Like every year around this time, Ponferrada has an appointment with the cinema, thanks to this magnificent Festival organized by the ‘Mi Retina Me Engaña’ Cultural Association, which is doing an incredible job in promoting and disseminating the audiovisual artistic phenomenon, as The fact that this year we celebrate the twentieth edition of the Ponferrada International Film Festival demonstrates.

Twenty years since “My Retina Tricks Me” founded and organized a modest Short Film Competition back in 2001, which became the Film Festival in 2003 and an international festival in 2013.

Throughout these two decades, more than 90,000 people have attended the activities programmed by the Festival. Of these, more than 38,000 people attended one of the most consolidated and best-received sections of the Festival: What a Session!, dedicated to Children’s Cinema, essentially aimed at the infant and primary cycles of our schools and whose objective is to promote and spread among the youngest the knowledge of our environment, the educational content, the values ​​and, of course, the love of this wonderful artistic manifestation that is the cinema.

Throughout these 20 years of cinema, a total of 1685 films have been selected and screened within the framework of the Festival with a great diversity of cinematographic proposals, styles and genres, both in its official competition sections (828 films) and parallel and thematic cycles (857 films); and, within that extensive list, I want to highlight the 107 films by local authors or shot in El Bierzo and which have had a significant presence in each edition of the Festival.

The Ponferrada International Film Festival is in very good health, so I congratulate the organizers for their tenacity and, ultimately, for their success.

I also want to take this opportunity to invite everyone to attend the screenings of this twentieth edition, with the absolute conviction that they will live a very enriching cultural and artistic experience.

Olegario Ramón

MAYOR OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF PONFERRADA