5th edition Cines del Sur festival

The fifth edition of the Granada Film Festival, Cines del Sur, solidifies its position as a firm commitment to understanding between civilizations through audiovisual art, using cinema as a universal communication vehicle capable of overcoming linguistic, physical, and intellectual barriers. For one week, Granada hosts films never before seen in Spain, originating from Asia, Africa, and Latin America—productions outside commercial circuits that allow audiences to discover lesser-known actors and directors and to approach realities told from indigenous perspectives, sometimes harrowing and other times full of hope.

The festival has become a stable event thanks to its varied cinematic offerings and, above all, to the growing support of the public, who, year after year, endorse this open window to other cultures with their presence. Institutions such as the University of Granada, the Board of the Alhambra and Generalife, the Provincial Council, and the City Council of Granada, together with the Junta de Andalucía, support an initiative that expands the city's already extensive cultural offerings and reinforces its role as a crossroads between North and South.

Its program for the fifth edition combines the Official and Itineraries sections, featuring new productions from Southern cinemas, along with a block of retrospectives that add historical depth to the overall selection. Highlights include a focus on Argentine filmmaker Andrés Di Tella, the “Bollywood Noir” series, centered on crime and genre cinema in India, and the “Award-winning Cinema at FESPACO” showcase, bringing some of the most significant titles from the great Pan-African festival in Ouagadougou to Granada. The major retrospective of this fourth edition is dedicated to forty years of Filipino cinema (1970–2010), an unprecedented selection in Spain that brings together about twenty seminal titles, from classics by Lino Brocka, Eddie Romero, or Ishmael Bernal to contemporary perspectives by Lav Diaz, Brillante Mendoza, or Adolfo Alix Jr. The program is rounded out by sections such as Southern Memory, TransCine, More Human Factor, or So Much Strange Sea, along with a tribute to Jafar Panahi, which underscore the festival's commitment to cinema that questions history, identity, and fundamental rights.

Leading sections such as Southern Memory, Human Factor, and So Much Strange Sea are also maintained, along with cinesdelsur.ext, which coordinates extensions and screenings in other venues and municipalities. Five years after its inception, Cines del Sur takes stock of over three hundred films screened and the collaboration of filmmakers from around the world, and reaffirms itself as an essential festival for understanding other realities, enjoying good cinema, and moving towards a society more sensitive to diversity and more humane.