“Cinema, cinema, cinema, cinema,
more cinema please.
That everything in life is cinema
and the dreams cinema are “

This was sung by our beloved and longed-for Luis Eduardo Aute, who precisely left us this year so rare and so convulsed. A year where everything was paralyzed for several months and in which things are now starting very slowly.

I have to admit that Ponferrada, the Ponferradinas and the Ponferradinos, need as never before that cultural food that is the cinema (more cinema, please). We need it to return to a normalcy that, I suspect, will never be quite like the one that existed before this global pandemic.

Therefore, I have to thank the association ‘Mi Retina me Engaña’, for the enormous organizing effort of this 18th edition of the Ponferrada International Film Festival in such an exceptional and complicated year. A commendable effort, because the screenings will be held in person, mainly at the Casa de la Cultura, and also at La Fábrica de Luz. Energy Museum and La Dehesa Cinemas, which will undoubtedly force drastic measures of sanitary security, cleaning and distancing with reduced capacity. At the same time, the screenings will also be made online, a modality that, due to the imposition of COVID19, has spread to our entire society in a way that we could never have imagined before.

And I have to say that the result of this organizational effort could not be more fruitful, since 1,117 films have finally been registered to participate in official and parallel sections, from a total of 50 countries. Of these, 82 films have been chosen, which will be screened and viewed, along with other audiovisual proposals, throughout the Festival.

I do not have to remember that Ponferrada’s name is and will always be linked to cinema: a monument to cinema welcomes visitors and cinema is in our hearts and our collective imagination, because, among many other things, Ponferrada is cinema, cinema, cinema, cinema …

Olegario Ramón

MAYOR OF PONFERRADA CITY COUNCIL