The Best Film in the International Competition will be selected by Cinzia Bomoll, Daniel Cohen, and Manuela Velasco. For the Caligari Prize, the young jury of roughly 80 students and cinephiles will be coordinated by Manlio Gomarasca (president), Maurizio Di Rienzo (coordinator), and Anna Maria Pasetti (tutor).
INTERNATIONAL JURY
Cinzia Bomoll, with Romani roots on her mother’s side, grew up in Bologna, where she graduated with a literature degree, then moved to Rome, New York, and the Mojave Desert in California, before returning to Bologna, where she now lives. She’s been writing since a very early age, with a story in the 1998 collection Quello che ho da dirvi (edited by Giulio Mozzi, Einaudi) as her debut. She has published the novels Lei che nelle foto non sorrideva (Fazi, 2006), 69 (Fazi, 2011), and Cuori a spigoli (Ianieri, 2019). She is also a screenwriter (winner of the 2020 Solinas Award) and film and television director. She has made three feature films: Il segreto di Rahil (2007), Let’s Dance (2010), and La California (2022), selected for the Freestyle section of the 17th Rome Film Fest. La ragazza che non c’era is her first mystery novel.
Daniel Cohen is the Artistic Director of the Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival. A fan of genre cinema and fantastic worlds since his teen years, he began his career at an art house cinema in Strasbourg in 1999, where he worked principally as a projectionist. In 2006, he founded Spectre Films and organised his first festival, a retrospective of the legendary Hammer Studios. In 2008, with Spectre Films, he founded the current Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival. His other activities range from scouting international film markets, participating in festival juries, holding student film conferences and running a genre cinema club throughout the year.
Actress Manuela Velasco made her screen debut in Law of Desire by Pedro Almodóvar in 1987. She was also a TV presenter and had small parts in several TV series as well as roles in films by directors such as Jorge Iglesias (Gente pez, 2001), but her breakout role came in 2007, when she played the lead in the horror film REC by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. The role of Ángela Vidal earned Velasco a Goya for Best New Actress as well as Best Actress at the Sitges Festival. After several more TV series and stage roles, Velasco returned to the big screen in El dos de mayo by José Luis Garcí; REC 2, once again directed by the duo Balagueró and Plaza; and REC 4: Apocalypse, solo-directed by Balagueró, with whom she would make the short film Inquilinos in 2014. In 2018 she starred in the film Antes de la quema di Fernando Colomo.
CALIGARI AWARD JURY
Manlio Gomarasca founded the magazine Nocturno Cinema in 1994 and serves as both publisher and editor-in-chief. He has published the books 99 Donne and Io Emanuelle (both published by Mediaword) and La piccola cineteca degli orrori and Monnezza amore mio (both published by Rizzoli). He has also curated retrospectives for the Venice Film Festival and been a programmer for many of the world’s leading film festivals, such as Locarno (since 2009). He also collaborates with major fantasy film festivals. Since 2015, he has handled film distribution for Koch Media. His directing credits include the documentaries Totally Uncut, Fernando di Leo: la morale del cinema, I Tarantiniani (co-directed with Stefano Della Casa), and Inferno rosso – Joe D’amato sulla via dell’eccesso, winner of Best Documentary at the 2021 Sitges Festival.
Maurizio Di Rienzo is a journalist and film critic, a film festival consultant and programmer (Giornate degli Autori, Bif&st in Bari), and co-director of the ShorTS International Film Festival in Trieste. He also collaborates with FICE, creates and curates showcases of Italian films at the Cinémathèque suisse as well as documentary film programs at the Casa del Cinema in Rome. He has hosted radio and TV programs and specials. He also organizes and hosts conferences, workshops, masterclasses, and press conferences, and writes copy for books, catalogues, and specialized publications. For the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, he has worked with its board on the annual Silver Ribbons awards, curating the pre-selection of Italian short films and documentaries since 2002.
A film critic and journalist, Anna Maria Pasetti contributes to Il Fatto Quotidiano and other media outlets. Her work has appeared in Alias, Ciak, Rolling Stone, and MyMovies, to name a few. She graduated with a language degree at Milan’s Cattolica University, writing her thesis on film semiotics, and went on to earn an M.A. in Film & Television Studies at Birkbeck College in London. Pasetti has been a programmer for the International Critics’ Week at Venice and the competition lineup of women’s films for the festival Sguardi Altrove. In 2018, she founded the cultural association Red Shoes, devoted to British film culture. She also takes part in teaching projects aimed at creating film classes for students of all ages.
