Blog: Film festivals

The European Short Film Festival Villamayor de Cine emerged in 2008 in the picturesque village of Villamayor de Santiago, located in the province of Cuenca. Its main mission was to create a space where short films took a prominent place and young directors had the opportunity to shine.

This festival takes place annually during the month of August, in intense days where a team of over forty young professionals, under the direction of the festival's founder, Javier Alonso, tirelessly works to bring the best of short cinema to Villamayor de Santiago.

Renowned Spanish actor Jesús Guzmán was the Honorary President of this film event until his unfortunate passing in 2023. In his honor, the award for the best fiction short film bears his name, keeping his memory and legacy alive in the world of cinema.

The festival's host is Luis Mottola, a highly esteemed professional actor and presenter. His presence elevates the festival with his experience and talent. Mottola feels a profound affection for Villamayor, just as the town appreciates him. @luismottola

The main purpose of La mida no importa-Size Doesn’t Matter is to promote short film production and culture.

Further information: www.lamidanoimporta.cat

Brasília Animation Festival is the firts International Film Festival in Brasília, exclusevily for animation movies. The short films selected will be displayed between 04 and October 06, 2019. There will be a special session, named "Bloody Session", dedicated exclusively to marginal, experimental movies, fantastic, surreal and even scatological.

The festival intends to promote Independent Cinema, national and international.

Montelupo International Independent Film Festival is the brainchild of Lorenzo Ciani, an independent film director charmed by the magic of Cinema Mignon d’essai. Through the collaboration with the Art director Daniele Pertici, the project became a reality.

Now in its 4th year, the Leamington Underground Cinema Festival will be running at venues across the town of, yes, Leamington Spa from 11th to the 19th of November 2016. The festival is made up of a programme of cool, non-mainstream features and shorts – which is why we need your entries.

This year we have prizes for the best short film under 15 minutes, the best sub 1-minute films and a FREE to enter prize for short animation. Also for the first time we are inviting feature submissions to be screened as part of the festival programme.

Leamington Underground Cinema is a shady subterranean operation that was conceived in 2011 as a way of bringing the cool, the unusual and the seldom seen of the cinematic world to the attention of the previously culture-starved masses of the local area.

Operating at various venues across the previously unsuspecting town of Leamington Spa – LUC has presented a whole load of unique one-off cinematic events as well as running three instalments of the Leamington Underground Cinema Festival in September 2013, October 2014 and November 2015.

Our aims are to

- screen brilliant, but less well known or non-mainstream movies

- bring great short films to a wider audience

- show classic cult movies in unusual locations

- supplement screenings with live music, interactive discussions, quizzes and any other ideas we can think of.

UK Web Fest is the first regional festival of it's kind and the second in the country. We are a platform for digital media and the tech worlds to showcase talented, creative, and collaborative master pieces.

We believe that UK and beyond can showcase web series and digital content for all to view anywhere in the world.

"LE PLEIN DE SUPER" is a SHORT FILM TOUR organised by the French association "La Boîte Carrée".

La Boîte Carrée goes on tour by bus across FRANCE (Pays de la Loire) and PORTUGAL to bring cinema to small villages on the road. LE PLEIN DE SUPER is a real opportunity (and most of the time the only one) for people and communities to discover short films and share unique moments.

The screening usually takes place outdoors.

For the third edition, the bus will hit the road again on April 1, 2018 until September 30, 2018. There will be more or less 45 screenings to ensure that each short film will be screened several times.

Please, visit our website to fully discover our state of mind and way of doing things.
https://www.laboitecarree.org

Only Argentine citizens or foreigners residing in the Argentine Republic may participate in the competition who comply with the terms and conditions of these regulations.

Film is an international medium that has its roots in the American inventors and entrepreneurs. This spirit is felt in every word of a script, every frame, every cell and every pixel of film produced around the world.
The American Film Award is a recognition of what it means to have that founding motivating force. It is much more than a trophy, it is a message that the spirit of film is alive.
The American Film Award is a mark of excellence in Film Craft.

SEMBRANDO CINE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
XII EDITION: Recognizing our shadow

Our shade can be a real problem.

It is that side of our humanity, which we prefer to keep hidden, and which makes us act questionably.

This shadow, is in part, what has led us to cause a terrible impact on the environment.

Deforestation, oil spills, pollution of soils and seas, annihilation of species, violation of indigenous rights and assassinations of environmental defenders.

This shadow, individual and collective, is projected from the big cities over our ecosystems and under the protection of state legality and private investments in favor of “progress and industrialization”.

