Diego Armando Aparicio, a Cypriot, has been appointed as a member of the 38th Teddy Awards International Jury, a significant accolade in the realm of LGBTQI+ cinema, bestowed as part of the esteemed Berlin International Film Festival.
The 74th Berlinale is slated to run from February 15th to February 25th, 2024.
Aparicio, who serves as the artistic director of the Cypriot Queer Wave film festival, finds himself in Berlin as an esteemed guest of the festival organisers. He joins a distinguished panel of five jurors tasked with adjudicating the Teddy Award, recognised as the festival’s official LGBTQI+ film prize.
The award ceremony is scheduled for Friday, February 23rd.
Alongside Aparicio, the panel comprises Seriz Howard, the programme director of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, Kami Sand, an artist and curator from Pakistan, Luis Fernando Moura, a cinema consultant from Brazil, and Vick Carmen Sønne, an actress and writer from Denmark.
The Teddy Award stands as the world’s oldest and most prestigious queer film accolade. The jury, consisting of seasoned cinema professionals and organisers of LGBTQI+ film festivals, reviews films across all sections of the Berlinale to determine the winners.
Notably, films need not be part of the festival’s official competition to qualify for consideration for a Teddy Award. The jury compiles a selection of films meeting the criteria, with awards presented for both short films and documentaries, in addition to a special Teddy Jury Award. This year, a total of 33 films have made the coveted list.
The Teddy Award has honoured renowned directors such as Pedro Almodóvar, Derek Jarman, Gus Van Sant, Tilda Swinton, James Franco, Udo Kier, and Barbara Hammer in the past.
Established in 1987, the Teddy Award has garnered widespread acclaim and serves as a beacon of diversity and inclusion within societies and cultures worldwide. It has evolved into the foremost gathering of the global queer film and media industry, boasting a network encompassing over 180 queer film festivals.
Who is Diego Armando Aparicio?
Diego Armando Aparicio, born in Cyprus in 1993, is the founder and artistic director of the Queer Wave film festival.
His work earned him a place among the top 20 finalists for the 2021 Commonwealth Youth Award, out of a pool of 1,000 candidates from 43 countries. He previously served as an official juror at the Giornate degli Autori during the Venice International Film Festival in 2018 and participated in the selection committee for the European Parliament’s LUX Audience Award in 2022.
Aparicio has been involved in various international co-productions, including feature films and television series premiering at prestigious festivals like Venice, Cannes’ Critics’ Week, and the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
He graduated with a degree in physics from Imperial College London in 2016 and is a member of the European Film Academy.
