Morelia International Film Fest

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Check out the winners of the 9th FICM here

Past Editions

Michoacán Short Film and Screenplay Jury

Ana Cruz

Born in Mexico City, Ana Cruz is a Communication Sciences graduate from the Universidad Iberoamericana. She also studied film at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and specialized in television and documentary at the BBC in London. She has produced scientific documentaries for CONACYT (National Science and Technology Council) and was a scriptwriter for theatre series and television dramas for state-owned IMEVISION. After that, she became an independent scriptwriter, producer and cultural television director.

Her work in Mexican media, which stretches over more than 25 years, has earned her numerous awards such as the Latin-American Historic Radio Series Prize (1989) and the Silver Microphone (2001) for the tourism and cultural promotion series Mosaico Mexicano. She also received the Goethe award for her promotion of German culture in Mexico.

Since 2004 she is President of the Women in Film and Television Association (Mexico), and in 2005 she presided the jury of the Femme Totale International Film Festival celebrated in Dortmund, Germany. She is currently Promotion and Programming Director at the Cineteca Nacional (National Cinematheque) and works as an independent scriptwriter. She is also a contributor to several national and foreign cultural magazines.

Marina Stavenhagen

Marina Stavenhagen was born in Mexico City, where she studied Communication Sciences at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana and screenwriting at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC). A promoter of audio-visual culture, she has been Promotion Director of the IMCINE (Mexican Film Institute) and Director of the first three editions of the International Film Festival of Film Schools, as well as General Coordinator of the International Video and Electronic Arts Festival (Vidarte) in 1999 and of the first six editions of the Acapulco French-Mexican Film Festival.

A juror at numerous film, short film, and video contests and festivals, she is a member of the Board of Directors of the Mexico City Children’s Film Festival and Vice-President of Women in Film and Television (Mexico). The French government awarded Stavenhagen, in 2004, the Order of Arts and Letters.

She has participated in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters’ Laboratory in Mexico, sponsored by the Toscano Foundation. Her vast filmography includes En medio de la nada (Hugo Rodríguez, 1993) and De la calle (Gerardo Tort, 2001). She presently coordinates the Evaluation and Project Development Workshop of Televisa Film and is writing screenplays for several film projects.

José María Escriche

Born 53 years ago in Huesca, Spain, José María Escriche has worked tirelessly in the field of film promotion. After his university studies, he was elected President, in 1973, of the Pena Zoti Cultural Association, in which he founded the International Short Film Competition, a pioneering contest in character and orientation. Five years later he became president of the International Short Film Competition of the city of Huesca. The enthusiastic response from audiences and filmmakers led him to create the Huesca Film Festival Foundation. Between 1983 and 1986 he was Town Councillor of Huesca, successively holding the offices of Deputy, Mayor, and President of the Education, Culture, Sports and Celebrations Commission. At the same time, he was advisor to several associations, trusts and cultural organizations, both Spanish and foreign. He has also worked on commissions dedicated to evaluating film projects in Spain.

Escriche has been a juror in a variety of film competitions and is a founding member of the European Coordination of Film Festivals sponsored by the European Union— which encompasses more than 200 European festivals. Presently, he is Technical Cultural Advisor for the Huesca Town Council and Director of the Huesca International Film Festival.

Short Film Competition

Irma Dulmers

A promoter of Latin-American cinema in Europe, Irma Dulmers was born in Arnhem, Holland in 1964. She studied Theatre and Film Sciences at Utrecht University and completed her education at the International Television and Film School in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, where she developed a thesis on LatinAmerican film.

Since 1984 she has worked for several film festivals in her native country, and since 1989 she is the programmer of Latin-American short films at the Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR). From 1991 to 1999 she directed the Latin-American Film and Literature Festival in Rotterdam, featuring a variety of screenings as well as the participation of distinguished Spanishlanguage authors. She has produced several documentaries and imparted conferences either on Latin-American cinema in general or on a particular film, tendency or filmmaker.

She currently selects Latin-American features at the IFFR, which is why she is frequently invited (sometimes as a jury member) to the most relevant film festivals in Latin America. She lives in Amsterdam.

Patrice Carrè

A journalist, filmmaker and television host, Patrice Carré was born in Paris in 1958. During the 1990’s he began working in the film industry until he became assistant director. For seven years he has presided the Short Film Cooperative, now converted to the Maison du Film Court. He is responsible for the short film section of the weekly magazine Le Film Français, and he writes, since 1998, for the special editions about the Cannes Film Festival, the César Awards and the Film Production Guide in France. For six years he has been editor and presenter of the weekly broadcast Cinécourts, dedicated to worldwide short films. He has also participated at the plenary commission of the National Film Center for the financial support of short film.

Since 2004 he is part of the selection committee of the Cannes Film Festival’s International Critics’ Week. His first short film, La Femme qui a vu l’ours (2003) has participated at various festivals (Montpellier, Villeurbane, Pantin, Grenoble, Trouville), was pre-selected for the 2005 edition of the César Awards, and nominated for the Lutins Short Film Awards. Carré directed the play Western Solo, which was presented at the Avignon Festival. He is currently writing the script of his first film.

