Two Latin American filmmakers have been selected as jury members for the 70th edition of the Berlin Film Festival: Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho will be participating in the official international jury which will grant the Golden and the Silver Bears, and Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor will participate in the new jury of the inaugural edition of the competitive section Encounters.
In the 1990s, while still working full-time as a programmer, film critic and journalist for various media, Mendonça Filho began making his own short films. For Crítico, his documentary debut feature, the Recife-born Brazilian filmmaker gave 70 directors and critics a chance to speak their minds. O Som ao Redor / Neighboring Sounds, Mendonça’s first fiction feature film, had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2012 and Brazil selected it as its entry for an Oscar. The film has been shown at over 100 festivals and “The New York Times” listed it as one of the ten best films of the year. Four years later, Aquarius, starring Sonia Braga, was invited to participate in the competition in Cannes. The film sold to more than 100 countries and was nominated for a César and an Independent Spirit Award. In 2019, Bacurau, Mendonça’s most recent work, co-directed and co-written with Juliano Dornelles, screened in the competition in Cannes and won the Jury Prize. Kleber is also artistic director of Janela Internacional de Cinema do Recife.
Sotomayor is a film director, writer and producer born in Santiago de Chile in 1985. Her first feature film De Jueves a Domingo / Thursday Till Sunday (2012) was developed at the Cannes Cinéfondation Residence. It won the Tiger Award in Rotterdam and has been gaining international recognition ever since. In 2015, she premiered her medium-length film Mar at the Berlinale Forum and also co-produced the collective project Aqui, em Lisboa: Episódios da Vida da Cidade (Here in Lisbon – Episodes of a City). For Tarde para morir joven /Too Late to Die Young (2018) she became the first woman to receive the Leopard for Best Direction at Locarno. Sotomayor is also one of the founders of the production company CINESTACIóN and the CCC, Centro de Cine y Creación, a new arthouse cinema and centre in Santiago de Chile.
The winners of the Berlinale will be announced on Saturday, February 29.
