José Luis Cienfuegos, new director of Valladolid International Film Festival

After the deliberation of the Governing Council of the Municipal Foundation of Culture of Valladolid (FMC) it has been resolved the appointment of José Luis Cienfuegos as new director of the International Film Week of Valladolid, at the proposal of the technical commission of evaluation of the candidacies presented to the selective process summoned to cover the position left vacant by the until now director of the festival, Javier Angulo. The decree of appointment has been signed by the President of the Municipal Foundation of Culture of the City Council of Valladolid, Ana Redondo.

José Luis Cienfuegos assumes the direction of Seminci after having remained at the helm of the Seville Festival since 2012. As director of the European film event, Cienfuegos has brought together the great figures of European cinema, from legends such as Agnès Varda or Paolo Taviani, to winners of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, such as Jacques Audiard, Abdellatif Kechiche or Ruben Östlund, through creators who have set the pace of auteur cinema in recent times, such as Joanna Hogg, Alice Rohrwacher, Elia Suleiman, Abel Ferrara, Pietro Marcello, Christian Petzold, Sergei Loznitsa, Jessica Hausner, Mark Cousins, Andrea Arnold, Ulrich Seidl, Pedro Costa, Miguel Gomes, Aleksandr Sokúrov, Roy Andersson or João Pedro Rodrigues.

As director of the Seville Festival, Cienfuegos was part of the Organizing Committee of the 31 European Film Awards gala, held in the city of Seville in December 2018. A member of the European Film Academy, he also sits on its expert committee, has been a member of the LUX Film Awards selection committee until 2019 and has been a programming advisor at Laboral Cinemateca and German Films for the German Film Festival in Madrid, as well as a jury member for the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts from the Prince of Asturias Foundation from 2013 to 2017.

Between 2000 and 2012, he organized the multicultural festival “Intersecciones”, dedicated to prestigious and up-and-coming musicians from the national and international independent scene, a task he combined with the direction of the Gijón International Film Festival, which he directed between 1995 and 2011, and to which he gave a seal of quality and independence. In Seville and Gijón he has organized tributes to filmmakers such as Olivier Assayas, Tsai Ming-liang, Aki Kaurismäki, Abbas Kiarostami, Paul Schrader, Víctor Erice, Todd Haynes, Hal Hartley, Todd Solondz, Larry Clark, Harmony Korine, João César Monteiro, Claude Lanzmann, Ulrich Seidl, Lukas Moodysson, Leos Carax, Bruno Dumont, Lisandro Alonso, Claire Denis, Carlos Reygadas and Bertrand Bonello.

A regular member of juries at international film festivals such as San Sebastian, BAFICI, Karlovy Vary and IFF Rotterdam Tigers, José Luis Cienfuegos now assumes the direction of the Valladolid International Film Week, where he will lead all the activities developed throughout the year around the brand of the event and the new Espacio Seminci. He will also assume the ordinary representation of the festival, will direct the work teams that provide services to the event and will propose to the FMC’s Governing Council the action plans for the event, both for the days of the festival and, if deemed necessary, for extension activities over time.