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The Festival

Michoacan-noches

Our Founders

Alejandro Ramirez

Alejandro Ramírez

Founder and President of FICM. Chief Executive Officer of Cinépolis, one of the largest film exhibition companies in the world with operations in Mexico, Brazil, Spain, India, the United States, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Central America. He served as Mexico’s Representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and as Technical Secretary of the Social Cabinet in the Executive Office of the President of Mexico. He has worked for the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program in the areas of poverty and human development. He is Chairman of the Mexican Business Council, the most influential business organization in Mexico. He serves on the Boards of BBVA Bancomer, the Mexican Competitiveness Institute, the Sundance Institute and the Harvard Board of Overseers. He was appointed a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2005 and co-chaired the WEF’s Annual Meeting in 2012. Also in 2012, President Calderon appointed him as Chair of the B20, the G20’s Business Summit. He holds a BA in Economics from Harvard University, an MSc in Development Economics from the University of Oxford and an MBA from Harvard Business School

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Batel

Founder and Vice-President of FICM. He was born in La Orilla, municipality of Melchor Ocampo del Balsas (today Lázaro Cárdenas), Michoacán. He studied architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM). He was Executive Vice-President of the Foundation for Democracy – alternative and debate – a.c. for two decades and is currently Vice-President of the Lázaro Cárdenas and Amalia Solórzano Center a.c., and adviser to the Head of State of Mexico City in matters of culture. He has been a consultant in the planning of various cinematographic and cultural festivals in Mexico and Latin America, as well as in the design and implementation of public policies related to development through culture. He works independently in the fields of architecture, fine arts and jewelry. He is part of the Honorary Council of the Festival Ambulante and the Advisory Council of the Ibero-American association Cinema 23.

Daniela Michel

Daniela Michel

Daniela Michel is the Founding Director of the Morelia International Film Festival, an annual event launched in 2003 to support and promote a new generation of Mexican filmmakers. The festival has an ongoing partnership with the Critics’ Week section of the Cannes Film Festival.  She holds a degree in English Literature from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and studied film-making at Mexico’s Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica. Michel has also served on the Jury for the Rockefeller Foundation’s Media Arts Fellowships, the Fulbright García-Robles Film Fellowships, the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, and the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, as well as for film festivals, including the Un Certain Regard and La Semaine de la Critique sections of the Cannes Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the Locarno International Film Festival, the San Sebastian International Film Festival, the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), the Sarajevo Film Festival, the Transylvania International Film Festival, the Fribourg International Film Festival, the San Francisco Film Festival, the Cartagena International Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival.

Invitados especiales

Special Guest

Every year we invite artists, producers, directors and screenwriters to share their experience within the medium of cinema.