María Larrea

Invitado de Honor

Larrea was born in Bilbao in 1979 and grew up in Paris. She studied Cinema at Paris 8 University and Directing at the French national film school La Femis. She graduated in 2006 and directed several short films and commercials. She works as a screenwriter and is currently collaborating on several feature film productions, particularly in genre cinema (in collaboration with Dario Argento).

She published her first novel in France with Grasset in 2022 and in Spain with Alianza Editorial in 2023: Los de Bilbao nacen donde quieren. The novel won several awards in France (First Novel Prize, France Télévisions Novel Prize, Les Inrockuptibles Prize) and received the Rodolfo Walsh Prize at the Semana Negra in Gijón. The novel will be adapted for the theater in Paris in autumn 2024 with Bérénice Bejo, and its film adaptation is underway with Estrella Productions. The novel has been translated into six languages.

She contributed to the collective book on the Olympic Games, Je me souviens...de la foulée de Pérec, published by Seuil, with a story about Carl Lewis at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. She wrote the monologue Las noches con mi padre for the Paris des Femmes festival.

Other activities involving the participant:

"Childness" Landscape in motion

Laura Ferrero

Invitado de Honor

(Barcelona, 1984) is a writer, journalist and scriptwriter. She has written the storybooks Piscinas vacías (2016, Alfaguara) and La gente no existe (2021, Alfaguara), the novels Qué vas a hacer con el resto de tu vida (2017, Alfaguara) and Los astronautas (2023, Alfaguara), and the illustrated album El amor después del amor (2018), in collaboration with Marc Pallarès. She is a regular contributor to El País and participates in the program La Ventana on Cadena SER.

She currently works as a scriptwriter on several projects. She co-wrote with Isabel Coixet the movie adaptation of the novel Un amor, which won the Gaudí Prize for best adapted screenplay, and a Goya nomination in the same category.

Pilar Torre

Invitado de Honor

Torre holds a degree in Hispanic Philology, with many years of experience in cultural management and cultural relations, particularly involving books, film, and international cultural fields.

She is currently Head of the Support Unit at the Directorate-General for Books, Comics, and Reading at the Spanish Ministry of Culture. In previous years, she worked in the Ministry’s International Relations department, specializing in multilateral relations and Ibero-America.

From 2000 to 2009, she served as Deputy Director-General for Promotion and International Relations at the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA) within the same ministry. She has been a jury member at various film festivals, and was a board advisor for the San Sebastián International Film Festival during this period. She was also a member of the Board of Directors of European Film Promotion (2004-2009), and she received the Latin ACE Award from the ACE (Association of Latin Entertainment Critics of New York) in 2008 "in well-deserved recognition of her work promoting Spanish cinema in the United States," among other honors.