In times where the imbalance we have caused in the environment, comes back at us like climate disasters and nature embezzles, it behooves us to dare to look back at this shadow.

We have a responsibility to understand its impact, point out those projecting it and demand regulations to defend those it affects.

They say that the first step to solving a problem is to identify it and today, through cinema, we seek to acknowledge our actions, to stop the advance of their consequences on our unique natural environment.

ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL SEMBRANDO CINE – XII EDITION
RECOGNIZING OUR SHADOW

ENTRETODOS 17 - Is a free entrance Festival dedicated to the exhibition and award of short films, with up to 25 minutes, of all genres and formats, that addresses issues related to Human Rights.

The Festival takes place in São Paulo. Produced by Prefeitura de São Paulo, Spcine and ESTATE Produções.

ENTRETODOS Festival team.

Festival Inclús is a festival of audiovisual productions, both documentary and fiction centered on the theme of physical and mental disabilities. It is an initiative Associació Inclús and conducted by Fish Muvi.

The aim of Festival Inclús is to give visibility to audiovisual works produced around the theme of disability with a different point of view. The goal is to provide a deepest perspective of the reality of disabilities, whether the production is carried by entities directly involved in the world of disability, or other persons or groups.

We also are an inclusive festival that is why we have two new sections: Inclus values, cinema for kids and teens about social issues and Sing Language cinema, movies in sign language.

The Festival will be held in November, 2024, close to the International Day of Disability December 3rd. The Audiovisual material of the finalists will be played during this day according to the different categories. There will be awards for the best submittals. Inclús focuses on audiovisual productions, but it also has other artistic and commercial activities and disciplines in order to give visibility to this sector.

Mission Statement

TIFA, the Toronto Independent Film Awards Inc. (formerly known as Toronto International Film and Video Awards Inc. TIFVA) is dedicated to awarding and showcasing the best independent films from around the world.

TIFA was started by independent filmmakers who understand the process of submitting to festivals and the challenges met when trying to get recognition for their work by professionals in the industry. That’s why TIFA offers so much – we want to support filmmakers and writers in any way we can!

TIFA’s core beliefs are the following – Accessibility, Equality and Diversity.

At TIFA we believe that everyone should be given equal opportunities to express their talents in film. For this reason TIFA screens and awards films and screenplays from every country, in all genres, and a range of independent budgets.

To help level the playing field we accept feature films in four sub-categories based on the project’s budget so films are not competing against others made at higher budgets. We also highlight categories that are often overlooked such as experimental films, web series, animations, music videos and children’s films.

TIFA is a strong supporter of diversity in filmmaking. Everyone has a story to tell and promoting diversity in the industry can only make it better. This year TIFA has received submissions from over 40 countries as we continue to expand our reach year after year.

For your chance to be recognized as the best of the best in independent film- from any genre and from any country around the world- submit to TIFVA.

The 10th Farinha Film Festival is back !!!! We return with the proposal to light the cultural flame of exchange and learning in film culture. It is during the festival that the backlands of Paraíba experience meetings of cultural manifestations, through exhibitions of regional and national audiovisual productions, with meeting spaces for discussion and learning, as well as film shows, panels, workshops, features and shows.

A horror film contest. Prizes include promotion on the Hollywood Investigator website, award plaques.

Tabloid Witch founder Thomas M. Sipos is the author of Horror Film Festivals and Awards (McFarland 2012) and Horror Film Aesthetics (McFarland 2010), available on Amazon.com.

New NAMES, new GENRES, new CINEMA LANGUAGES on a big screen in the middle of Siberia!

International Kansk Video Festival (Russia/Siberia) is not a conventional film festival. It is an experiment in time and space. The small Siberian city of Kansk, was found on the Internet by chance and selected as its name correlates with the Cannes Film Festival, Kansk in the Russian language is pronounced the same as Cannes.

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Since 2002 the festival has taken place annually in the depths of Siberia. Far away from the Côte d`Azur in the severe Taiga climate, 7000 km from London, 4500 km from Moscow and 300 km from Krasnoyarsk by the Trans-Siberian Railway formerly used to transport shackled contvicts. In this area, full of wonderful and brave Siberian people, pelmeni and cedar nuts, even buses seem reminiscent of the old school buses from a long lost Soviet place full of magic.

The Kansk Video festival has grown immeasurably from it’s 2002 beginnings. Each year it hosts an international jury from the industry and artistic communities, running international film and video-art competitions with a special screenings program and a bank of ideas big enough for the next 150 years. The festival promotes new names, new genres and new cinema trends of the independent and uncompromising video and filmmaking industry.