Daniel Giménez Cacho

In his extensive career, distinguished Mexican film actor Daniel Giménez Cacho has become an internationally recognized stage and screen presence. Born in Madrid, Spain in 1961, he studied acting, voice, and dance in Mexico, Italy, and Spain. In the 1980’s he began his work in theatre and succeeded in building up an attractive repertoire (including Shakespeare, Tieck and O’Neill) while working with celebrated directors such as Juan José Gurrola and Ludwik Margules. He has also tried his hand at stage direction with works like Copi’s El homosexual o la dificultad de expresarse, which premiered in 2002. His film career encompasses more than 30 features, including Sólo con tu pareja (Alfonso Cuarón, 1990), La Invención de Cronos (Guillermo del Toro, 1992), Profundo Carmesí (Arturo Ripstein, 1996), Celos (Vicente Aranda, 1999), Le prince du Pacifique (Alain Corneau, 2000) and La mala educación (Pedro Almodóvar, 2003), in addition to his considerable work as a short film actor.

His achievements have been widely recognized. He was awarded the Best Actor (1993) and Best Actor in a Monologue (2005) awards granted by the Mexico Theatre Columnists and Critics’ Union. He has also been distinguished twice with the Ariel award for Best Supporting Actor (1996 and 2004), and twice for Best Actor (1996 and 2003) for the films Profundo Carmesí and Aro Tolbukhin. En la mente del asesino.

Documentary Competition

Jorge Ayala Blanco

Over the last decades, and thanks to an impressive body of work, Jorge Ayala Blanco has become one of Mexico’s most respected film critics. Since 1963 he has worked as a full-time professor at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos (CUEC). He became a film critic that same year, and since then has contributed without interruption to Mexico’s leading periodicals. His research has focused on film exhibition in Mexico.

His critical works on Mexican cinema have taken the form of sequential volumes: La aventura del cine mexicano (1968), La búsqueda del cine mexicano (1986), La condición del cine mexicano (1986), La disolvencia del cine mexicano (1991), La eficacia del cine mexicano (1996), La fugacidad del cine mexicano (2001) and La grandeza del cine mexicano (2004). Other works have cultivated his interest in international cinema: Cine Norteamericano de Hoy (1968), Falaces fenómenos fílmicos (1981), A salto de imágenes (1988), El cine, juego de estructuras (2002), El cine actual, desafío y pasión (2003), El cine invisible (2004) and El cine actual, palabras clave (2005). He is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (National Researcher’s System) since 1988, and currently writes for the journal El Financiero.

Carlos A. Gutiérrez

A promoter and curator of film and video programs, Carlos A. Gutiérrez studied Communication Sciences at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and earned a master’s degree in Film Studies at New York University. He is co-founder and co-director of Cinema Tropical, a non-profit cultural organization dedicated to the promotion, programming, and distribution of Latin-American cinema in the United States. As a curator, he has presented numerous film and video programs at institutions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), and the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá, Colombia, among others.

Between 1998 and 2003 he was Director of Film and Scenic Arts at The Mexican Cultural Institute of New York. He has been a panelist and a member of the nominating committee of the Media Arts Program in Mexico, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Student Academy Awards. He is part of the selection committee of the New York Lesbian & Gay Film Festival and the Black Maria Film and Video Festival. He frequently gives conferences or participates at round tables at universities. He is currently a member of the Hanson Film Institute advisors’ council and a contributor to Bomb Magazine and Adweek’s Marketing y Medios.

Tom Luddy

Since 1979 has been associated with American Zoetrope as a film executive or producer. As Zoetrope’s Director of Special Projects he developed and supervised the 1981-82 worldwide revival of Abel Gance’s 1927 masterpiece Napoleon, as well as the 1980 presentation across America of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s seven-hour long movie, Hitler ein Film aus Deutschland. Luddy coordinated Zoetrope’s sponsorship of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi (1983), and two collaborations with Jean-Luc Godard, Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980) and Passion (1982). He was also instrumental in Zoetrope’s support for Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha (1980). Other films in his career as a producer worth mentioning are: Mishima, (Paul Schrader, 1985), Tough Guys Don’t Dance (Norman Mailer, 1987), Barfly (Barbet Schroeder, 1987), King Lear ( Jean-Luc Godard, 1987), Powaqqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1988), Manifesto (Dusan Makavejev, 1988), Wait Until Spring, Bandini (Dominique Deruddere, 1990), Wind (Carroll Ballard, 1992), The Secret Garden (Agnieszka Holland, 1993) and Mi familia / My Family (Gregory Nava, 1995).

In 1974, Luddy co-founded the Telluride Film Festival. He served as a member of the New York Film Festival Selection Committee for three years and he was also on the board of the San Francisco Film Festival for many years. He has been Jury of the Moscow and Berlin Film Festivals in 1979 and 1987 respectively, and in 1983 he was the appointed American Jury Member at the Cannes Film Festival, under the chairmanship of Louis Malle.