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Ventana Cinéfila reaches more than 365,000 young viewers, 35% thanks to the Seville Festival

In its fifth edition, this unique educational project, which brings together five of the most important film festivals in our country (Seville, Malaga, Huelva, Valladolid, and Sitges), reached 365,906 young spectators.

To foster a love of cinema in the spectators of tomorrow and to use audiovisual narrative in the classroom as a learning tool. These are the main objectives of Ventana Cinéfila, which in its fifth edition has managed to reach 365,906 schoolchildren, 126,867 (35%) from 347 centers through the 21st Seville Festival, the film event that has contributed the most spectators to this initiative promoted by the Seville European Film Festival, the Valladolid International Film Week, the Malaga Festival, the Huelva Festival and the Sitges Festival. The project aims to promote film education for young people and has the collaboration of the FILMIN film platform. This year 2024 has registered 1,000 primary, secondary and high school schools, with the participation of nearly 2,000 teachers from Andalusia, Catalonia and Castilla y León.

The programming of Ventana Cinéfila, curated and agreed upon by each festival's programmers, offered through the free online film channel FILMIN seven feature films and two short film programs from mid-October to the end of November 2024.


As a novelty in this edition, the programmers of the festivals in charge of the selection recorded specific video presentations of each of the feature films and short film sessions so that before the viewing in the classroom, some of the thematic and stylistic keys, as well as the historical and cinematographic context, could be previewed.

Also, nine didactic guides in Spanish and Catalan were prepared and available for teachers to work with students and enrich the class discussion before and after the viewing. This didactic material is produced by the social initiative cooperative Drac Màgic, dedicated to the study and dissemination of audiovisual culture, Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts 2021 and whose most outstanding projects include 'Construir Mirades', an educational initiative for training in audiovisual languages; the Mostra Internacional de Films de Dones de Barcelona, a film festival directed by women; and Pack Màgic, a distributor of children's films.

In terms of programming, in this fifth edition of Ventana Cinéfila, and unlike previous editions, short film programs were the most popular, with animation and live-action titles. Nature and the environment were the protagonists of these programs, along with themes such as the animal world, friendship and empathy or female empowerment. The short films selected for the high schools addressed gender identity, sexual diversity, climate change awareness, and social networks' power on adolescents.


The feature films selected were Beautiful Thing, by Hettie MacDonald (the United Kingdom, 1996), an initiation story about the amorous awakening of two gay teenagers in the complicated environment of a London slum district with the fear of rejection for their sexual orientation; The Newbie, by Rudi Rosenberg (France, 2015), about the arrival of a new boy at a school where no one pays attention to him; and La suprema, by Felipe Holguín (Colombia, 2023), a story about a teenage girl from a lost and isolated village in Colombia who dreams of becoming a boxer.

La supremaLa suprema (directed by Felipe Holguín Caro, screenplay by Felipe Holguín Caro, Andy Sierra)

The animation was present at Ventana Cinéfila with Calamity, by Rémi Chayé (France, 2020), an initiatory western about a heroine in the conquest of the Wild West winner of the Annecy Festival; The Castle Through the Looking Glass, by Francesca Calo, Keiichi Hara and Takakazu Nagatomo (Japan, 2022), an extraordinary anime about a group of teenagers with complicated and lonely lives; The Adventures of Little Columbus, by Rodrigo Gava (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 where, according to legend, there is a treasure that remains hidden; and The Mud Demons, by Nuno Beato (Portugal/Spain/France, 2022), a Goya Award-nominated story about a young city girl's reconciliation with her rural roots.

El novatoThe Newcomer (directed by Rudi Rosenberg, screenplay by Bruno Muschio).

Ventana Cinéfila emerged in 2020 and, in its five editions, has programmed 37 feature films and 69 short films, grouped into different programs for each age range.

Importance of new audiences

In its 21st edition, the Seville Festival has once again made a strong commitment to new audiences, offering, parallel to this joint initiative, a broad program focused on spectators from educational centers with a triple pedagogical objective: to familiarize them with audiovisual narrative, educate them in values through the seventh art, and awaken future vocations and cinematographic talents.

The Europa Júnior and Cinéfilos del Futuro sections, widely recognized by school audiences, took a fresh look at European cinema for children and young people, respectively. During the festival (from November 8 to 16), 32 titles were screened in 55 screenings for 12,227 spectators.

Thus, the 12 films screened in special screenings designed for children and primary school students (Europa Júnior) attracted 3,332 children, while the 20 films screened for secondary and high school students (Cinéfilos del Futuro) were attended by 8,895 young spectators. The total number of schools participating in both programs was 136, with a large majority belonging to the province of Seville, although schools in the provinces of Cadiz, Cordoba, Huelva, and Jaen were also involved.