José Luis Aparicio Ferrera (Cuba, 1994), independent filmmaker, critic and curator. B.A. in Film and Television Directing from Cuba’s University of the Arts (ISA). His graduation short-film El Secadero / Dryland (2019) won several awards in Cuba, Panama and Mexico and was also selected for several film festivals in Latin America and the U.S. His medium-length documentary Sueños al pairo / Dreams adrift (2020) was censored by the Cuban government due to its criticism of the regime’s violent history. It had its world premiere in Argentine’s BAFICI and has been selected for several European festivals. His latest fiction short-film Tundra (2021) had its world premiere in Curta Cinema – Río de Janeiro International Short Film Festival and its North American premiere in the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. In 2019 he was named amongst the “One hundred latinos that create and inspire a better future” by Colombia’s Avianca magazine. As a film critic he created the Cine Cubano en Cuarentena / Cuban Cinema in Quarantine (CCC) initiative, a collaborative effort aimed at the preservation, research and exhibition of Cuban cinematic legacy.
He has written about cinema and arts for several Cuban magazines and he also participated with three articles in the encyclopedia A Cuban Cinema Companion (2019, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers). He worked as a programmer of the 2nd Mexico City Independent Film Festival and currently performs as head curator of Cuba’s INSTAR Film Festival. He’s currently developing two feature films: the creative documentary El mar / The sea and the fiction project Ismael.