The educational project Ventana Cinéfila opens registration for its fifth edition

This unprecedented initiative launched on the European festival scene, offering seven feature films and two short film programmes, bringing together the Valladolid, Malaga, Seville, Huelva and Sitges film festivals through ProFestivales21.

Valladolid International Film Festival, Sitges Film Festival, Seville European Film Festival, Huelva Film Festival and Malaga Film Festival, gathered under the brand Profestivales21, are launching the Ventana Cinéfila project, a free online film channel in collaboration with the FILMIN platform directed at educational centres that aim to promote the audiovisual education of future spectators, who can formalise their registration from Monday 16 September onwards.

This unique project bring together five of the most prominent film festivals to broaden the social outlook and aesthetic sensibility of young people through a programme curated and coordinated by the corresponding programmers, featuring a selection of recently produced international films in which quality prevails, combined with thematic and aesthetic balance, in accordance with the needs of the different age ranges at different stages of schooling.

This year, the programme of Ventana Cinéfila offers seven feature films and two programmes of six short films each by contemporary international authors, which deal with issues that appeal to the present reality of any pupil through different approaches and narrative styles, encouraging an active and transversal view of multiple subjects.

The feature films selected are Beautiful Thing, by Hettie MacDonald (UK, 1996), an initiation story about the awakening romance of two gay teenagers in a complicated environment in a London slum district afraid of rejection for their sexual orientation; Rudi Rosenberg‘s  The New Kid (France, 2015), a coming-of-age film full of humour and tenderness, winner of the New Directors Award at the San Sebastian Festival, about the arrival of a new boy at a school where nobody pays attention to him; and Felipe Holguín‘s La suprema (Colombia, 2023), winner of the Audience Award at the Huelva Festival, a story about a teenage girl from a lost and isolated village in Colombia who dreams of becoming a boxer.

Animation will be present at Ventana Cinéfila with Rémi Chayé‘s Calamity (France, 2020), an initiatory western about a heroine conquering the Wild West, winner of the Annecy Festival; Keiichi Hara‘s Lonely Castle in the Mirror (Japan, 2023), an extraordinary anime about a group of teenagers with complicated and lonely lives who gain access to a wonderful castle through the mirrors in their rooms; Rodrigo Gava‘s As Aventuras do Pequeno Colombo (Brazil, 2016), in which three little friends – Christopher Columbus, Leo Da Vinci and Mona Lisa – embark on a ship on their way to an island in Brazil where, according to legend, there is a treasure that remains hidden; and Nuno Beato‘s My Grandfather’s Demons (Portugal/Spain/France, 2022), a Goya-nominated story about a young city girl’s reconciliation with her rural roots through the letters and clues that her recently deceased grandfather left her to make amends for the mistakes he made in the past.

Ventana Cinéfila estará disponible en FILMIN desde el 15 de octubre hasta el 30 de noviembre. Los centros educativos de Castilla León, Andalucía y Cataluña podrán acceder a los contenidos previa inscripción, que se abre este lunes 16 de septiembre. Los centros que lo deseen pueden inscribirse a través de la página web del festival.

Educational guides

Every school interested will also receive a complete didactic guide for each film, designed to stimulate curiosity about each film and to encourage appreciation of cinema from an early age. Last year, this pioneering programme reached 366,938 spectators and attracted the participation of more than a thousand teachers from Castilla y León, Andalusia and Catalonia.

Feature Films

• Beautiful Thing, by Hettie MacDonald (United Kingdom, 1996)
• Calamity, by Rémi Chayé (France, 2020)
• Lonely Castle in the Mirror, by Keiichi Hara  (Japan, 2023)
• The New Kid, by Rudi Rosenberg (France, 2015)
• La suprema, by Felipe Holguín (Colombia, 2023)
• As Aventuras do Pequeno Colombo, by Rodrigo Gava (Brazil, 2016)
• My Grandfather’s Demons, by Nuno Beato (Portugal/Spain/France, 2022)

Short films – middle schools

• Juan Viento by Carlos Farina (Argentina, 2020)
• The Masked Avenger by Luna Strmotić (Croatia, 2021)
• The Chameleon by Pimter Braak (Netherlands, 2022)
• Suzie in the Garden by Lucie Sunková (Czech Republic, 2022)
• Out There by Judit Orosz (Hungary, 2020)
• Funny Birds by Charlie Belin (France, 2022)

Short films – highschools

• Trumpets In The Sky, by Rayan Makasi (Palestine/Lebanon/France/Belgium, 2021)
• La Prima Cosa, by Omar Al Abdul Razzak and Shira Ukrainitz (Spain/France, 2021)
• Goût Bacon by Emma Benestan (France, 2016)
• Last Days of Summer by Stenzin Tankong (India/France, 2023)
• By Flávio by Pedro Cabeleira (Portugal/France, 2022)
• Las Infantas by Andrea H. Catalá (Spain, 2021)