Elena López Riera Masterclass

Elena López Riera Masterclass

Drawing on her own materials and those of others that have accompanied her creative processes — films, texts, photographs and sound recordings — Elena López Riera will deliver this masterclass as a meeting point to explore and share some of the questions that underpin her work. Who is entitled to speak, in which spaces, and addressing whom? What scope does each new generation have to reinterpret an image, a word, a gesture? How might we reframe the question of cultural, social and geographical heritage? Is it even possible?

Elena López Riera (Orihuela, 1982) wrote a thesis on contemporary Argentine cinema before teaching comparative literature at several universities. Her short film Pueblo (2015) premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. Both Pueblo and Las vísceras (2016) and Los que desean (2018) competed at l’Alternativa. Her debut feature, El agua (2022), premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes and was nominated for two Goyas and two Swiss Film Awards. Las novias del sur was screened at l’Alternativa 2024, following its premiere at Cannes Critics’ Week, where it won the Queer Palm, the César Award and the Quartz Award.

She has participated in artistic residencies and development programmes including the Berlinale Talent Campus, Ikusmira Berriak, Arché Lab and the Cinéfondation Residency in Cannes, where she was awarded a grant from the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée in 2019. Her video installations have been presented at MoMA PS1 in New York and the Madrid Architecture Biennale, among others.