SEPTEMBER 8-12, 2025
JURY 2019
The Official Jury's decisions are final. The selected authors will be notified via the email address provided and published on the festival website www.navarrafestival.com, its social media channels, and any other media outlets the organization deems appropriate.
WORKSHOP CONTEST JURIES
The works participating in this section of the festival will compete for the Melitón Workshop Contest for the best work produced in the annual Estudios Melitón workshop. €1,000
AHMAD TAHERI
President of the Workshop Contest Jury
An Iranian journalist and translator, he has lived and worked in Spain for 20 years. He is an expert in Persian Sufi poetry and has translated several Persian poetic works into Spanish with Clara Janés. He is the founder of the Persepolis Intercultural Association. He worked as the official Spanish translator for film director Abbas Kiarostami and currently works as a translator for Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, with whom he had and continues to have a close friendship.
JAVIER GRUÑEIRO
Workshop Contest Jury
Javier Gruñeiro is a filmmaker and one of the founders of the collective “Dispongo de Barcos”. In his pieces he tries to delve into the impact of the individual on the collective, and how the reality of the latter is the result of its confrontation with the past. Javier has participated as a jury member in, among others, DOCUMENTAMADRID 2018 (best photography award - national feature film). He is currently working on a collective feature film with Javier Rebollo and Noemi Arms, in which the introduction or application of obstructions works to conceptualize a different view of The Night.
RAQUEL CORTÉS
Workshop Contest Jury
Writer and filmmaker. She has taught photography and creative writing workshops both in Spain and abroad. She has directed and co-directed documentaries such as "I Am Not Your Slave" (2018) and "Without Reconciliation" (2014). She is currently working on two personal documentaries and a book of short stories that compiles the best pieces she has written over the last 10 years.
RUTH GUTIÉRREZ
Workshop Contest Jury
Professor of Screenwriting and Epistemology at the Faculty of Communication at the University of Navarra. A specialist in Poetics, Myth, and Heroism, she earned her PhD with a thesis on The Heroic in the Cinema of John Ford. She leads the research team Mythmaking and Heroism in Audiovisual Narratives (MYHE). She has been a Visiting Researcher at the British Film Institute (London), the University of Glasgow (Scotland), and University College of Cork (Ireland); and a Visiting Scholar at the University of St. Andrews, the Universität Bremen (Germany), the Università di Bologna, and the Cineteca di Bologna (Italy). She has also taught at the School of Social and Media Culture in Torun (Poland) and on the Screenwriting Diploma at the University of La Sabana (Colombia).
LOLA MAYO
Workshop Contest Jury
Screenwriter, producer, and film professor. She has directed documentaries for TVE's Documentos TV program and has won the Queen Sofía Journalism Award. She teaches narrative at film schools and universities in Spain and Latin America, such as the Carlos III University of Madrid, the ECAM (National Institute of Film Studies), the Madrid Film Institute, the Lusofona University of Lisbon, and Hamilton College in the United States. She directs the Feminist Documentary Creation Laboratory at the Francesca Bonnemaison Center in Barcelona. She is a programmer for the DocumentaMadrid and Alcine festivals. For three years, she coordinated the Documentary Chair at the San Antonio de los Baños Film School in Cuba and founded the Master's Degree in Documentary Project Creation there. She is a producer and co-writer of many of director Javier Rebollo's works. Her production company, Lolita Films, has been dedicated to the creation of auteur films for over 20 years. He is currently a teacher in the Cine en Curso program, which teaches film in public schools.
OFFICIAL SELECTION JURIES
A jury of professionals will select the winning entries from among the 28 finalists.
JAVIER TOLENTINO
President of the Official Selection Jury
He holds a degree in Information Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid and studied Law at the University of Salamanca. He won the position of editor in the open competitions for access to public radio (RNE) and, having directed some of the network's most charismatic news programs (Siete días, Informe Abierto, La Jornada, El Ciempiés), he soon opted for cultural journalism and film information, taking part in the most prestigious cultural program on Spanish radio, El Ojo Crítico. He is the creator, founder and director of El Otro Cine Posible (Radio 5), El Árbol de las Palabras (Radio Exterior de España) and El Séptimo Vicio (Radio 3); the latter, with seventeen years of implementation in the cultural network of public radio and with which he has won one hundred awards, the Critics' Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the San Sebastian Film Festival, among others.
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PABLO BLANCO
Official Selection Jury
As a film editor, he has worked on more than 60 films and has been nominated for the Goya Awards seven times. He won three of them, for "Airbag," "No habrá paz para los malvados," and "Las brujas de Zugarramurdi." In 1998, he founded the post-production company Atalanta. For television, he has edited episodes of "Criminal" and "Alatriste," among others. He has produced feature films such as "Flores de luna," directed by Juan Vicente Córdoba, and "El abrazo de los peces" by Chema Rodríguez, both of which participated in the San Sebastián International Film Festival. In 2010, he directed his first independent project, "Alegría," a documentary short. In 2011, he produced the short film "Una caja de botones," which won a Goya Award for Best Fiction Short Film. In 2018, he wrote "Jhony," a film script with Carmen Boza and Jorge Luque. In 2019, he directed the short film "Intolerance." Among his most recent works is the feature film "Born King," directed by Agustí Villaronga. He is a founding partner of Microteatro and Estudios Melitón.
