The Festival de Málaga, Valladolid International Film Week, Sitges Film Festival, Seville Film Festival and Huelva Film Festival, under the brand Profestivales21, are kicking off for the fifth year the Ventana Cinéfila project, a free online film channel in collaboration with the FILMIN platform aimed at educational centres, which aims to promote film education for future audiences, who can register from today, Tuesday the 17th of September.

This unique project brings together five of the most important film festivals with the aim of enhancing the social outlook and aesthetic sensibility of young people through a programme commissioned and agreed upon by the respective programmers. It has a selection of recently produced international films in which quality, thematic and aesthetic balance are a priority, in accordance with the different age ranges of the different school stages.

This year's programme of Ventana Cinéfila offers seven feature films and two programmes of six short films each by contemporary international filmmakers. The films address issues that appeal to the present reality of any student from different approaches and narrative approaches, which encourage an active and transversal approach to multiple subjects.

The feature films selected are Beautiful Thing, by Hettie MacDonald (UK, 1996), an initiation story about the romantic awakening of two gay teenagers in the complicated environment of a London district with the fear of rejection for their sexual orientation; The Newcomer by Rudi Rosenberg (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 La suprema by Felipe Holguín (Colombia, 2023), 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; El castillo a través del espejo by Francesca Calo, Keiichi Hara and Takakazu Nagatomo (Japan, 2022), 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; Las aventuras del pequeño Colón 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 in Brazil where, according to legend, there is a treasure that remains hidden; and Los demonios de barro by Nuno Beato (Portugal/Spain/France, 2022), a Goya-nominated story about a young city girl's reconciliation with her rural roots through the letters and clues her recently deceased grandfather left her to make amends for his past mistakes.

Meanwhile, the feature films’ programmes also include both animation and live-action projects. In the programme designed for schools, nature and the environment are very present, along with topics such as the animal kingdom, friendship, empathy or women empowerment. On the other hand, selected projects for high-schools covers topics such as gender identity, sexual diversity, climate change awareness or the effect of social media on teenagers.

For the first time, in this edition the screenings will have a presentation by the programmers in charge of selecting the films, who will offer some tips to the students when watching the film and will highlight each of the titles.
Ventana Cinéfila will be available on FILMIN from the 15th of October to the 30th of November. Schools in Andalusia, Castilla León and Catalonia will be able to access the contents after registration, which opens today, Tuesday the 17th of September. Schools that wish to register can do so through the festival's website.

Teaching 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 didactic guides to work with students and enhance the debate in class before and after the viewing, as well as to work in depth and in a transversal way 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 take part, was launched in 2020. 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 a wide range of topics and current social issues.

Last year, this pioneering programme reached 366,938 viewers and attracted the participation of more than a thousand teachers from Andalusia, Castilla y León and Catalonia.

Feature films

•    Beautiful Thing, by Hettie MacDonald (United Kingdom, 1996)
•    Calamity, by Rémi Chayé (France, 2020)
•    El castillo a través del espejo, by Francesca Calo, Keiichi Hara and Takakazu Nagatomo (Japan, 2022)
•    El novato, by Rudi Rosenberg (France, 2015)
•    La suprema; by Felipe Holguín (Colombia, 2023)
•    Las aventuras del pequeño Colón, by Rodrigo Gava (Brazil, 2016)
•    Los demonios de barro, by Nuno Beato (Portugal/Spain/France, 2022)

Schools’ short films

•    Juan Viento, by Carlos Farina (Argentina, 2020)
•    The Masked Avenger, by Luna Strmotić (Croatia, 2021)
•    The Chameleon, by Pimter Braak (Netherlands, 2022)
•    Susi en el jardín, by Lucie Sunková (Czechia, 2022)
•    Al escondite, by Judit Orosz (Hungary, 2020)
•    La isla de las aves, by Charlie Belin (France, 2022)

High schools’ short films

•    Trumpets in the Sky, by Rayan Makasi (Palestine/Lebanon/France/Belgic, 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)