Preview

Animated Shorts Jury Awards

LALIFF 2022 brings three competitive categories: Live Action Shorts, Animated Shorts and Episodic Series.

Animated Shorts

A jury of three judges will select the Best Animated Short Film and a Special Jury Prize.

GUILLERMO MARTINEZ

Currently has a project in development in which he will be director for Sony Pictures Animation. Most recently, he served as the head of story on the Academy Award®-nominated The Mitchells vs. The Machines, now on Netflix. Prior to joining Sony Pictures Animation, he served as a story artist at Laika Studios on Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link. Guillermo’s additional credits include storyboard artist and writer on the Cartoon Network series We Bare Bears. He was born and raised in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, and earned his bachelors in design at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas in San Juan, Puerto Rico before attending Academy of Art University for his masters. He currently lives in Culver City with his wife and two daughters.

NICOLE RIVERA

Vice President of Development for Cartoon Network Studio, where she works to identify and shepherd new animated series. Prior to joining the development team at Cartoon Network, she was on the development teams at Universal Kids & Family Productions and DreamWorks Animation TV. She also worked for Cartoon Network from 2008-2015, first as part of the Content Acquisitions Team and then as Manager of Current Series, where she worked on shows including Steven Universe, Clarence and the reimagined The Powerpuff Girls. Nicole holds a BA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two young sons.

SIMÓN WILCHES-CASTRO

Animation Director, Titmouse
Simón Wilches-Castro is an award-winning animation director from Colombia, currently based in Los Angeles where he works as a Creative Director at Titmouse. His films have screened in festivals around the world and have earned him various recognitions, including two Adobe Design Achievement Award awards, two Annie Awards nominations, and two student Academy Award regional finalist nominations, as well as six consecutive official selections in the Annecy Festival, among others. He recently served as animation director for Dua Lipa’s latest animated video, Hallucinate and Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. He directed The Emperor’s Newest Clothes for HBO and did a One Direction Smut fiction for Euphoria. Simón received his MFA from the John C. Hench Division of Animation at USC and is also a Fulbright Scholar.

FILMS PARTICIPATING: