Professional Role

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January First / Primero de enero
? – present
In the midst of his parent's divorce and after his father's beloved piano is stolen, 12-year-old Sebastian and his two best friends decide to travel across Costa Rica with the objective of bringing it back home before New Year's Day.
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Biography

Writer / Director Born and raised in Costa Rica, Bagnarello obtained her MFA in Film Production at Florida State University where she attended as a Fulbright International Fellow (2004-2006). In 2007 she was selected as one of the recipients of the “Opening Doors Grant” for Emerging Latina Filmmakers established by General Motors and the New York Women in Film and Television Association. A year after that, she was invited by the Japanese Non-Profit Organization PEACE BOAT, to direct a documentary entitled “Flashes of Hope: Hibakusha Traveling the World”. The film shows a voyage where 102 atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki traveled around the world to promote nuclear disarmament. Shot in over 22 countries, the one-hour documentary premiered in 2009 at the United Nations in New York City and was theatrically distributed in August of 2010 in Costa Rica. Later that year, she finished a short fiction film that she wrote, produced and directed, entitled “The Hooker’s Son”. The short screened in various film festivals such as the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival and won Second place and Audience Award at the AXN Film Festival. It was also broadcast on cable television in Latin America to over 15 million people. Other films she has directed in the past have screened at the San Francisco Latino International Film Festival, New York Peace Film Festival, Palm Beach International Film Festival, and won an Honorable Mention at the Student Director’s Guild of America Awards. In 2010 she was selected as a 2010 TED Global Fellow and later on that year, the Fulbright Association and the U.S Embassy in Costa Rica honored Erika by selecting her as the “Fulbrighter of the Year”. In 2011 she wrote and directed the documentary “Gangs, Ninis and Thugs: An unofficial war”. The film is 50 minutes and was co-produced by Costa Rica Filmworks and the Oscar Arias Peace Foundation. The film is about the threat of small arms in three of the most dangerous cities in Latin America: Caracas, San Salvador and Ciudad Juárez. Erika also works as a television commercial director with TRIO FILMS www.triofilmscr.com, a production company that she co-founded in 2010. In 2012 Erika was invited to attend the Berlinale Talent Campus, taking place during the Berlin Film Festival. She’s currently developing her first narrative feature film as a writer and director, entitled JANUARY FIRST. With this project she had the opportunity to participate in HBO’s-NALIP’s Latino Producers Academy and Huelva’s International Film Festival co-production forum. The script was also recently selected by the International Association of Cinema – Dreamago, to attend the Plume & Pellicule 2013, a screenwriters workshop taking place in Switzerland next May. For more information about this film go to www.primero-de-enero.com