Juan Palacios is a film director, researcher, and cinematographer with a background in Environmental Studies and an MA in Film (cum laude) from the Netherlands Film Academy.

In 2016, he self-produced his first feature documentary film, PEDALÓ, which was awarded at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. He used that prize money to produce his next project, MESETA (INLAND), a sensorial journey through the "empty" landscapes of inland Spain. It was awarded at CPH:DOX 2019, L'Alternativa 2019, and the Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema in Pesaro 2019, among others.

His third feature documentary, As the Tide Comes In, had its world premiere in IDFA's International Competition and it was the opening film at Visions du Reel 2024. It has also been shown at CPH:DOX, Thessaloniki Film Festival, True False, Gothenburg Film Festival, and Camerimage, among more than 50 others. It had a wide cinema release in Denmark and it has been nominated for the Robert Awards (Danish Oscars) and the Bodil Award. Recently, it won the Best Film of Spanish Cinema and Best Director of Spanish Cinema at the Gijón International Film Festival.

In 2019 he did a residency in Tabakalera (Spain) and he was part of Berlinale Talents. He has received the Statens Kunstfond Working Grant in Denmark three times. In 2023 he started working as a researcher in the Lectoraat program of the Netherlands Film Academy. He is currently working on a hybrid sci-fi film titled Permanent Being.

juan@juan-palacios.com