Juanita Onzaga (1991) is a Colombian filmmaker and visual artist currently based between Brussels and Bogotá. In her films, Juanita combines fiction and non-fiction elements, touching the importance of memory, death and imagination, creating poetic tales that reflect different ways of perceiving reality within strong political contexts.

Her work explores from intimate and emotional landscapes the crossroads between mysticism, ancestral futurism, transformation of trauma from violent conflict, the dreamworlds and the poetics of nature by decolonizing time and perception of the real through ancestral technologies.

Her first short film THE JUNGLE KNOWS YOU BETTER THAN YOU DO was premiered at the Berlinale Generation 2017 where it won the jury prize for best short film; the film was selected at San Sebastian, Cartagena, Busan and more than 40 festivals, obtaining the VAF wildcard and multiple awards.

In 2018, her second short film OUR SONG TO WAR premiered at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at Cannes Film Festival and was selected in more than 80 international festivals as Clermont Ferrand, IDFA, FNC, DokLeipzig, Biarritz, as well as being longlisted for the Oscars, nominated for L'Oeil d'Or at Cannes and winning multiple prizes.

TOMORROW IS A WATER PALACE, her 3rd short film, premiered at International Film Festival of Rotterdam 2022 Ammodo Tiger competition and was presented at the Museum of Modern Art of New York as part of Movies from Earth, at the Museum of Modern Art of Paris and many other venues and exhibitions.

FLOATING WITH SPIRITS is the last creation of Onzaga, a mid-length Virtual Reality experience which just premiered in the Venice Immersive competition of La Biennale, Venice International Film Festival 2023.

In her work, her storytelling creates within realism, an intimate quest for mysticism, where the invisible complements and gives more answers and meanings to the physical world. She holds a bachelor in cinematography from IAD and a Master in Audiovisual Arts from Sint-Lukas Brussel, obtained with honors. She is a Berlinale Talents alumni from 2018 and has been a jury for Berlinale, San Sebastian, Clermont Ferrand, Vienna Shorts, Mecal & El Gouna.

Currently she is in financing stage of her first fiction feature film THE LANDSCAPES THAT YOU SEEK supported by Hubert Bals Bright Future, in development of a documentary and a series of installations around ancestral futurism.