The winners of MOTELX 2024

Méliès d’argent Award Winner – Feature Films @ MOTELX 2024

Jury Mélies d’argent – Best European Feature Film

Stefanie Coimbra
Co-founder of House of Quest Films, a film production company working across Film, TV, and Commercials in Portugal and internationally. She recently produced the feature film “The Ballad of a Hustler” (directed by Heitor Dhalia), currently in festivals, and “Amazonia – The Final Season” (with Ben Harper); she was an Executive Producer on “Lovely, Dark and Deep” (directed by Teresa Sutherland and screened on last year’s MOTELX) and “Submission” (by Leonardo António), and served as a Production Executive on “The Color Out of Space” (by Richard Stanley). Stefanie collaborates often with BBC Studios, producing locally for “Alien Planets” (Netflix), “The Universe”, and “Walking With Dinosaurs” (2025), and has also produced commercials for Apple, Nivea, Lavazza, Heinz, Peugeot, Mercedes IO, among others.

Alan Jones
Alan Jones is a pioneering reporter in the horror genre. He was the British correspondent for the American magazine “Cinefantastique/CFQ” between 1977 and 2002, and is currently a co-curator of FrightFest, the UK’s biggest horror event. Jones has worked for designer Vivienne Westwood and was a DJ for the Sex Pistols, as well as being a world authority on disco, with several published books. Other notable publications include “Dario Argento: The Man, the Myths & the Magic” and “The Act of Seeing”, with Nicolas Winding Refn. As a film critic, he has also written and published several articles for newspapers and magazines such as Empire, SFX, Wonderland, Heat, The Guardian, The Independent, G, Vogue, FHM, Femme Fatales, The DarkSide, and Premiere. He recently became the Artistic Director of the Trieste Sciente+Fiction Festival.

Rui Vieira
From an early age, Rui had a passion for visual expression, which led him to study Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon. After completing his studies, he began a career in advertising, becoming Creative Director in some prestigious agencies in Lisbon, New York, and Amsterdam. Over the years, his multidisciplinary work has been acclaimed, earning him several distinctions. In 2018, he was named Director of the Year by the Portuguese Creativity Club, and in 2020, Photographer of the Year. He currently divides his time between Amsterdam and Lisbon as a director, creative producer, and head of the Development & Content department at the production company Playground. Rui maintains close ties with MOTELX, where he has been responsi- ble for creating the image and promotional films for the 2019, 2020, and 2024 editions.

Méliès d’argent Award Winner – Short Films @ MOTELX 2024

Jury Mélies d’argent – Best European Short Film

Cátia Rodrigues
Film programmer and critic, and a PhD student in Artistic Studies at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of NOVA University of Lisbon. In 2020, she graduated in Philosophy from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto, and in 2023, she got a master’s degree in Aesthetics and Artistic Studies, with a specialisation in Cinema from NOVA-FCSH, where she defended her dissertation “The gesture of showing in Abbas Kiarostami. An analysis based on Wittgenstein and Agamben”. She is a programmer for Curtas Vila do Conde IFF and BEAST IFF, and since 2021, she has also curated the First Short Films Showcase at the Térmita bookshop (Porto). She is a member of the editorial board of La Furia Umana magazine. She was previously an editor for the CINEblog IFILNOVA.

Heidi Honeycutt
Film festival programmer, journalist, and film historian, whose expertise is horror movies. She is the co-founder of the Etheria Film Festival, the most prestigious festival showcase of new horror, sci-fi, fantasy, action, and thriller films directed by women. She has contributed to a variety of genre books and magazines, including Fangoria, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Moviemaker Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Rue Morgue, and Delirium.

Nuno Galopim
Nuno Galopim made his radio debut in 1989 on Antena 1 and, shortly afterwards, presented his first pro- gramme on Antena 2. He went on to experience the adventure of XFM (of which he was one of the founders) and Radar (where he hosted “Discos Voadores” for twelve years) and collaborated with TSF and several programmes on Antena 3 (two of which are still in production), before returning to his original home at the end of 2021. He also worked with newspapers and magazines (Expresso, Blitz, DN, and Billboard) and later in television, creating documentaries for RTP and doing regular work for Festival da Canção and Eurovision since 2016.

The competition is organized in collaboration with the Méliès International Festivals Federation (MIFF). The winners of the competitions also win the nomination to the Méliès d’or annual competition.

Don’t forget to watch the MELIES D’ARGENT Special Programs on our Méliès Fantastic Hub!