The FIFAK 2023 presented yesterday the Playlab Films platform, including the initiator, the Colombian Estephania Bonnet Alonso, is one of the members of the international jury.
This is the first time that producer Estephania Bonnet Alonso has visited Tunisia. Arrived directly from Mexico City where she animated a workshop, this Colombian who has lived in Spain for twelve years, reached Kélibia after a trying journey.
Accustomed to these intercontinental flights where the recovery of his own energy is an art that we end up mastering, Estephania Bonnet Alonso quickly took its marks within the International Festival jury.
Attentive during the projections, taking notes, interaction with the other members of the jury, she follows with delight each evening of the festival and admits to being impressed by the vitality of the public and the cosmopolitanism of the festival.
This international producer should have discovered FIFAK a year ago but a workshop prevented him from engaging with the Tunisian Federation of amateur filmmakers. It was only awarded, because a year later, here it came to discover a festival whose international influence is undeniable.
Estephania Bonnet Alonso is one of the many cultural operators who know that FIFAK is as much a pool as an observatory and an event that counts in the international landscape.
Taking advantage of its visit to Tunisia, FIFAK scheduled for Wednesday, a close -up on Playlab Films, the production structure that Estephania Bonnet Alonso led by the outdoor theater and presented two experimental films.
Speaking of her project which started in 2014 with the active support of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami for the first three years, the producer underlined the itinerant nature of the workshops she is organizing.
Each time, the workshop takes place in a different country, which led Playlab Films from Cuba to Peru, from Barcelona to Mexico City. This nomadic method pushes filmmakers who participate in workshops to get out of their comfort zone and also adjust their creativity to cultural variations.
Playlab Films develops according to two axes: a creative laboratory and a production laboratory. In this way, decisive support is given to artists who can work on their works and then be relayed for production and especially dissemination.
The proclaimed objective of Estephania Bonnet Alonso is to support emerging filmmakers and then propel their careers by inserting them into diffusion networks on an international scale.
The creative workshops of Playlab Films last a dozen days and take place in a closed circle with the aim of winning everyday life to devote itself to cinema according to a practical approach. These twelve days are comparable to a blocked internship during which each filmmaker will have to create an experimental work.
Each time, fifty filmmakers are gathered after being chosen by a selection committee which receives an average of four hundred applications. Later, out of the fifty films made, a dozen will be the subject of international broadcasting.
This year, filmmakers from twenty-seven countries participated in the Mexico City Workshop and their works are called soon to circulate. Perhaps in the future, Tunisian directors will be able to find their momentum from this platform dedicated to young emerging talents.
Today, Estephania Bonnet Alonso produces and distributes directors of many countries like Denmark, Costa Rica, USA, Switzerland or Argentina.
The presence in Tunisia of this producer who knows the South American region can perfectly know can open up Hispanic perspectives for the broadcast of Tunisian films.
But for the time being, Estephania Bonnet Alonso is immersed in the work of the International Fifak Jury, an arduous task given the number and diversity of films but also an aesthetic and cultural discovery that the guest of the FTCA is enjoying each projection.
