Click!

Positioning ourselves as a film festival and seeking a prominent or different place in this incredible network formed by the multitude of competitions held around the world is a complex but exciting task at the same time, because we are people who love culture, we cannot forget that we are part of the film and audiovisual industry of our country and that we should recover the recreational-festive event with which it was born at the time.

Culture, industry and event: three strategies to follow, adaptable and modifiable. Three heart-shaped padlocks that symbolize our most passionate look at the seventh art. Three dry and brief opening or closing sounds: Click!

Click! in this new edition to the parallel sections of the festival where it is worth noting that we opened and closed with our most current cinema, presenting and promoting audiovisual projects filmed in El Bierzo or with the participation of Bercian authors in other people’s productions. We also increased the participation of young filmmakers with a new section called “Film schools. Cinema in Training” where students from any educational center in the world who study cinematographic or audiovisual studies have participated. Of the rest we maintain what we consider most interesting: “What a session. Children’s cinema”, “Without borders. Cinema on VOSE: Bafta Shorts” and “CYL in Cinema. Castilla and León Cinema”.

It remains pending, because we need more institutional support, to modify all the current official sections and launch new parallel sections and complementary activities. We have to look for the best to adapt to the current times in our immediate environment, where a difficult socio-economic and industrial reality forces our young and not so young people to have to go to study and work in other places, where the population that remains ages and everything seems more complicated every day, but where there are still people, projects and ideas that seek the best so that a land as wonderful as ours has a future. For all this, our festival must respond to these challenges through new ideas and a more innovative and professional project that supports the most thriving sectors of our society.

As the philosopher and writer Miguel de Unamuno once said, “Progress consists of renewing oneself,” which gave rise to the popular saying “Renew oneself or die.”

Thank you all for continuing to trust “My Retina Deceives Me”. Happy 21FICP/2023

Antonio Donís

DIRECTOR OF THE PONFERRADA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL