The twelfth edition of the Educational Film Festival, Cinedfest, began its journey on September 24 with the opening of the registration period, which will remain open until March 28, 2025 and comes loaded with new features, including the increase in the endowment of prizes to the winners at the final galas and the incorporation of a special prize that will be awarded by the commissioner of the REF (Ministry of Finance and Relations with the European Union) whose storyline highlights some of the measures of the Economic and Fiscal Regime of the Canary Islands.
Another significant novelty of this edition is the launch of The Cinedfest Game, an original playful format designed by the organizing team of this contest so that students learn to create stories by playing.
Also, a bank of short films by theme will be created, consisting of a selection of the works presented throughout the history of this festival, grouped by themes that reflect specific values with which teachers can work in the classroom.
In parallel, new didactic guides will be made available to participants, such as the one for subtitles or the one for exporting videos, which are added to the existing ones, including those for gamification for script creation, 2D animation, Stop Motion, editing, pre-production, etcetera, and other didactic resources and training actions given by leading professionals in the audiovisual sector such as video workshops on cinematographic lighting, sound, editing, script, interpretation, film poster design or copyright; master classes on characterization and makeup effects, film direction, art direction or interpretation, among others, and a multitude of face-to-face classes in the participating centers.
Special gala in La Palma
As every year, in June the island awards galas will be held in La Palma, Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura, in addition to the Grand Final Gala for Children and Primary School and the Grand Final Gala for the rest of the educational levels, which will take place in Tenerife.
In this school year, the special gala of the Island of La Palma will have as guests, in addition to all the participating centers of the Island, the winners of the Peninsula section and will be broadcast via streaming.
In addition, a relevant personality from the audiovisual world will attend as honorary godfather or godmother of the festival in La Palma and will carry out a talk-workshop with students participating in the festival. And the usual cinedfest master class, taught by an audiovisual professional and broadcast live via streaming, will be held this year from the island of La Palma.
Throughout the festival's history, a total of 4,584 short films have been received made by students mainly from the Canary Islands, but also from the rest of the autonomous communities of Spain and even from some Ibero-American countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile or Ecuador, which have accumulated more than 50 million views through the Cinedfest Youtube channel.
Other highlights of the past eleven editions are the participation of some 54,000 students and the involvement of 4,560 teachers from 3,116 educational centers.
In the words of its co-director, David Cánovas,
