José Luis Aparicio Ferrera (Cuba, 1994), independent filmmaker, critic and curator.

B.A. in Film Directing from Cuba’s University of the Arts (ISA). His graduation short-film El Secadero / Dryland (2019) won the Best Fiction Award at Panamá’s BannabáFest and Honorable Mention at Cinema Ciudad de México, as well as the Audience and Best Production Awards in Cuba’s Muestra Joven. It was also selected for several film festivals in the U.S. and Latin America, including the Seattle Latino Film Festival, Guatemala’s Festival Ícaro and Chile’s BioBioCine.

His medium-length documentary Sueños al pairo / Dreams adrift (2020) was censored by the Cuban government due to its criticism of the regime’s violent history. It had its world premiere in Argentina’s BAFICI and has been selected for several European festivals like Germany’s up-and-coming International Film Festival Hannover, Spain’s Festival Internacional de Cine por la Memoria Democrática (FESCIMED) and Belgium’s MAX Diversity Film Festival. It won the Best Cultural Representation Award at Festival Internacional de Cine Austral (FICA) in Argentina.

His latest fiction short-film Tundra (2021) had its world premiere in Curta Cinema – Rio de Janeiro International Short Film Festival and its North American premiere in the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. It has also been selected by Locarno, Miami, Santa Fe, World Cinema Amsterdam, San Diego Latino, Minneapolis St. Paul, BAFICI, Lago, Psarokokalo, Philadelphia Latino, Philadelphia Independent, CineFestival San Antonio, Micheaux, Cheongju, Yubari Fanta, Svaneti and Uruguay International film festivals. It won the Best Short Film Award at Fantaspoa, Pendance and New York City Independent, and received an Honorable Mention in the New Jersey International Film Festival.

In 2019 he was named amongst the “One hundred latinos that create and inspire a better future” by Colombia’s Avianca magazine. As a film critic he created the Cine Cubano en Cuarentena / Cuban Cinema in Quarantine (CCC) initiative, a collaborative effort aimed at the preservation, research and exhibition of the Cuban cinematic legacy. He has written about cinema and arts for magazines like Rialta, Hypermedia, El Estornudo and Cine Cubano. He also contributed with three articles to the encyclopedia A Cuban Cinema Companion (2019, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers).

Between 2018 and 2020, he was a board member of the Muestra Joven, a Cuban festival for young filmmakers. He worked as a programmer of the 2nd Mexico City Independent Film Festival and currently performs as head curator of Cuba’s INSTAR Film Festival. For INSTAR (Institute of Artivism “Hannah Arendt”, cultural and civic institution founded in Havana by Cuban visual artist Tania Bruguera) he also curated the exhibition Land without images: the absent in Cuban Cinema during 2022’s documenta fifteen (Kassel).

He was a member of the Mezcal Jury at the 33rd Guadalajara International Film Festival and was selected for the 3rd International Film Residency “Castello Errante”, organized in Italy by Occhi di Giove and Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. In 2021 he taught the workshop “Deconstructing a community’s visual archive” for The New Alphabet School’s #CommunityBuilding at HKW Berlin.

He’s currently developing two feature films: the hybrid documentary El mar / The sea and the fiction project Ismael. Recently he was invited to 2022’s Open Doors program at Locarno Film Festival.