torres (Colombia); and Ulises by Oscar Godoy (Chile, Argentina).

Michel founded the Morelia International Film Festival in 2003 and has been its director since the beginning. The festival has an ongoing partnership with the Critics' Week section of the Cannes Film Festival.

A promoter of Mexican cinema, Daniela Michel studied Modern English Literature at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) while attending the CCC film school. She has written on cinema for El Economista, Viceversa, Somos, Cine Premiere and El Financiero, and since 1994 has hosted film programs for Televisa and Channel 11.

Michel has organized film festivals since 1994, when she began co-directing the Jornadas de Cortometraje Mexicana at the Cineteca Nacional. She has been a jury member for the Rockefeller Foundation Audiovisual Scholarships, Fulbright-García Robles Film Fellowship and the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding. She has also been a member of the jury at numerous international festivals, including Sundance, the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA), the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF).

If you'd like to read an interview with Daniela Michel, click here: