Public deliberation and young jury
Irina Raffo
A filmmaker, photographer and producer with an MA in South American Cinema (Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Argentina) and a BA in Communication (Universidad Católica del Uruguay). She furthered her studies in France at Université Rennes II and graduated from the Cinema Programme at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
Awards and recognitions received include: Fondo Concursable para la Cultura (UY), Fondo de Formación Artística (UY), Fondo de Fomento Cinematográfico del ACAU and a participation at the Berlinale Talents BA 2020. She has co-directed L’Avventura Cine together with Gabriela Guillermo.
Her filmography includes Historia de invierno (2022), Historia de otoño (2021) and Historias de verano (2020). In 2018 she joined Fiørd Estudio to produce audiovisual, curatorial and pedagogical projects. She has taken part as a juror and mentor in film festivals and has been a visiting lecturer at Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV, San Antonio de los Baños, among other institutions.
María Abenia
A filmmaker, teacher, scriptwriter and programmer who studied Documentary Photography at Escuela Blankpaper in Madrid, Film Direction at ESCAC, and Contemporary Cinema and Audiovisual Theory at UPF in Barcelona. Abenia lives in Tenerife, where she directed her first short film, Circe (2022) and for five years has been the programmer of the MiradasDoc International Documentary Film Festival. She is currently working on scripts for four long features: the fiction work LejosCerca (2025), La casa natal es el color primero (2024) for the Canarian filmmaker David Baute, Sugar Island (2023) for the Dominican filmmaker Johanne Gómez and Nocturno n.33 (2024) for the Canarian filmmaker Rafael Montezuma. She is also in the process of producing her directorial debut Futura, la niebla (2024), while imparting lessons and workshops on photography and/or audiovisual creation. Her latest initiative in the field of cinema is the production company MamaFilms.
Garbiñe Ortega
Specialised in experimental and non-fictional cinema, Ortega’s practice focuses on curatorship and programming, building audiences and creating specific frameworks to expand the collective cinema experience. Her curatorial work has been shown internationally in institutions like Film Society of the Lincoln Center (NY), Tate Modern, Film Museum in Vienna, Pacific Film Archive, the National Gallery of Art in Washington or Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. She is a former co-director of programming for Gira de Documentales Ambulante (Mexico), artistic director of the Punto de Vista festival (2018-2021) and curator of Sala Z at the Artium museum (2021-2022). She has produced films by Nicolás Pereda, Lois Patiño, Matías Piñeiro and Virginia García del Pino. She currently teaches cinema curatorship at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (San Sebastian) and is artistic director of the Dirdira Lab project.
Description
Granting an award is always an important decision. Prizes and awards implicitly recognise a proposal, work or contribution in culture, science, sports or other fields. But distinctions also inevitably imply the establishment of a hierarchy of sorts in which the views of a group of people—the jury—decide that a specific contribution stands out amongst the others in terms of value or interest. Prizes usually involve at least two additions: a financial reward (occasionally) and the prestige of winning (always).
With that in mind, and considering the frequent objections, criticism or doubts produced by the deliberations of juries behind closed doors, five years ago the Muestra de Cine de Lanzarote decided to change its method of deciding on the winner of the Official Section prize. A specific methodology was established in 2018 to make it possible for the jury to deliberate openly and in front of an audience in a film theatre. Hence, anyone interested can attend and witness the reflections of the jurors. Only individuals directly connected to the productions of films competing in the festival are excluded from participating in the deliberation.
These last five years have seen a series of gripping debates backed up by coherent and well-thought-out arguments. Each year, jurors have had to face different situations. Sometimes the criteria have led to quick consensus; other times, reaching a decision proved far from easy. But in all cases, the experience of the juries openly debating in public has been extraordinary, both for their members and for the audience listening to their opinions. Each public deliberation has been a display of profound respect for reflections about cinema, the expression and defence of ideas and, ultimately, of the implications in awarding a particular film.
Description
La Muestra de Cine de Lanzarote is a project organized by the Tenique Cultural Association, a non-profit organization whose main objectives are to promote, exhibit and debate independent cinema.
Awards
Granting an award is always an important decision. Prizes and awards implicitly recognise a proposal, work or contribution in culture, science, sports or other fields. But distinctions also inevitably imply the establishment of a hierarchy of sorts in which the views of a group of people—the jury—decide that a specific contribution stands out amongst the others in terms of value or interest. Prizes usually involve at least two additions: a financial reward (occasionally) and the prestige of winning (always).
With that in mind, and considering the frequent objections, criticism or doubts produced by the deliberations of juries behind closed doors, five years ago the Muestra de Cine de Lanzarote decided to change its method of deciding on the winner of the Official Section prize. A specific methodology was established in 2018 to make it possible for the jury to deliberate openly and in front of an audience in a film theatre. Hence, anyone interested can attend and witness the reflections of the jurors. Only individuals directly connected to the productions of films competing in the festival are excluded from participating in the deliberation.
These last five years have seen a series of gripping debates backed up by coherent and well-thought-out arguments. Each year, jurors have had to face different situations. Sometimes the criteria have led to quick consensus; other times, reaching a decision proved far from easy. But in all cases, the experience of the juries openly debating in public has been extraordinary, both for their members and for the audience listening to their opinions. Each public deliberation has been a display of profound respect for reflections about cinema, the expression and defence of ideas and, ultimately, of the implications in awarding a particular film.