Public make the Seville Festival an event of international reference

 

With 76,162 spectators and 125,085 euros in box office take, the Festival has the loyal support of a public that participates in an open, informed way.

 

124 filmmakers from all of Europe travelled to Seville to present their films in over 160 meetings with the festival’s public.

 

SEFF Industry has been consolidated as a place of debate regarding the circulation and distribution of European cinema.

 

The 15th Seville Festival was held between the past 9 and 17 November, an event which, with its evolution, its permanent renovation, has managed to become an event of international reference, a place where public, filmmakers and the professional sector meet to experience and celebrate personally what European cinema is today and to reflect on where it is heading.

 

The Seville Festival incorporates a demanding film programme while opening up to the city which hosts it and proves to be a strong supporter of its activity.

 

Judging from the officially certified data which we will analyse below, in this edition the Festival has consolidated its growth in audience attendance at the cinemas, in the arrival of personalities from the world of cinema, in the organisation of activities and encounters between the public and participants in the Festival, and in a varied offer of complementary educational and professional activities.

 

This diversity of contents seems to have made Seville a very attractive combination for European filmmakers who, enthusiastically and willingly, answered the Festival’s call to screen their works and mingle with the public through their agenda of meetings, talks, presentations and Q&As, with a profusion unequalled since the Festival’s creation. In 2018, 95% of the films in the Festival’s competitive sections were accompanied by those responsible for them.

In its 15th edition the Seville Festival has endorsed its condition as an open, friendly event and one of the international festivals with most interaction between filmmakers, actors and public.

 

The Seville Festival has also grown in support. The more than thirty private and public entities from all over Europe who already backed the Festival have increased their support (ICAA, Creative Europe, European Film Academy, Eurimages, Moving Cinema, AC/E, Extenda, Renault, Deluxe, Festival Scope, TV5 Monde…) and in addition this year Movistar has become a new collaborating entity.

 

PUBLIC LOYALTY CONSOLIDATES THE FESTIVAL’S CONTINUED GROWTH

When providing figures for audience and box office take, the festival has the necessary homologation to issue certifications from the Instituto de la Cinematografía y las Artes Audiovisuales (ICAA), with regard to the total or partial inclusion of festival and competition spectators in the overall calculation of a film’s spectators.

 

In 2018, with 76,162 spectators in the cinemas, the figure surpasses the 75,238 achieved in 2017. The increase in the festival’s public is a constant than can be observed progressively year by year, certifying an increase of 32% with regard to the 2012 edition and growing in the last two years by over 10,000 spectators.

 

As a result of the increase in spectators, the festival has obtained a box office take of 125, 085 euros consolidating the increase from 2017 (121,500 euros). It is a growth in take of 128.6% since 2011.

 

The Official Section is still the most sought after by the public, obtaining 16,976 spectators, followed by The New Waves with 11,176 spectators, while the EFA Selection continues to be one of the most popular sections at the Seville Festival with 7,845 spectators. The new competitive section Endless Revolutions takes over strongly from Resistances with a notable attendance of 2,988 spectators.

 

Among the varied offer of parallel activities, industry activities, the daily SEFF Night concerts, educational workshops, etc., the total number of attendances surpasses the 95,000 people who participated in the festival.

 

CREATING NEW AUDIENCES: A FESTIVAL WITHIN ANOTHER FESTIVAL

 

 

 

Increasing its commitment to educating new audiences, Seville has maintained the Europa Junior Section (for audiences from 4 to 11) and the Film Lovers of the Future (for audiences from 12 to 19), as competitive sections with their own entity which attend to the different interests of the morning spectators. For this segment of the public, going to the festival has been much more than seeing films. They have been able to go more deeply into film language and European film through carefully prepared educational guides and more than 180 workshops on audiovisual training. In addition, during the festival they have enjoyed a total of 43 Q&As (in 2017 there were 21) with the filmmakers from Europa Junior and Film Lovers of the Future after the screenings.  

 

Junior and Film Lovers make up practically a festival in itself, bearing in mind the number of titles and premieres, the quality of the programme and all the activities that complete the offer. For this, the support of the Educational Community, which grows year after year, is decisive. This increase in audience in the Europa Junior Section corresponds to the 13,200 young people who didn’t come from the city of Seville.

 

Fundamental to this work is the commitment by the Department of Educational Programmes (Área de Educación, Participación Ciudadana y Edificios Municipales) at Seville City Hall and the collaboration of the Consejería de Educación of the Andalusian Regional Government.

 

In the on-going project for the creation of new audiences, this year the Festival incorporated film sessions for babies, and reinforced the number of family cinema screenings  in morning sessions over the weekends of the festival.

