Production Manager Manuela Ocón, Ricardo Franco-Film Academy Award at the Malaga Festival

The Málaga Festival (organized by the Málaga City Council through Málaga Procultura) will award the Ricardo Franco Prize to production director Manuela Ocón Aburto in its 29th edition (taking place from March 6 to March 15). This award, given in collaboration with the Film Academy for the seventeenth consecutive year, recognizes the various film professionals whose behind-the-scenes work shapes the most interesting films of our cinema.

Manuela Ocón Aburto is one of the most solid and recognized figures in production direction in contemporary Spanish audiovisuals. With a career spanning almost three decades, she has participated in more than twenty feature films and fiction series, covering all categories of the production department since 1996 and establishing herself as a key professional in projects of great artistic and logistical complexity.

With a career of almost three decades, she has participated in more than twenty feature films and fiction series

After her initial work under fundamental filmmakers such as Carlos Saura or Fernando Fernán Gómez, her career has been decisively linked to directors like Alberto Rodríguez, Santi Amodeo, Ana Rosa Diego, or Paco Baños, "with whom she contributed to renewing the landscape of Andalusian and Spanish cinema from an authorial and contemporary perspective," the festival highlights.

Goya Award and Carmen Award

Her collaboration with Alberto Rodríguez and the production company Atípica Films has been crucial. She has participated in reference titles such as 7 vírgenes (2004), After (2008), Grupo 7 (2012), La isla mínima (2014), El hombre de las mil caras (2016), and the series La peste (2017–2019). In 2022, she took on the production direction of Modelo 77, work that earned her the Goya Award for Best Production Direction and the Carmen Award from the Andalusian Film Academy.

Throughout her career, Manuela Ocón has received numerous accolades, including the Luz Award from the Ibero-American Film Festival of Huelva, the ASECAN Josefina Molina Award, as well as various awards given by critics and professional associations. She holds a PhD from the Faculty of Communication Sciences of Seville with the thesis 'Gender Inequality in the Executive Team of Fiction Production in Spain' from which she published the book 'Tiempo femenino singular', ASECAN Award for the best cinema or audiovisual book.