Current director of Dok Leipzig will join the Biografilm team starting 2020 and will head the festival as of 2021.

Biografilm Festival announces a new step towards Europe: Andrea Romeo, Biografilm’s founder and current director, has called Leena Pasanen, director of DOK Leipzig, to head Biografilm starting in 2021.

Pasanen will join the team already in 2020 to prepare for a definitive passage of responsibilities in 2021.

Andrea Romeo will remain part of the festival organization to ensure continuity of the Biografilm project and concentrate on developing new synergies with the territory and the entertainment industry.

"For a passionate follower of biographies like me", Andrea Romeo comments, "it's really a great opportunity to build your own succession. Biografilm is a project I have been working on for twenty years and I am proud and happy to have been its founder and artistic director. I will be heading the festival until its sixteenth edition, completing a double cycle of 8 years. I believe that 8 years is the right measure to fully express the direction of a festival: in my case, 8 years as artistic director have followed 8 years of its foundation.

"Biografilm must reach its 16th year with a project for the next sixteen. I am very happy of the relationship with the festival audience and the region it represents. I feel the warmth, the trust, and I still enjoy it very much when I can amaze it. However, I believe that at some point a festival must necessarily change artistic director in order not to fall into an identity relationship, and to find a new energy and point of view. Since every transition should be built, pondered and prepared with the right timing, I started the selection of the new artistic director a few years ago. I am pleased to announce today that for the four years going from 2021-2024 – with a possible renewal for 2025-2028 to complete a cycle of 8 years - the artistic director of Biografilm Festival will be Leena Pasanen.”

Over the past years, Biografilm has built a prestigious international reputation, both as a film festival and as a market specialized in documentaries.

“To take this even further,” adds Romeo, “it is a logical step to mix up what we have achieved so far, with the perspective of the director of the longest-running documentary festival in the world and her decidedly international point of view that is bound to bring Biografilm closer to Europe.”

In Bologna to make her new appointment official, Leena Pasanen declared: "I have a close and personal relationship with Italy, so I was very happy when Andrea Romeo asked me to succeed him as director of Biografilm. I am impressed and inspired by the work Andrea did in Bologna, where he created a film festival with a powerful editorial voice and a broad and passionate audience. Biografilm has the potential to become a crucial hub for Italian and international professionals."