Jordi Wijnalda

Jordi has honed his passion for cinema in Amsterdam, Ludwigsburg and New York City, graduating Columbia University's M.F.A. in Film Directing with the short film SOUTHWEST, a predecessor for his feature-in-development FOREIGNERS, that premiered at the Museum of Modern Art’s New Directors/New Films showcase and was nominated for a Student Academy Award.

He has been making short films (including the award-winning GILLES (2017) and his first foray into queer filmmaking, LUKAS AAN ZEE (2016), long-listed for the Iris Prize), as well as exploring the cultural landscape via film festivals and institutions. He has been program coordinator Binger Film Lab, producer and jack-of-all-trades at International Film Festival Rotterdam, and has most recently coordinated the international exchange & creative development platform Holland Film Meeting at the Netherlands Film Festival.

His other loves are teaching, which he is now shifting his career towards doing fulltime, and which he's done at Columbia University, the American University of Paris, the University of Utrecht, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague, and the Parisian film school STUDIO-M; writing, which has now resulted in his first published book, IMMUNITY: A TINY ATLAS OF THOUGHTS (2022); and astronomy, which he has revelled in under the starry skies of the most beautiful Dutch island, Schiermonnikoog, where he hailed from until very recently.

His latest work, the Dutch short film FOSTER (2021), produced by Labyrinth FIlm, is currently making rounds at international festivals, including nominations for best film at the Busan International Kids & Youth Film Festival (BIKY, KR, July 2022) and New Filmmakers L.A. (USA, Dec 2022). He is currently based in Brussels, Belgium, where he spends his days as a film teacher, as an expert advisor for some of the European Commission's funding calls, and as a (screen)writer, gazing out of his big windows as he scribbles away on his first feature film and his second book (a fiction novella, this time).