Jury - DOCanarias
Jury
Festival
Jury
International Feature Film Jury
Johanné Gómez Terrero
Johanné Gómez Terrero is a Dominican director, screenwriter, educator and arts administrator. She graduated from the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, and specialised in film distribution at Barcelona’s ESCAC. Her work inhabits the border between fiction and documentary, informed by decolonial perspectives and the Caribbean’s historical and cultural complexities.
Gómez Terrero is the artistic director of Miradas AfroIndígenas, an incubator for documentary projects designed to foster spaces for creation, exchange, and dialogue between different knowledge systems from across the Global South. Her films have received recognition at leading international film festivals. Caribbean Fantasy (2016) received, among other awards, the Premio Coral for Best Mid-Length Documentary at the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana, as well as a Special Mention from the Jury at MiradasDoc. Her feature fiction debut, Sugar Island (2024), premiered at the Venice Film Festival’s Giornate degli Autori and has received numerous international awards, establishing her as one of the most distinctive and significant voices of contemporary Caribbean cinema.
Noé Pineda Arredondo
Born in Mexico City, Pineda Arredondo studied Social Communication at UAM-Xochimilco, specialising in documentary cinema. He later obtained a master’s degree in Rural Development. In 1997, he moved to San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, where he spent much of his career before returning to Mexico City in 2026.
In 2000, he and Jesús Ramírez Cuevas won first prize in the Social Movements category at the First Encuentro Hispanoamericano de Cine y Video Documental Independiente for the short La guerra contra los pueblos zapatistas. He has worked as a photographer, local producer, and documentary filmmaker for entities and production companies such as TV UNAM, Clío, ProMedios, and the History Channel.
For over two decades he has promoted initiatives focused on audiovisual training, community communication, and documentary film promotion, particularly among Indigenous communities. He was the director of the project Son pa’ llevar (2010-2011), was a member of the Fotógrafos Independientes de San Cristóbal de Las Casas collective, and has been a part of ProMedios de Comunicación Comunitaria since 2012.
In 2018, he coordinated the Memoria Líquida gathering with the Muestra de Cine Ocote, and founded Cinetiqueta, an initiative offering film and audiovisual training to children. He has collaborated with IMCINE since 2019, and has coordinated the Estímulo a la Creación Audiovisual en México y Centroamérica para Comunidades Indígenas y Afrodescendientes (ECAMC) since 2023.
Vanessa Cuervo
Vanessa is a cultural worker, dancer, impact strategist, and field builder based in Bogotá, Colombia. She connects cinema and activism to spark social change towards more just and diverse societies. She has designed campaigns, created programmes, and developed strategies in collaboration with documentaries, podcasts, and social organisations. Her creative strategies reach the right audiences and collaborators and invite them to be part of the change we want to see.
As Director of Latin American Programmes at Doc Society, she designs and leads labs, programmes, and collaborations across Latin America, building strong alliances with cultural organisations in Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador, and Brazil, while supporting documentary filmmakers and podcasters throughout the region.
She is also the founder of Nodo Sur, an initiative that promotes social impact cinema and strengthens collaboration networks between storytellers, social movements, and agents of change in Latin America. Vanessa has collaborated with Colombia’s Comisión de la Verdad as a consultant and trainer, and coordinates the SolidariLabs network, which is dedicated to promoting dialogue between activists and creators in order to transform reality through storytelling.
D.O. Canaria Jury
Beatriz Rodríguez
Beatriz Rodríguez has been with the RTVC News Services since their inception in 1999. Prior to that she was a journalist and presenter for Cadena SER and Antena 3. Highlights of her recent work include the documentaries Isla Flotante and Un Hombre. The latter, featuring Alejandro Palomas, was selected for several festivals, such as the Festival de Cinema de Girona. It premiered at FENAVID – Festival Internacional de Cine de Santa Cruz, in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, and received a special mention at the Kalaburagi International Film Festival, India (2024).
Rodríguez received a Special Mention at the Premios Nacionales de Periodismo de la ONCE en Televisión for her work on RTVC’s Arte, efectos secundarios en la comunidad (June 2022). In 2021, she was awarded for her documentary work, social issues reporting and efforts to promote cultural diversity, receiving the Premio Internacional MUMES, an award that recognizes an individual or organization for their work promoting multiculturalism. Her documentary En la Próxima estación became the first feature-length film labelled by the Ministry of Culture as “Especially endorsed for promoting gender equality” (2012). It was also recognized as the Best Television Project by Canarias Cultura en Red. The project took her to Kyiv, Ukraine, as a special guest of the Spanish Embassy before the European Committee for Equality, which was visiting the city to promote gender equality in the region. Her script for the documentary El Tukuy derrotó la tormenta was awarded the Premio LEAC at the international documentary film festival MIRADAS DOC.
