The public presentation took place this Thursday, May 22, with the Teatre Rialto’s Sala 7 reaching full capacity. The hosts of the art and design podcast Lengua de Sapas, Jotaká and Mar Villar, spoke with Carlos Madrid, the festival director, and Ada Diez, the festival’s art director. The event also featured an audio contribution in podcast format from the poster’s author herself.
This year’s poster, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the festival, pays homage to what cinema represents—its many emotional facets and its power to engage a diverse and plural audience. “This poster went through a couple of iterations before arriving at what you see today,” the artist explained. “Initially, I wanted to take a more local approach,” but the graphic concept ultimately evolved into something that could capture “the festival’s more global nature, aiming to connect with as many people as possible.”
According to María Jesús Contreras: “The poster you now see was born from that transformation—from a local idea to a more open, abstract, and expansive proposal that allows for multiple interpretations and connects with a more universal vision.”
For the artist, this year’s poster design reflects the creative exercise of illustration: “Much like in cinema, when a poster needs to represent characters or clearly convey a narrative, there’s a communicative purpose that guides the image.” Contreras shared that “she sees illustration as a bridge between art and design. In that intersection, creativity sometimes has to take a back seat—and that’s okay. Other times, it becomes the center of the process. That back-and-forth is what interests me.”
The artist “has a uniquely personal style, with colors that evoke paper textures, and she plays with imagery that takes us to dreamlike or completely unfamiliar places,” said Carlos Madrid, director of Cinema Jove. Symbolism plays a central role in the poster. For Madrid: “The moon is not only the symbol and prize of this festival, but also holds a certain enchantment—it’s something you can become absorbed in, something that allows you to escape the world, which resonates deeply with what cinema offers.”
“It’s a visual calling card where we use elements historically linked to Cinema Jove: the moon, the audience as both spectators and creators, and the big screen as a mirror and showcase of what has happened,” added the festival’s art director, Ada Diez.
“Through the use of highly recognizable elements, which draw from audiovisual narrative traditions, and by incorporating a rich visual texture with an almost handcrafted graphic style, Contreras has created a piece that faithfully reflects the spirit of Cinema Jove: a long-standing festival that highlights youth’s ability to reinvent and take ownership of classical storytelling, while also discovering new ways to tell stories,” she explained.
After the special Lengua de Sapas podcast, two short films were screened: Turnaround (2024), written and directed by Irish filmmaker Aisling Byrne, premiering after winning Best Short Film at the Galway Film Fleadh, and Une nuit particulière (2023) by Enzo Martinez, winner of the Audience Award at the 39th edition of Cinema Jove.
Youth and a Passion for Cinema
María Jesús Contreras, born in 1993 in Temuco, Chile, resonates with cinema created by young artists and perspectives. In fact, some of her favorite films are by top-tier filmmakers who took creative risks with innovative storytelling at a young age—like Paul Thomas Anderson. “My favorite movie is Magnolia (1999), and even though I’ve watched many films—and I watch a lot—it’s still my favorite. He was only 29 when he made that film, and that has always impressed me,” she said. “It reminds me that someone so young can create such a spectacular piece. I was also deeply impacted by early Wes Anderson, especially The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). I was struck by his bold aesthetic choices and the narrative style in that particular film left a lasting impression on me.”
The Chilean illustrator publishes a weekly piece in The New York Times as part of the Saturday morning column. She currently works with newspapers, magazines, and supplements such as The Washington Post, Texas Monthly, The New Yorker, The Telegraph, The Economist, Los Angeles Times, and New York Magazine, as well as brands like Gucci, Hermès, Apple, Lush, McDonald’s, NPR (U.S. public radio), and the publishing house Penguin Random House.
Her work has been featured on platforms like It’s Nice That, Domestika, WeTransfer, Colossal, and Creative Boom. In 2022, she received the YoungGuns Award from The One Club for Creativity, which honors creative professionals under 30 worldwide. The following year, she won the AI42 Award from American Illustration, was shortlisted for the World Illustration Awards, and was invited to serve on juries for the Latin American Design Awards, the D&AD New Blood Portfolio Competition, and YoungGuns. In 2024, she joined the jury for the Annual ADC Awards and was recognized by Forbes magazine as one of the 50 most powerful women in Chile.