 

THE GREAT NAMES IN EUROPEAN CINEMA PRESENT THEIR FILMS IN SEVILLE

Attending to quantitative criteria, the Seville Festival has become in 2018, more than in any previous edition, the meeting point for European cinema. The affluence of filmmakers and professionals from the European audiovisual sector has brought to Seville more than 780 professionals and 283 accredited journalists.

 

Those attending the festival’s activities and screenings have had 192 occasions to coincide with them at the presentation of their films in the cinemas -16 more than in 2017- and converse in the more than 160 talks held (34 more than in 2017). 

 

 

 

Overall, this year the Festival has organised 304 activities that involve guests (compared to  271 in 2017) among which are seminars, courses, workshops, presentations and Q&As in the cinemas, meetings and talks, special screenings, exhibitions, presentations in bookshops, industry activities, press conferences, SEFF Night activities, galas, events and even a football match.

 

In addition to the presence of Roy Andersson, Swedish film maestro and a true reference for the new creators in European cinema, who came to Seville to receive the Honorary Giraldillo; and of the filmmaker Ula Stöckl, a jury member and to whom the Festival dedicated a retrospective, the Festival welcomed a striking list of directors who are showing the way for contemporary European cinema. Of note among them were Olivier Assayas, who opened the festival with ‘Non Fiction’, Sergei Loznitsa who won the Gold Giraldillo with his film ‘Donbass’, Mia Hansen-Løve, Abdellatif Kechiche, László Nemes, Christophe Honoré, Richard Billingham, Adina Pintilie, Babis Makridis, Aleksey German, Aleksey Fedorchenko, Nicolas Philibert, Yolande Zauberman, Salomé Lamas, Vitaly Mansky, Elsa Amiel , Sarah Fatthi, Sergio Trefaut, Jean-Bernard Marin, Camille Vidal-Naquet , Stefano Savona, Andre Gil Mata, Mats Gorud, Marysia Nikitiuk  and Anna Eriksson.

 

 

The edition was also marked by the visit from actresses and actors such as Valeria Golino Dani Rovira, Alberto San Juan, Guillermo Toledo, Luis Bermejo, Manuela Velles, Roberto Álamo, Pedro Casablanc, Andrés Gertrúdix, Michel Noher, Jan Cornet, Jelena Jovanova, Francesc Garrido, Arturo Valls, Antonio de la Torre, Manolo Solo, Estefanía de los Santos, Alfonso Sánchez and Paz Vega, among many others.

 

And, once again, the great family of new Spanish cinema also had interesting meetings and talks with the audience. Those participating included Xavier Artigas, Xapo Ortega, Víctor Moreno, Alberto Gracia, Marcos M. Merino, María Antón, Carlos Pardo, Pablo Llorca, Alberto San Juan, Valentín Álvarez, Ilan Serruya, Albert Serra, Antón Corbal, Armand Rovira, Saida Benzal, Elías León Siminiani, Isaki La Cuesta, Samuel Alarcón, Ibon Cormenzana, Almudena Carracedo and José Luis Cuerda.

 

Finally, among the Andalusian filmmakers who chose the Festival to present their films, many as a world premiere, are Álvaro de Armiñan, Jesús Ponce, María Cañas, Jesús Armesto, Paola García Costas, Jesús Ponce, Nicolás Pacheco, Ángel de Haro, Isaías Griñolo, Laura Hojman, Manuel Blanco, Antonio Donaire, Mariano Agudo, Daniel Lagares, Jorge Laplace, Elías Pérez, Bernabé Rico, Mateo Cabeza, Carlos Rivero, Alonso Valbuena and José Luis Tirado.

 

THE PROGRAMME: EUROPEAN AUTEURIST CINEMA, THE NEW SPANISH CINEMA, ANDALUSIAN CINEMA AND REVISING THE CLASSICS

In addition to the titles that could be enjoyed in the competitive sections, other attractions at this edition were the mini-seasons dedicated to Roy Andersson, which after the festival could be seen at the Filmoteca Española, and to the women pioneers Ildikó Enyedi and Ula Stöckl, whose films are being shown these days or will be shown at the Filmoteca de Valencia, the Centro Galego da Artes da Imaxe and the Filmoteca de Cantabria.

 

 

In 2018 the Seville European Film Festival has shown 228 titles: 155 features and 77 short films, in a total of 465 sessions. The main competitive sections have up to 45 first feature films, which shows the festival’s commitment to the new talents in Spanish and European cinema.

 

Notable directors from European cinema decided to premiere their films at the Seville Festival. This year, counting feature films alone, there have been 35 world premieres and 117 Spanish premieres.

 

There were also 10 world premieres among the Andalusian films present at the Seville European Film Festival, which confirms the growing interest of Andalusian filmmakers in premiering their films in Seville. This year the Festival has shown 43 Andalusian films (the largest representation of the community in all the festival’s history): 27 short films, 15 feature films and a medium length film. Of them, 40 were part of the Andalusian Panorama. Apart from the Andalusian Panorama section, the Andalusian productions took the Lope de Vega Theatee at successive galas with their special screenings (Todos los Caminos by Paola García Costas; Entre dos Aguas  by Isaki Lacuesta; Jaulas by Nicolás Pacheco; 23 Disparos by Jorge Laplace; or Tiempo Después by José Luis Cuerda).

