16/10/2025 - Features by Irati Gorostidi and Sofia Bohdanowicz are screening in competition in the event, which will honour Isaki Lacuesta, Helena Wittmann and Belén Funes

From 19-25 October, Granada will play host to the 31st Jóvenes Realizadores – Granada Film Fest, presenting a carefully curated line-up of today’s most daring and surprising cinema, and reaching out to new audiences by embracing other formats such as podcasts. Headed up by Antonio Miguel Arenas, Idoia Virdozola and Julio Bolívar, the event will close with the Andalusian premiere of Flores para Antonio, a documentary by Elena Molina and Isaki Lacuesta that bowed at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, in which actress Alba Flores sets out to reclaim the voice and story of her late father, Antonio Flores, asking her family and friends about him for the first time.

True to the gathering's mission to spotlight new talent, two debut features stand out within the International Competition (which is rounded off by 21 short films): Aro Berria [+see also:
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film profile] by Irati Gorostidi, an immersive portrait of a commune in the Basque Country in the 1980s that received a Special Mention from the jury in San Sebastián’s New Directors section, and Measures for a Funeral by Canadian filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz, a mystery set in the world of classical music, whose cast includes Granada-born violinist María Dueñas in her first acting role, and which premiered at Toronto last year.

In addition, during the festival, prominent filmmaker Isaki Lacuesta will receive the Sin Fin Award and will lead the Filmmakers’ Encounter organised by the Culture and Education Department of the Granada Provincial Council; German director Helena Wittmann (Drift [+see also:
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interview: Helena Wittmann and Theresa…
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trailer
interview: Helena Wittmann
film profile]) will lead a seminar as part of the first Spanish retrospective dedicated to her striking body of work; and Belén Funes (A Thief’s Daughter [+see also:
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trailer
interview: Belén Funes
film profile], The Exiles [+see also:
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interview: Belén Funes
film profile]) will receive the Special Award and deliver a master class.

At the opening, Andalusian short films will take centre stage with the first session of the Vibraciones Competition, held in collaboration with the SGAE Foundation. Alongside the International Competition and the Aguaespejo Competition, promoted by the AguaGranada Foundation, the festival’s official competitive sections will hand out more than €5,000 in prizes. In total, over 90 titles from 27 countries will be screened, encompassing both shorts and features. With 12 world and five Spanish premieres on the cards, it's worth noting that the Pantalla Film in Granada section broadens its scope to include works by students from training centres across the province.

Among its special screenings, the festival has scheduled a showcase of Palestinian short films highlighting the talent of a new generation of filmmakers who have addressed the massacre in Gaza through fiction, animation and documentary. It also brings back masterpieces that are turning 100, such as The Gold Rush by Charlie Chaplin, Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein and Seven Chances by Buster Keaton, the latter accompanied by live music from pianist José Ignacio Hernández. The cycle will culminate in an event where local artist Chico Blanco, who fuses dance music with other genres, will provide a live score to Rupert Julian’s The Phantom of the Opera.

(Translated from Spanish)