Juanita Onzaga

Juanita Onzaga (1991) is a Colombian-Belgian film director and producer based in Brussels. Juanita's latest short film "Our Song to War" premiered in 2018 at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at Cannes Film Festival. It was selected in more than 80 international festivals as Clermont Ferrand, IDFA, FNC, DokLeipzig, RIDM, Chicago and won multiple prizes. Her first short film "The Jungle Knows you Better than You Do" won the Jury Prize for Best Short Film at its premiere in the Berlinale 2017 in section generation 14plus, won the VAF Wildcard and many other prizes, while being selected in festivals worldwide like San Sebastian, Busan, Cartagena, etc. She combines fiction and documentary elements within her narrations. Touching the importance of memory, death and imagination, creating tales that reflect different ways of perceiving reality, often within a strong political context. Watching her work, you wander in dreams, jungles and cities surrounded by spirits. Marrying this way a sense of emptiness in realism in an intimate way with a quest for mysticism, where the invisible gives more answers and meanings than the physical world. She is developing her first fiction feature film "The Landscapes That You Seek" at TFL script lab, supported by Hubert Bals Bright Future, while directing other short films and a VR-project. Juanita is a Berlinale Talents alumni from 2018 and has a bachelor in direction of photography at IAD and a Master in audiovisual arts at Sint-Lukas Brussel.