Announcement of the official selection of short films in competition.

The Councillor for Culture, E. Pablo Centella, together with the directors of the festival Jaime Noguera and José Ramón Martínez Verastegui, have presented the poster of the 21st edition of the Festival Internacional de Cortometrajes y Cine Alternativo de Benalmádena (FICCAB), the work of the Monegasque graphic designer David Grimaldi.

The FICCAB will be held this year between 29 October and 5 November in Casa de la Cultura. 

Free admission until full capacity is reached.

'We are entering the countdown to the celebration of one of the most important events in the world of culture in Benalmádena, the FICCAB, which continues to grow year after year, as evidenced by the number of short films that have been submitted to the competition this year: we have once again exceeded the figure of one thousand short films, from the five continents,' said Centella.

'This year the jury will be made up entirely of women, an added value in our fight for real and effective equality', the councillor emphasised.

'In addition, our film festival helps us to offer a tourist package that goes beyond sun and beach, and also brings us closer to our goal of making Benalmádena the cultural capital of the Costa del Sol,' said Centella.

The poster is a tribute to cinema through iconic images of the seventh art seen in films such as 'Jaws', Chaplin or 'A Clockwork Orange', as well as a nod to the celluloid frame, the (almost) extinct format of reproduction in cinemas. The colours chosen for the background, according to the artist, are intended to associate cinema with Benalmádena, as the different shades of orange and blue evoke the flag and the coat of arms of the municipality, as well as the sea and the coastal sky that the town enjoys.

To participate in the International Short Film Competition, this year 1027 short films have been received from all over the world, coming from countries such as Brazil, France, Argentina, Iran, Colombia or the United States, from which 24 have been finally selected, which will compete for the First Prize of the Festival, endowed with 2000€ and for the Second Prize, endowed with 1000€, sponsored by Emabesa. The Official Selection includes short films from Colombia, the United States, Iran, Israel, the United Kingdom, China and Spain, with 5 short films from Malaga competing for the € 500 Best Short Film from Malaga, sponsored by the Cine Club Más Madera.

The short films selected include works starring national actors and actresses of the stature of José Sacristán, Julieta Serrano, Luis Tosar, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Carmen Machi and El Langui. The themes range from social and political criticism to family drama, the most absurd humour or difficult issues such as terrorism or the struggle for equality between men and women.

This year's jury, made up entirely of women, is made up of different national and international audiovisual personalities: Equatorial Guinea-born Ondas award-winning journalist Teresa Ekobo; the head of programming at the Tarifa African Film Festival, Frenchwoman Marion Berger; Italian Stefania Sandrone, from the selection committee of the International Short Film Festival 'Festival Tous Courts' (Aix-en-Provence, France); Uruguayan producer and director Erika Elizalde; and Argentinian filmmaker, director of photography and visual artist Constanza Manescau. Once again this year, the jury will be joined by a member of the Cine Club Más Madera, represented this year by Concepción Correa.

The screenings of these short films will take place in the afternoon at the Casa de la Cultura in Arroyo de la Miel, with free admission until full capacity is reached. In addition, as a novelty this year, the Festival will have another exhibition window at the Benalmádena Exhibition Centre, where, with the collaboration of the Goethe Institute (a highly relevant German public institution whose mission is to promote, disseminate and promote knowledge of the German language and culture), documentaries will be screened about artistic movements such as the legendary Bauhaus and the controversial performance artist, sculptor, draughtsman Joseph Beuys, but with a special focus on the female creative figure, with titles on the German choreographer Sasha Waltz, the dance theatre of Pina Bausch, as well as a fiction film on the life of the painter, sculptor and radical pacifist Käthe Kollwitz.

The FICCAB will publicise the existence of this cycle through the German media on the Costa del Sol, in the hope that the Goethe programme will arouse the interest of the German-speaking community.

Next week the festival organisers will inform about the rest of the programme.