Ice Merchants

João Gonzalez (1996) is a Portuguese film director, animator, illustrator and a musician with classical training in piano. Recipient of a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, he did a Masters at the Royal College Art (UK), after finishing his BA at ESMAD (PT). In these institutions he made 2 multi-award winning films, “Nestor” and “The Voyager”. In 2022 he became the first Portuguese animation filmmaker to be awarded at Festival de Cannes, winning the Jury Prize for Best Short film in competition at the Critics Week with “Ice Merchants”, which also became the first ever Portuguese film to be nominated for an Oscar. He has a big interest in combining his musical background with his practice in authorial animation, always taking the role of composer and sometimes instrumentalist in the films he directs, occasionally setting them to a live performance.