Juan Vicente Manrique is a Venezuelan filmmaker based in Mexico City since 2018. His first approach to audiovisuals was making skate videos for a web platform in Valencia, Venezuela, the city where he grew up. Later he studied Social Communication-Audiovisual Arts at the Andrés Bello University in Caracas. Upon his arrival in Mexico, he worked for three years in news media, where he confirmed his interest in documentary filmmaking. His latest short film LOOKING FOR A DONKEY (2024) won the award for Best Mexican Documentary Short Film at the Morelia Film Festival and the Jury Award at SXSW. His short documentary Don’t Worry (2021) premiered at IDFA and was nominated for Best Mexican Documentary Short Film at the 65th Edition of the Ariel Award. It also won the Best Mexican Documentary Short Film Award at the Guanajuato Film Festival. He has also directed the short film Creole Balls (2018) and the documentary series Never Again in Venezuela (2017 – 2019), presented at One World Film festival and winner of a Suncoast Emmy. In 2020, he started Función Cine, a production company based in Mexico City where he is in post-production of his first feature film Stray Bullet.