Primarily focused on documentaries that explore social and human issues, Rodríguez continues to work on films such as Buscando un collar de estrellas, filmed in the Orinoco Delta over the course of five years and whose post-production was suspended due to the pandemic, as well as other projects in Kashmir and Latin America.
Notable works in her filmography include Misión de paz, en tiempos de guerra, which examines life in former Yugoslavia following the end of the Balkan War; Sahara Occidental, años de espera, which focuses on the lives of Sahrawi refugees living in the Tinduf desert; Tras la huellas de un santo, in which she studies the work of the devotees of Hermano Pedro (the first Canarian saint) with disadvantaged communities in Guatemala; and Santa Cruz en Carnaval, la transformación de una ciudad, which aired on Canal Viajar and reveals some of the best-kept secrets behind the celebration.
Eduardo García Rojas
Eduardo García Rojas was coordinator of the cultural magazine 2C of La Opinión de Tenerife and currently coordinates El Perseguidor at El Diario de Avisos. He runs the blog El Escobillón.com, has served as director of the Ideapress news agency, and worked as a journalist in the cultural section of La Gaceta de Canarias, El Día and El Diario de Avisos, where he was also chief of the Society and Culture section. He is the author of the books La caja tonta and Paisajes del alma: Canarias, cine e identidad. García Rojas wrote the screenplays for the short films El Extraño Pacto, by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, and Por los viejos tiempos, by Miguel Ángel Toledo. He handled press and communications for the documentary feature film El pueblo soy yo: Venezuela en populismo, by Carlos Oteyza, and for the music group Taller Canario de Canción.
As a journalist, he has contributed to Russia Today, Letras Libres (Mexico), Primera Línea and Ritmo Global. He has also contributed to the magazine of the Academia de las Ciencias y las Artes de Televisión de España and to the Enciclopedia de Cine Español y Latinoamericano, as well as to the Enciclopedia Canaria, where he penned several entries on Canarian filmmakers and others related to the world of comic books.
He led the press offices for the Colegio Oficial de Farmacéuticos de Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the Salón Internacional del Libro Africano (SILA). He also handled press for the first two editions of the Congreso de Museos de Canarias and has been an interviewer at the Festival Internacional de Literatura de Viajes y Aventuras Periplo de Puerto de la Cruz, which awarded his work; the Festival Hispanoamericano de Escritores, Tenerife Noir and Aridane Criminal. He was the curator of the latter for three editions after the January 2023 death of Alexis Ravelo and was also curator of the Festival de Novela Histórica Ciudad de Tacoronte.
In 2022, he moderated the talk El pecado de leer, as part of a programme organised by the Libros de Bolsillo de Alianza Editorial book collection, which featured the writer and journalist Yolanda Batista and the poet and writer Pedro Flores. In May 2025, the Academia Canaria de la Lengua invited him to the 11th Jornadas del Español de Canarias: Literatura y periodismo, where he delivered the talk Cómo hacer un suplemento cultural y no desfallecer en el intento, and took part in the roundtable La novela de no ficción entre la literatura y el periodismo.
Macu Machín
Macu Machín (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) is the director, screenwriter, and coproducer of La Hojarasca, which premiered at the Forum of the Berlinale in 2024. Through its festival run it has received, among other awards, the Biznagas de Plata for Best Spanish Film and Best Director at the Festival de Málaga, as well as the Premio del Jurado for Best National Film at DocumentaMadrid, the Best Director Award for an Ibero-American Documentary Feature Film at the Festival Internacional de Cine de Guadalajara and the Best New Visions Award at RIDM (Montreal). La Hojarasca has also been selected at renowned festivals such as Porto/Post/Doc, Thessaloniki Film Festival, D’A de Barcelona and the Festival Internacional de Cine de Cartagena de Indias. La Hojarasca was also nominated for the Feroz Arrebato for Non-Fiction Award.
Machín holds a degree in Media Studies, studied screenwriting at EICTV de Cuba and received a master’s degree in documentary filmmaking at the Universidad del Cine en Buenos Aires. She currently combines teaching with her work as a film editor and project mentor at various labs, such as FICCI (Colombia).