Jury
Pedro Rivero
Bilbao (Basque Country, Spain), 1969. Screenwriter, director and producer of animated films. Winner of two Goya awards for the short film Birdboy (2012) and the feature film Psiconautas, los Niños Olvidados (Birdboy, The Forgotten Children, 2017). He was the co-writer of the live-action movies El Hoyo (The Platform, 2019) — one of the most watched films in the history of the Netflix platform —, El Hoyo 2 (The Platform 2, 2024) and Rich Flu (2024). Former artistic director of the Bilbao International Animation Community Festival — ANIMAKOM FEST, he has participated as a jury member, mentor and lecturer at numerous animation film festivals. President of the Basque Screenwriters' Guild between 2002 and 2008. Author of comic books and theatre plays, he has been teaching film scriptwriting for several centers and academies for more than twenty-five years, and now is one of the mentors for the Rise & Shine program.
“The Tofuzi Festival began around the same time my films started traveling internationally, so it was always on the list of destinations where I wanted my work to be shown—and, while I was at it, a place I wanted to visit. However, my curiosity about Georgia goes back further, to when I first saw Tengiz Abuladze's Repentance in the 1980s; that interest has endured thanks to my contact with the Georgian exile community in Bilbao, my hometown. It will be a pleasure to set foot in your country.”
