10th Cines del Sur Festival edition

The tenth edition of the Granada International Film Festival Cines del Sur marks the return of the event after a hiatus in 2016, ushering in a new era with more venues, expanded programming, and the joint support of the Junta de Andalucía, City Council, Provincial Council, University of Granada, Euro-Arab Foundation, and the Board of the Alhambra and Generalife. The festival reinforces its mission to bring the best films from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Arab world to the people of Granada, while maintaining its focus on local production with the “Andalusians and the South” series.

The Official Section once again takes center stage in the program, with a selection of feature films that address themes recognizable in any context—sexual identity, political commitment, migration, women's rights, justice, and social crises—striving to go beyond the limits of mainstream cinema. The festival opens with the Iranian film “Being Born” by Mohsen Abdolvahab, about the impact of an unwanted pregnancy on a middle-class family, and closes with the Argentine film “El peso de la ley” by Fernán Mirás, which questions the very concept of justice through a judicial duel starring Paola Barrientos and María Onetto.

In addition to these, the program includes titles such as the Venezuelan film “La Soledad,” which uses the sale of a family home to portray the country's crisis, the Lebanese documentary “A Maid for Each,” about the trafficking and exploitation of migrant domestic workers in Beirut, and “House Without Roof,” a Kurdish-Iraqi road movie about memory, betrayal, and exile. The Asian section offers highly authorial and intimate works such as the Japanese “The Long Excuse,” the Malaysian “You Mean the World to Me,” the Korean “A Quiet Dream,” and the Taiwanese “The Last Painting,” which combines thriller, art, and politics in contemporary Taipei.

Plaza de las Pasiegas regains prominence through the Itineraries/Open Screen section, with a selection designed for all audiences featuring films like the Japanese “Close-Knit,” a delicate fable about family bonds between a girl and a trans woman, the Ghanaian drama “Nakom,” and the Bollywood ensemble comedy “Dil Dhadakne Do.” The tenth anniversary is completed with multiple parallel programs (Docs Música, Aula Sur, “New Filmmakers from the United Arab Emirates,” TransCine dedicated to Hong Sang-soo, “Central America 21st Century,” “Pioneers of Japanese Animation”) and with the Cines del Sur extension in the province, which reinforces the festival's idea as a celebration of diversity and symbolic justice, and as a common space to share emotions and stories from the South.