Feb 18, 2021
Encounters Jury

The competitive section Encounters was introduced in 2020. Its goal is to support new voices in cinema and to give more room to diverse narrative and documentary forms in the official programme.

A three-member jury will choose the winners for Best Film, Best Director and a Special Jury Award, and will announce them during the Berlinale Industry Event on March 5. This year’s line-up comprises twelve titles from 16 countries, of which seven are first features.

The Members of the 2021 Encounters Jury Are:

Florence Almozini (France) - Programmer
Florence Almozini is currently Senior Programmer at Large for Film at Lincoln Center, serving on committees including the New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films, organising numerous retrospectives and overseeing the programming of new releases. At the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where she worked from 1999 until 2013 as Director of BAMcinématek, she launched the venue’s first ever film festival, BAMcinemaFest. She has served on juries for the Mar del Plata and Tribeca film festivals as well as Cinema Tropical and the Gotham Awards and has been on the selection committee for Tournées Film Festival since 2012. She was awarded the French Order Chevalier of Arts and Letters in 2013.

Cecilia Barrionuevo (Argentina) – Artistic Director
Cecilia Barrionuevo has been the artistic director of the Mar del Plata International Film Festival since 2018 and a member of the festival’s programming team since 2010. Among her other work, she has been involved with the curation of “Neighboring Scenes: New Latin Cinema” at the Lincoln Center, Documenta Madrid and is an advisor at Antofacine in Antofagasta, Chile. Barrionuevo also co-edited several publications, including the bilingual collection of “Las Naves Cine”, and has taught film classes around the world. She is currently a member of the advisory board for the Film Study Center at Harvard University. In 2020 she was awarded with the honorary title of Chevalier of the Arts and Letters from the French Ministry of Culture.

Diedrich Diederichsen (Germany) – Editor and Publisher
In the 1980s, Diedrich Diederichsen was the editor and publisher of music magazines such as “Sounds” and “Spex”. During the 1990s, he taught at universities in Frankfurt, Pasadena, Offenbach, Munich, Weimar, Bremen, Giessen, Vienna, Gainesville, St. Louis, Cologne, Salzburg and Los Angeles. From 1998 to 2006, he was Professor of Aesthetic Theory / Cultural Studies at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart, and since 2008 at the Institute for Art and Cultural Studies of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. His publications include books and texts on pop music, politics, visual arts and The Sopranos.

Press Office
February 18, 2021