Marcelo MARTINESSI

Marcelo Martinessi was born in 1973 in Asunción, Paraguay. He studied communication before going to the London Film School. His work revolves around memory, identity and human rights in his home country. He has also researched on the relationship between cinema and literature, adapting short stories. Karai Norte (2009) is a black and white record of an oral narration collected during the 1947 Paraguayan civil war and El Baldío (2013) evokes the hundreds of disappearances over the course of the long Paraguayan dictatorship. He has developed cinema workshops for children living on the streets of Asunción creating with them Calle Ultima (2011). His work has been shown at the Berlinale, Clermont Ferrand, Locarno and many other festivals, winning several international awards. He is currently developing his first feature film set in Asunción, based on the experiences of a 60 year old woman as she is forced to abandon the comfort of her petit bourgeois existence.

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