Ventana Cinéfila Reached Nearly 320,000 Young Viewers in 2025

Ventana Cinéfila (Cinephile Window), the educational project that brings together the Valladolid International Film Festival (Seminci), the Malaga Film Festival, the Seville European Film Festival, the Huelva Film Festival, and the Sitges Film Festival under the Profestivales21 umbrella, in collaboration with Filmin, closes its sixth edition with figures that consolidate this initiative as one of the most important film education opportunities for young people in Spain. 

In 2025, its free online film screenings reached nearly 320,000 (319,587) elementary, middle, and high school students from 900 educational centers in Andalusia, Castile and León, and Catalonia, with the participation of 1,727 registered teachers. Since its inception in 2020, Ventana Cinéfila has exceeded 1.5 million viewers and has programmed a total of 39 feature films and 75 short films grouped into different programs for each age group, including a diversity of styles, formats, and cinematic approaches.

The aim of this project is to promote film education among young viewers through a selection of recently produced international films, carefully curated and agreed upon by the programmers of the five participating festivals. The choice of films takes into account both their cinematic quality and their thematic and aesthetic balance in accordance with the age of all the different school stages.

Each school receives comprehensive teaching guides for each film, available in Spanish and Catalan, which enable teachers to enrich classroom discussions before and after viewing, as well as to work in depth and cross-curricularly on subjects such as history, natural sciences, languages, and art. In addition, the screenings are accompanied by presentations by the festival programmers, who offer key insights into the films and highlight the value of each of them, resulting in the experience of curating a festival's content.

2025 Line-up: Diversity and Cinematic Quality

The sixth edition of Ventana Cinéfila offered a lineup consisting of seven feature films and two short film programs, with films of a variety of styles from different countries. Among others, they addressed topics such as identity, empathy, the environment, and social relationships.

The selection of feature films consisted of A los libros y las mujeres canto (To Books and Women I Sing) by María Elorza (Spain, 2022); Oink by Mascha Halberstad (Netherlands, Belgium, 2022); L'horizon (The Horizon) by Émilie Carpentier (France, 2021); Las hijas (Sister & Sister), by Kattia G. Zúñiga (Panama, Chile, 2023); Radical, by Christopher Zalla (United States, Mexico, 2023); Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds, by Benoît Chieux (France, Belgium, 2023); and Tony, Shelly and the Magic Light, by Filip Pošivač (Hungary, Czech Republic, 2023).

The short film program for elementary schools included Foxtale, by Alexandra Allen (Portugal, 2022); Homework, by Nacho Arjona (Spain, 2024); Jules et Juliette, by Chantal Peten (Belgium, 2022); La primavera siempre vuelve, by Alicia Núñez Puerto (Spain, 2021); Tobi and the Turbobus, by Verena Fels and Marc Angele (Germany, 2020); and Yo voy conmigo (Go My Way), by Chelo Loureiro (Spain, 2024).

Meanwhile, the short films chosen for high schools were Alien0089, by Valeria Hofmann (Chile, Argentina, 2023); At Sixteen, by Carlos Lobo (Portugal, 2022); Kawauso, by Akihito Izuhara (Japan, 2023); The Criminals, by Serhat Karaaslan (France, Romania, Turkey, 2020); Lluna de sal, by Mariona Martínez (Spain, 2024); and Dad's Sneakers, by Olha Zhurba (Ukraine, 2021).

Ventana Cinéfila Celebrates Its 7th Edition by Bringing Cinema to Classrooms

The 7th edition of Ventana Cinéfila will once again be offering the educational community a carefully curated selection of films, which will be available on Filmin from October 15 to November 30, 2026.

The educational community will be able to access the channel by requesting a viewing code by filling out a form that will be published on each festival's website. The application period will open starting on September 15, 2026.

Aimed exclusively at schools and free of charge, Ventana Cinéfila is a firm commitment by five of Spain's most important film festivals to education in audiovisual culture. At a time when the consumption of images is omnipresent in the lives of young children and teenagers, this initiative provides tools that help them develop a critical and informed perspective, turning young people into active viewers who are capable of understanding and appreciating cinematic language.

This project is open to all schools interested in participating, reaffirming their commitment to educating tomorrow's viewers and promoting film culture in Spain's educational system.