September 3, 2021 (SIGNIS). The 78th Venice International Film Festival opened on September 1 and will run until September 11, 2021. The members of the Jury arrived in Venice on Thursday and began their Jury duties today. As every year, the SIGNIS Jury will award a Prize to a film from the main competition.
Ana Boariu (Romania)
Theatre director and director of documentary films, including a Making of Callas Forever, Franco Zefirelli’s film shot in Romania in 2001. Anca Berlogea-Boariu also worked in film production as a production assistant and location manager (location manager). She has collaborated, among others, with Lucian Pintilie for The Oak (Cannes 1992) and Radu Jude for Aferim! (Berlin, 2015) and Trece si prin perete/It crosses the walls – Fortnight 2014). She taught for two years the art of actor in cinema at the University of Sibiu (2016-2019). SIGNIS member since 2001, she founded the association in Romania in 2002 and was a European delegate from 2001 to 2009. She was several times a member of SIGNIS and Ecumenical juries in Cannes, Monte Carlo, Hong-Kong etc.
Joachim Valentin (Germany)
Joachim Valentin is director of the Catholic Academy Rabanus Maurus, Haus am Dom Frankfurt (Since 2005), and adjunct professor for Christian religious and cultural theory at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main (since 2009). After receiving his doctorate in 1996 as Dr. theo. in Freiburg i.Br., he trained as a pastoral consultant in the diocese of Limburg. After his habilitation (fundamental theology and religious history) on May 25, 2004, he taught at the University of Mannheim from 2004 to 2009. He is a member of the Film Commission and Consultor of the Media-Commission of the German Bishops Conference. He was a member of catholic and oecumenical Juries in Locarno (2001, 2011, 2017), Berlin (2009) and Venice (2014), three times as President of the Jury. His main areas of research and interests are religions and new media, film and theology, religions and modernity, post-biblical Judaism versus philosophy, new religious movements (NRB) and fundamentalism.
Massimo Giraldi (Italy)
Massimo Giraldi has been a Journalist since 1978. He is a critic in film periodicals and author of several books and monographies about Italian and international cinema. He published, “Giuseppe Bertolucci” (Il Castoro), “The film of Luc Besson”, “The film of Steno” (Gremese edition). He is one of those responsible for the Cinema articles of “Roma Sette”, in the daily newspaper “Avvenire”. He is the President of the Commissione Nazionale Valutazione Film (Commission for Film Rating) of the Italian Bishops Conference, for which he was the Secretary from 1997 to September 2017. (Venice 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021).
Sergio Perugini (Italy)
Sergio Perugini was born in 1980. He has a degree in Political Science and a PhD in Cinema. As of 2007, he has been working as an Assistant Lecturer in Film Studies and Film Industry at the LUISS “Guido Carli” university with prof. Dario Edoardo Viganò, also teaching »Film and Bioethics” in the Master’s program promoted by the Pontificio Istituto Giovanni Paolo II – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. He works at the Communication Office of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI). He also holds the role of Secretary of the Commissione Nazionale Valutazione Film (Commission for Film Rating) of the Italian Bishops Conference since September 2017. He is the author of several publications about Religious Studies (cinema, tv-series and religion). (Venice 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021)
Jorge Villa (Cuba)
Linked to audiovisual (AV) since 1974, he joined the University of Havana through the Movie and Cinema Department, where he carried out film debates and specialized criticism through different printed bulletins and other materials issued. He collaborated with the institution mentioned above. In the 1980’s he began working with the International Catholic Cinema Office of Cuba (OCIC Cuba). He collaborated with the OCIC Cuba bulletin and, sometime later writing articles for ECOS Magazine, belonging to present-day SIGNIS Cuba. In the 1980s, he joined its publishing staff, nowadays being its Chief (Senior) Editor. As a member of SIGNIS Cuba, he has been a Jury member on several editions of the National Showcase of Young Filmmakers, summoned by the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC); of the Havana International Latin American Film Festival (5 times) and in the 2016 Mar del Plata International Film Festival. He has also delivered workshops, lectures and courses on Cinema Appreciation summoned by the Latin American and Caribbean Association for Communication (SIGNIS ALC) and SIGNIS Cuba. He is the President of SIGNIS Havana, First Director of SIGNIS ALC, a regular collaborator of the Cuban Cinemathéque and a member of the Cuban Association of Film Press, affiliated to FIPRESCI.
In 2020, the SIGNIS jury awarded Quo vadis, Aida? by Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanić and gave a special Commendation to the film Nomadland by Chloé Zhao.
For more information on the festival, visit labiennale.org.