Marianela Illas

Bachelor in Mass Communication from the Andrés Bello Catholic University of Venezuela, and with more than 20 years of experience in the cinematographic area. Her films and projects have been presented at important festivals such as Cannes, Berlin and San Sebastián, obtaining funds such as the Hubert Bals, Amiens, Sorfond and Ibermedia. In 2016 she premiered “El Amparo” (Rober Calzadilla) at the San Sebastian Festival, a film that has toured more than 50 international festivals and has won important awards. In 2017, “La Familia” (Gustavo Rondón) premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week, which won Best Film at the Lima and Santiago festivals. Both films were distributed by HBO. In 2018, she premiered the feature film “Jazmines en Lídice” at festivals in Toulouse, Miami and Havana, among others. Her projects have participated in many of the most important production workshops and markets in the world, such as the Berlinale Coproduction Market, Produire Au Sud, Atelier de Cannes, La Fabrique des Cinémas du Monde, EAVE-Puentes, BrLAB, EP2C, among others. She is a member of EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs). For the past eight years she has lived in Mexico City, where her daughter Emiliana was born. There, she’s producing the feature films “La Candidata” and “Jezabel”, both favored with the Foprocine support fund in the post-production stage. She has been a member of the selection committee for series in development at the Mexican Film Institute (IMCINE).

Marianela oversaw BTF Media's film department in Mexico for over a year. Currently, she develops and produces film projects under her production company, The F* Rom Com Pictures, founded with the objective of opening spaces for women to take ownership of their own stories on and off the screen, changing the paradigm of what it means to be a woman and broadening our horizons about who we are from what we see.

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