Twenty Spanish and Latin American digital creators are the winners of the first Hack MAFIZ and will attend the 25th Malaga Film Festival

All the participants will continue their training in the months to come with free online master classes

A total of 20 Spanish and Latin American digital creators are the winners of the Hack MAFIZ Malaga, the new event of MAFIZ, the Malaga Film Festival Industry Zone. This new section is geared at the new talents of the audiovisual sector, with the objective of converting the event in a meeting point for young creators of digital content and distributors, brands, media, streaming services and production companies from all over the world.

The first edition of Hack MAFIZ Malaga has been a big success, fully satisfying the organiser’s objectives. Nearly 1,300 participants from a wide range of countries, including Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Cuba, Costa Rica, Bolivia and Ecuador, responded to the call for applications. 54% of the applicants were 18 to 24 years old, and 31% were 25 to 34 years old. Of these applicants, 198 were selected, and after successfully passing all the creative challenges proposed, there are 20 winners, who will visit the 25th edition of the Malaga Film Festival to continue their training and look for new possibilities in the audiovisual market.

The winners are: Teo Saksonoff (Argentina), Sofía Tamis (Argentina), Miguel Ángel Malgo (Spain), Carlos Iglesias (Spain), Sergio Barba (Spain), Max Deniam (Spain), Luis Lambert (Venezuela), Nícolo Meneses (Colombia), Alejandro Gómez (Spain), Paola Ahtziri Estrada (Mexico), Juan Pablo Copello (Argentina), Fabiola Contreras (Dominican Republic), Muriel Sago (Argentina), Arima León (Spain), Gonzalo Lugo (Uruguay), Marta Vazgo (Spain), Adrián Roberto Campos (Costa Rica), Isabel Torres (Mexico), Adriano Canella (Peru) and Azul Renzi (Argentina). In their profiles the winners describe themselves as actresses/actors, creators of content, directors, creative producers, digital animators, videogame developers, illustrators/scriptwriters and presenters, amongst other professions.

You can find out more about the winners in this video on our WebTV.

With the creation of this seedbed of talent, the Malaga Film Festival fulfils the objective it had set for this edition, namely to reach new creators and new audiences who consume audiovisual content through very diverse channels and whose community identity requires a much more active dialogue on the part of content producers. With this initiative the Festival seeks to create new spaces that enable regenerating audiences and establishing a dialogue with them and with the creators with whom they identify. This is Hack MAFIZ Malaga’s main objective: to make room for these creators, get to know them and see them in action, allowing them to interact in a venue of synergies with the different agents of the traditional industry.

Digital creators bring innovation to the production of content and to the field of distribution and editorial positioning for their community. Learning from their experience and knowledge, and sharing this with others opens a window onto a differential and synergetic view of the new business models based on social media. Portability, fragmentation, co-creation, collaboration, self-distribution, monetization and new narratives are key aspects, amongst others, of these new creators’ identity, and of the event that will bring them together in Malaga.

The winners are not the only ones who will continue to benefit from the opportunities offered by the Malaga Film Festival. All participants in this first edition of Hack MAFIZ will have the chance of attending, in the course of the next nine months, different online master classes, free of charge, with experts from the audiovisual industry. The programme of the classes is as follows:

• 9 December: MAFIZ, a useful tool for the Ibero-American audiovisual sector - Annabelle Aramburu
• 22 December: Design Thinking - Florencia H. Busallo
• 12 January: Industry Markets: what to look for, what to find - Silvia Iturbe, Annabelle Aramburu and Ralph Haiek
• 26 January: Microseries and Cryptocurrencies - Adrián Garelik
• 9 February: Creative Coproductinos between Ibero-American countries: what should we know - Luis Ángel Ramírez
• 23 February: Basic Techniques for a Successful Pitch - Rogelio Chacón