Portugal’s Doclisboa International Film Festival has announced today Mexican producer and programmer Paula Astorga as its new director, taking over Miguel Ribeiro. Astorga will oversee Doclisboa’s 2024 edition scheduled for October 17-27.
Astorga is a producer, consultant and advisor for several cultural projects linked to audiovisual creation. She directed Mexico’s Cinemateca Nacional from 2010 to 2013, having carried out its remodeling, which included the creation of a museum, a restoration laboratory and a digital video library.
In 2012 she was nominated and decorated as a Commander of Arts and Letters by the government of France, and was nominated for the 2014 Arts Patronage Award by the Mont Blanc Foundation. She is the director of El Público del Futuro Seminar (FICUNAM) and is part of the extension program Next Wave from Deutsche Film - und Fernsehakademie Berlin DFFB. She is a tutor at BrLab Features and at Locarno Industry Academy for Latin America.
She graduated from the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica in Mexico City, and in 2000, she he created the Civil Association Circo 2.12 AC, dedicated to the promotion and management of audiovisual culture. In 2004, he founded the Mexico City International Contemporary Film Festival FICCO, which he directed until 2008; and latre
In 2010, he created and directs, to this day, the District Festival. Cinema and Other Worlds, whose objective is to exhibit, promote and disseminate national and international independent cinema. From June 2010 to October 2013 she was in charge of the General Directorate of the National Cinematheque, and has been named Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Government. As a producer, some of her credits include the feature films Malaventura, Once Upon a Time in Hungary, Charity, Omar & Gloria, and Trigal, winner of two recent Ariel Awards.
In a statement, Astorga said: “It is with the utmost sincerity and emotion that I welcome this unique opportunity to become part of this great celebration that is Doclisboa, a space where extraordinary possibilities for exchange are being explored, where I have witnessed the different contexts and the diversity of voices and gazes of the places we inhabit as critical thinkers, as cinephiles, as spectators and, of course, as creators.
“Doclisboa is a space of exchange of conceptual, philosophical, aesthetic, social and plural richness with which I share the same concerns, belongings and objectives that have accompanied my years of work and my vision. With enthusiasm and commitment, I hope that under my direction Doclisboa will continue to consolidate itself as a reference for its audiences, for Portugal and for the world's entire independent film ecosystem”.