 

THE SEVILLE FESTIVAL AS A MARKET FOR EUROPEAN CINEMA

From 13 to 15 November Seville welcomed a new edition of SEFF Industry, attended by a broad representation of the professional sector of the European audiovisual industry.

 

Mention should be made of the meeting of the distribution sector: some twenty Spanish distributors (Karma, La Aventura Audiovisual, Avalon, BTEAM Pictures, A Contracorriente, Golem,  Alfa Pictures, Latido, Pack Màgic, Filmax, Surtsey, Abordar, Film Buro, Flins y Pinículas, Modiband, Vértigo, Yedra Films) accompanied by numerous international distributors such as 101 films, Alpha Violet, Austrian Film Commission, Bankside, BAC Films, Beta Cinema, Charades, Coproduction Office, Deckert Distribution, Doc & Film, Films Boutique, Gaumont, Hungarian National Film Fund, Orange Studio, Luxbox, MK2, New Europe Film Sales, Norwegian National Film Institute, O Som e a Furia, Pascale Ramonda, Pathé, Pluto Films, Pyramide, Shellac, Indiesales, Syndicado, Swedish Film Institute, Tamasa, The Match Factory, UDI. Urban Distribution, True Colours, Westend Films, Wide.

 

This broad participation by members of the distribution sector shows that Seville is becoming a reference as a first point of contact with the public and the critics before commercial releases in cinemas. For this reason and in answer to a demand from the sector, SEFF Industry 2018 focused on offering filmmakers and professionals the knowledge and contacts for the international circulation and distribution of their films, given the challenge for independent cinema to find screens and reach the public through the complex ecosystem of festivals and cultural centres.

 

Other participants in SEFF Industry included the programmers from 28 festivals (including: Venice (Giornate degli autori), San Sebastian, Abycine, Valladolid, Documenta Madrid, Goteborg Film Festival, etc.); 30 sales agents (including: Films Boutique, UDI, Wild Bunch, Filmax, Latido, The Match Factory, Memento, etc.); 76 film producers (including: Les Fims d'Ici, El Deseo, Avalon, etc.); and 45 international exhibitors from 16 different countries. This affluence of sector professionals resulted in more than 150 one-to-one meetings.

 

In 2018 SEFF Industry also had the presence of the two main Spanish film schools, ECAM and ESCAC, who developed workshops, participating in the one-to-one meetings and attending cinemas as spectators.

 

FULL HOUSES AT THE FESTIVAL

Among the 465 sessions of a total of 228 titles offered by the Festival in 2018, many films had 90 or 100% occupation at their screenings. Apart from the Europa Junior or Film Lovers of the Future screenings which had numerous “sold out” signs or the Opening and Closing Galas, held in the Lope de Vega Theatre with the showing of Non Fiction and the winner of the Gold Giraldillo, Donbass, the Official Section had full houses at several sessions such as Sunset, Maya, Pity, Plaîre, aimer et courir vite, The Wild Pear Tree, Never Look Away, Ruben Brandt, Collector, Touch Me Not and Euphoria. This was also the case with various titles in other Festival sections, such as Chaos, Sauvage, Something is Happening (The New Waves and NF); The House that Jack Built, Beast, Michael Inside, Scary Mother, Border and Under the Tree (EFA Selection); El silencio de otros and En Liberté (Special Screenings); El Rey (Endless Revolutions) and the now traditional Grotesque Popcorn Marathon.

 

As for Andalusian cinema, titles such as La Primera Cita, Segunda oportunidad, Tierras Solares, Campo and La última toma were sold out for their screenings at the Alameda Theatre and Multicines Nervión; as happened in the Lope de Vega with Tiempo Después, Todos los Caminos, Entre dos Aguas,  Jaulas (at the Canal Sur Radio y Televisión Gala) and 23 Disparos (Winner of the Imagenera Award 2018) making the emblematic theatre a privileged setting for watching a film with all the seats filled, all of which confirms the Festival public’s commitment to cinema made in Andalusia by Andalusian filmmakers.

 

THE MEDIA AND THE SEVILLE FESTIVAL

In 2018 the Seville Festival had 283 accredited journalists, 36% of them from specialist press.

Coverage in the international media increased with the presence in Seville of specialist journalists from publications such as The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Screen International, Sight and Sound, Grazia (France), Kino (Poland), Cineuropa (Brussels), So Film (France), Cineforum (Italy), Sapo.pt and C7nema (Portugal); and the British newspapers the Guardian and the Times.