RESIDENCES

The Guanajuato International Film Festival (GIFF) in its twenty-fifth anniversary edition presents once again, in conjunction with Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg and Goethe-Institut Mexico, the Guanajuato-Berlin 24/7 Artistic Residency, thanks to which we will have the presence of German filmmaker Saralisa Volm, who in addition to advancing her new film project in our state, will present her directorial debut Schweigend steht der Wald with us this year. For his part, the Mexican filmmaker who will travel to Berlin to consolidate his next film project is Bruno Santamaría: a rising career filmmaker who has captivated with his particular photography and development of the documentary format, who will now venture into fiction.

Thanks to our collaboration with the prestigious Rotterdam International Film Festival, GIFF selected Mexican producers to be part of the renowned Rotterdam Lab workshop, where they received advice on international co-production, festivals and markets, as well as development in professional networks to enhance the success of their film projects. This year’s selections were the emerging producers Abril López Carrillo and María Fernanda Galindo, who learned tools to navigate the complex world of the international film market in a very favorable environment.

Ten years after the fruitful meeting that led to the invitation of the Netherlands as Guest of Honor Country in 2012, GIFF is taking advantage of its 2022 edition to further nurture this bilateral relationship with its GIFF Residencies program: a professional option for foreign filmmakers to develop or produce their projects in San Miguel de Allende while participating in meetings with delegates from the film industry. Dutch filmmakers Floor van der Meulen and Sebastián Mulder are currently developing their projects as part of this initiative.

Author of celebrated films such as 9 Days – From My Window in Aleppo (2015) or In Exile (2016), Floor van der Meulen will present her film Pink Moon this year as part of the Festival’s annual celebration and we will have the privilege of her presence at San Miguel de Allende, where she will work for several months on the development of her new project.

Sebastián Mulder, documentary filmmaker, will present his film Naya at GIFF 2022, which recovers the trail of a homonymous wild she-wolf that traveled from East Germany to Belgium and will also take advantage of his stay in San Miguel to consolidate his new filmic vision.

This year we also materialized another important bilateral exchange for artistic residencies. This is the Florence/San Miguel de Allende residency program, through which a filmmaker from Mexico will be able to live in that Italian city and vice versa, with the aim of promoting the work carried out in that period. In this way, GIFF continues to advance in its ongoing efforts to promote fruitful approaches between different international film industries and Mexican soil.