Valladolid International Film Week, Sitges Film Festival, Seville European Film Festival, Huelva Film Festival and Festival de Málaga, under the brand Profestivales21, are launching the fifth edition of the Ventana Cinéfila project, a free online film channel on FILMIN aimed at educational centres that aims to promote film education for future spectators and which this year will be available on the platform from the 15th of October to the 30th of November.

This unique project, unprecedented on the European festival scene, brings together five of the most important film festivals in our country with the aim of broadening the social outlook and aesthetic sensitivity of young people through a programme curated and agreed upon by the respective programmers of each festival, with a selection of recently produced international films in which quality and thematic and aesthetic balance, in accordance with the different age ranges of the different school stages, take precedence.
The programme of Ventana Cinéfila, which will be announced in September, will offer this year seven feature films and two programmes of short films by contemporary international filmmakers, which address issues that appeal to the present reality of any student from different approaches and narrative approaches, which favours an active and transversal approach to multiple subjects. This year, as a novelty, the screenings will include a presentation by the programmers in charge of the film selection, who will offer some keys to the students when watching the film and will highlight the value of each of the titles.

Schools in Castilla León, Andalusia and Catalonia will be able to access the contents after registration, which can be done through the website of each festival from the 16th of September.

Didactic guides
Each interested school will also receive a complete didactic guide for each title, material produced by Drac Màgic, a social initiative cooperative founded in 1971 and dedicated to the study and dissemination of audiovisual culture, one of whose most outstanding projects is the distribution company Pack Màgic, specialising in children's films. These guides are designed to stimulate curiosity about each title and to encourage a taste for cinema from childhood onwards.

Teachers will be able to use these teaching guides to work with students and contribute to the debate in class before and after the screening, as well as to work in depth and transversally on subjects such as history, natural sciences, languages or art, appealing to the present reality of any student from new approaches and narrative approaches.

This initiative, in which primary, secondary and high school students will participate, was launched in 2020 by the Seminci in Valladolid and the Seville European Film Festival, events that have been joined by the festivals of Huelva, Malaga and Sitges under the Profestivales21 brand. In its first four editions, Ventana Cinéfila has programmed more than 32 feature films and 43 short films -grouped into different programmes for each age range-, both animated and live-action, with very diverse and topical social themes, ranging from sexual and family diversity to the influence of social networks, including migrations and social integration, climate emergency, acceptance of one's own body, gender violence or artistic creation.

Last year, this pioneering programme reached 366,938 viewers and attracted the participation of more than a thousand teachers from Castilla y León, Andalusia and Catalonia between the 13th of September and the 29th of November 2023.