MINTXO DÍAZ
Official Selection Jury
He worked as an Industrial Engineer for 11 years. For 7 years he combined this with film production, creating his own production company in 2011, Dynamite Films. In 2016 he left Engineering to dedicate himself exclusively to his passion for cinema. He has participated in workshops such as Berlinale Talents, IDFA Academy or Torino Feature Lab. Among the projects he has produced are the feature films "The Maus", "Letters to Paul Morrissey", "Basque Selfie", "Las ninfas del celuloide" or "Shooting for Mirza" and short films such as "Safari", "The Acrobat" or "Picnic". Several of them are international co-productions. His projects have received more than 150 awards and selections at prestigious festivals such as: Semaine de la Critique at the Cannes Film Festival, Goya Awards, San Sebastian Film Festival, BAFICI, PÖFF – Tallinn Black Nights, Karlovy Vary IFF, Fantastic Fest in Austin, Tribeca IFF, FIDLAB Marseille, Malaga Film Festival, Sitges Film Festival, Seville European Film Festival... He is also a partner of Estudios Melitón.
NATALIA ARDANAZ
Official Selection Jury
She holds a PhD in Contemporary History from the University of Barcelona (2018), with her doctoral thesis, "The Cinema of the Destape: A Historical Analysis from a Gender Perspective," which will be published soon. She currently works as a Project Coordinator at CLAVNA (Audiovisual Cluster of Navarra). As a researcher specializing in film, gender, and history, she has collaborated on various specialized publications and is also the co-author of the book "Historia del Cine Británico." She also served as editor of the photography and film magazine "Contraluz" for five years. She has also participated as a co-writer and documentary filmmaker in several documentaries, including "Algo sobre Ser-Es" and "Focus on Gulu."
MAITE IRISO
Official Selection Jury
A graduate in Labor Sciences and a diploma in Social Graduate, she is the Territorial Director of the Spanish Red Cross Employment Plan in Navarre. She works for the integration of disadvantaged people, promoting and strengthening their employability to place them in better employment positions, regardless of their origin, sex, and/or age. She has extensive work experience in the management of different programs aimed at the integration of migrants, people over 45, women, and/or young people. She was Deputy Director of Youth for the Government of Navarre, and therefore participated as a jury member of different artistic disciplines in the Navarre Young Artists Meeting program.
JURY NAVARRA FILM CHALLENGE
A jury made up of professionals will decide the winning works from among the works submitted to the Navarra Film Challenge.
JOAQUÍN CALDERÓN
President Navarra Film Challenge Jury
My name is Joaquín Calderón and I'm from Pamplona. I trained at the Navarra Theatre School, the Arts Educational School London, the Teatro de la Abadía, and the ECAM (Spanish Academy of Cinema). I continued my training with directors such as Montxo Armendáriz, Mariano Barroso, and Benito Zambrano, among others. In 2013, I launched Arquetipo Comunicación and wrote, produced, and directed "Caminante," my first fiction short film, which won, among other awards, First Prize at the Navarra Tierra de Cine festival. That same year, I began producing and directing the documentary "Sarasate, The Violin King," which premiered in 2016. In 2015, I took an intensive workshop with Abbas Kiarostami, Iranian director and Cannes Palme d'Or winner. In 2017, I produced and directed the documentary "Basque Selfie," which was presented in competition at the 2017 San Sebastian Film Festival. I'm currently involved in the new venture of Estudios Melitón, of which I'm one of the promoters. I'm also involved in the organization and development of the Navarra International Film Festival, serving as its director. https://www.estudiosmeliton.com
TERESA MORALES
Navarra Film Challenge Jury
Teresa Morales de Álava holds a degree in Audiovisual Communication from the University of Navarra. In 2010, she joined Telecinco Cinema as Marketing Director, until returning to her homeland in 2018 to assume the Executive Directorship of the Punto de Vista Festival and join the Navarra Film Commission team. She combined this with the creation of Magma, the agency with which she continues to independently direct film and series campaigns.
MARCOS PERERA
Navarra Film Challenge Jury
Marcos Perera Ortiz is an expert in Corporate and Institutional Communication, with a degree in Journalism from the Complutense University of Madrid, a Master's degree in Business and Institutional Communication Management from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and a Higher Program in Communication Management and Advertising Management from ESIC – Business Marketing School. He has been the director of the short film competition Navarra, Tierra de Cine (www.navarratierradecine.es) since 2013. This festival was created with the aim of promoting Navarra through the filming of short fiction films. For this purpose, participating authors present their draft scripts and production plans, and the organization selects 10 finalist projects each year that move on to the filming phase. He has been a member of the jury at the Hendaya Film Festival and Cortometrando.
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HELENA BENGOETXEA
Navarra Film Challenge Jury
Filmmaker and journalist, she holds a postgraduate degree in Creative Documentary from EICTV (San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba) and a master's degree in Feminist Studies (UB). A partner at CIMA and NAPAR, she is part of the production company Haruru Filmak (Pamplona). She has produced audiovisual projects with numerous collectives and social organizations and has collaborated on various audiovisual projects at the Centre de Cultura de Dones laBonne in Barcelona since 2005.
SANDRA AGUERRI
Navarra Film Challenge Jury
Actress, playwright, and director. Professor at the Navarra School of Theatre. Trained at the Navarra School of Theatre, the creative laboratory of Mar Navarro and Andrés Hernández, the Madrid Film and Audiovisual School (ECAM), and Studio Schinca, among many other professional development and training venues. Currently, she is touring with "3, 2, 1, Tricky Jump!" (ENT·NAE Company), "El eco de los silencios" (Mara-mara antzerki, Navarra), and "Chez emballage" (premiering next October, with the Zumaia Municipal Band).