In recent decades, and at one time to the emergence of new technologies that have ended up scanning most of the processes of the film, the documentary has known a notorious and systematic growth around the world. In our country, and for more than one decade, a production before linked almost exclusively to fiction has been swelling their ranks with new topics, new approaches, new geographies, new dilemmas.

It is in this context that FIDBA is proposed as the 1st. International Film Festival dedicated to this genre which films with the same fans - as long as we believe that the forms and the doings of the documentary film are different from those of the fiction - may meet and dialogue among them and with the public. If the documentary is a meeting point for the FIDBA, it is insofar as it proposes an interpellation to the little-known memoirs, disturbing present and (our) future in suspension. FIDBA will then be an approach not only among audiences, filmmakers and thinkers linked documentary but also in relation to the always stimulating possibilities that allow you to open this space to other border and heterodox expressions framed inside of what we would call "non-fiction" and that encourage us to dialogue with contemporary expressions that go beyond even the scope of the film.

FIDBA will pay special attention to those filmmakers for whom cinema is linked to a form of research and knowledge of the world that surrounds us as to the portrait of human beings whose conditions of life, in certain historical and social contexts, allow you to ask us about our. It is, therefore, authors who not only reflect reality but also ethical and moral relationship which involves filming the other.

FIDBA aims to become a point of support for filmmakers seeking to widen the perception of reality and to films which represent a step forward in the effort to understand it and anticipate it. So, it will make focus on films whose aesthetic originality put at risk not only an idea of the documentary but also a thought about the same film and its possibilities. Since this focus implies questioning the status of the real front of the camera or of the film in relation to reality, this is as inseparable from the mediations that arises.

The cultural organisation Sa. Li. Ro' has since 2009 organised the A. M. Ortigia Film Festival. It takes place on the isle of Ortygia, which is the historic centre of the city of Syracuse. In 2015, the Festival will be celebrating its seventh edition, representing an important milestone in its history. For its seventh edition A.M. Ortigia Film Festival presents an engaging programme of films and events, screening a panorama of national and international films.

The A.M. Ortigia Film Festival presents an international competition of first and second feature films. It will also include retrospectives, previews, tributes to great filmmakers, documentaries, latest film productions, emerging filmmakers, focus on emerging national film scenes, masterpieces of film, exhibitions, installations, masterclasses, conversations with filmmakers and other events.

IN.S.A.N.E. animation film festival- An INternational Animated film festival in Malmö, Sweden, that will take a stand for Noted events in Society, with an Echo.
We stand for anti-racism, equality and every human's right to express themselves.

The film festival is free and it is not a contest. Read more what it is about.

The festival will take place in Sweden's third largest city, Malmö, during the weekend of september 11-13 with a opening evening friday september 11.

IN.S.A.N.E animation film festival will screen animation features, shorts and stop-motion films, for the public. Industry conferences, panels, workshops on the state of the art(s) and educational platforms for children will also be held.

IN.S.A.N.E. animation film festival is a private initiative to make a platform for animation artists to show their work, meet like-minded people, grow the interest for animation and stop-motion films and to start a discussion about issues in society globally.
This is the first time ever for the festival to take place and we look forward to having your animation or stop-motion film and you as a visitor and special guest at the festival.

IN.S.A.N.E. stands for:

.IN International
.S Society
.A Animation
.N Noted
.E Echo

6th CinemAvvenire Film Festival carries on and strengthens the International/European dimension of the Associazione Centro Internazionale CinemAvvenire, a project managed with enthusiasm and determination since 1992 through the starting idea by Gillo Pontecorvo.

Lumière 2015 signs a crucial step forward; the previous edition hosted 100 feature films and 200 shorts from 60 different Countries.
Each tool of the festival is at disposal for the discover and the exploration of new styles and talents, assisting and supporting the independent productions setting a European platform for their expectations. A look at the past won’t be ignored –bringing to light some unpopular zone of Cinema History – as it belongs to the logic of discovery too.
We have concluded many deals with several partners around Europe. This partnerships are planned to decentralize the event with the aim to promote young talents inside a European web allowing audiovisual works to get a broader circulation around EU.
This European direction led us choosing the platypus as logo for our festival. It unites different parts from different animals and this feature makes it unique. It has a duckbill, the tail as rodents, the paws as reptiles and it lays eggs notwithstanding it is a mammal animal. Its skills let it free form categorization and guardian of a precious metaphor: united in diversity.