TRIBUTE TO A LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN MEXICAN CINEMA
Luisa Huertas
Actress and teacher
A Mexican actress with a 57-year career. She graduated from the INBA School of Theater Arts and the UNAM University Theater Center (CUT). She has appeared in more than 75 plays, festivals, and international tours, as well as in more than 50 feature films and short films, and in TV series such as Capadocia, Diableros, and La casa de las flores.
She has 44 years of teaching experience. She has taught at CUT, Foro Contemporáneo, and NET, and served as the coordinator of the CasAzul de Argos Voice School from its founding until 2020. She is the co-founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of Voice Use (CEUVOZ), through which she conducts workshops in Mexico and abroad.
She has been recognized as Best Actress by INBAL and at various theater festivals. In film, she won the Ariel Award in 1989 for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Arturo Ripstein’s Mentiras piadosas . In 2025, she received the Ariel Award for Best Actress for No nos moverán, a role for which she also won awards at international festivals.
On September 14, 2024, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) awarded Luisa Josefina Hernández the Teaching Award.
She is a Principal Actress with the National Theater Company and a member of the Mexican Academy of Film Arts and Sciences. Among her honors are the Fine Arts Medal for Artistic Merit in Theater, her designation as a Living Cultural Heritage of Mexico City, the UNAM Bergman Chair Medal, and the Xavier Villaurrutia Medal from the National Theater Festival.
FICG INDUSTRY TRIBUTE
Elena Vilardell
Technical and Executive Secretary of the Ibermedia Program
She holds a bachelor's degree in Philology and Audiovisual Languages from the University of Valencia and a certificate in Film History and Aesthetics from the University of Valladolid.
She served as coordinator of the Film Club at the University of Valencia, and since 1991 has held various positions at the Film Archive of the Valencian Regional Government. She was a member of the Advisory Committee for the Cinema Jove Festival (Valencia) from 1992 to 1994.
Since 1998, she has served as Technical and Executive Secretary of the IBERMEDIA Program, a financial fund established by the Ibero-American Summits of Heads of State and Government to promote filmmaking.
MAGEY LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD TRIBUTE
Lola Dueñas
Actress
From a very young age, she knew she wanted to be an actress. She soon began training to launch her career in film and television.
Her professional film debut came in 1998, under the direction of Salvador García Ruiz, with the film Mensaka, for which she won the Best New Actress Award from the Actors' Union. Since then, she has appeared in more than thirty films in Spanish and French, including those directed by Almodóvar: Talk to Her, Broken Embraces,I’m So Excited!, and Volver, for which she and her co-stars won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival; Amenábar’s The Sea Inside and Yo, también (Dir. Álvaro Pastor / Antonio Naharro), for which received two Goya Awards for Best Performance; Alleluia, directed by Fabrice Du Welz; No sé decir adiós by Lino Escalera; Viaje al cuarto de una madreby Celia Rico; Sobre todo de noche, in which she stars in a film noir-tinged drama directed by Víctor Iriarte and also featuring Manuel Egozkue; and she is part of the stellar cast of the upcoming film by Los Javis (Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo), La Bola Negra, a story inspired by Federico García Lorca’s unfinished play of the same name.
On television, she is best known for her roles in the series *Instinto* for Movistar+ and *Veneno* for Atresplayer. She also stars in *La Mesías* by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, available on Movistar+. In this thriller, Lola plays “Montserrat Baró,” a devout mother who is convinced that God is communicating with her to entrust her with the mission of saving the world through her daughters.
INTERNATIONAL TRIBUTE
Darren Aronofsky
Director
Darren Aronofsky is an award-winning filmmaker who was born and raised in Brooklyn. Aronofsky founded Protozoa in Chinatown, New York. His credits include π, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler, Black Swan, Noah, Mother!, The Whale, the Sphere experience, Postcard from Earth , and, most recently, Caught Stealing.
As a producer, his credits include Jackie, The Fighter, The Good Nurse, Some Kind of Heaven, Viktor, Holding Liat, The Territory (winner of Peabody and Emmy Awards), National Geographic’s Limitless, starring Chris Hemsworth, Welcome to Earth, One Strange Rock, and Pole to Pole, starring Will Smith.
In 2023, Aronofsky founded Primordial Soup, a technology and storytelling company that is shaping the future of storytelling.
INTERNATIONAL TRIBUTE
Edgar Ramírez
Actor and producer
Edgar Ramírez can currently be seen in Emilia Pérez, the film that won the Jury Prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and holds the record for the most nominations in the history of the Golden Globe Awards, with ten nominations at its 82nd edition, of which it won four, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and Best Foreign Language Film. The musical film is directed by Jacques Audiard and also stars Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña, and Karla Sofía Gascón.
More recently, Edgar Ramírez wrapped up his work as a producer and actor on the Netflix feature film It’s Still Night in Caracas, based on the New York Times best-selling novel, which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2025.
Edgar has been nominated twice for a Golden Globe Award for his outstanding portrayal of Carlos the Jackal in Carlos, and he also received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his role as “Gianni Versace” in American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace.
Edgar appears in the independent film Les Arenas, directed by Camille Perton. He will soon be seen in Next Life, by writer-director Drake Doremus, where he shares the screen with Emilia Clarke.
His other film credits include Disney’s Jungle Cruise, alongside Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt; Universal Pictures’ The 355, alongside Jessica Chastain and Lupita Nyong’o; and Yes Day, starring Jennifer Garner for Netflix, which became the platform’s number-one movie in 50 countries, reaching more than 53 million households in its first four weeks.
On television, Edgar can be seen in the second season of Peacock’s anthology series *Dr. Death*, alongside Mandy Moore. He also starred in HBO’s The Undoing —the network’s most-watched show in 2020—alongside Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant, and Donald Sutherland.