The call for entries for the Documenta Madrid 2022 film competition is now open

Documenta Madrid, an annual international meeting point for creators, professionals and the public to whom their films are directed, will take place in the spring.  In this its 19th edition, the Madrid City Council’s International Film Festival, organised by its Department of Culture, Tourism and Sport, will begin this year on 24 May in both in-person and online formats. Its on-site screenings will end on 29 May while its online version will continue until 5 June.

The call for entries for its National and International competitive sections - aimed at films completed after 1 January 2021 - will remain open from today until 20 March. The Final Cut section - which supports national productions and projects - will remain open until 31 March. The winning films and projects in the three sections included in this year’s call will share more than 36,000 euros in cash prizes. Once again, this year, Final Cut will have a cash prize of 4,000 euros.

Once again, this year, the festival returns to Madrid to showcase the best films from all over the world, focusing on contemporary cinema and placing special emphasis on new aesthetic approaches, films that draw their inspiration from the myriad forms of non-fiction and explore audiovisual forms regardless of their definition, duration, genre or category.

In line with the changes the festival has made in recent editions, the 19th edition of Documenta Madrid is reinforcing its defence of a cinema without labels. All films, whether long or short, documentary, essay, hybrid or experimental, compete on equal terms, the only distinction being between national and international productions.

Both the requirements for participation and the film registration form can be consulted online on the festival's website.

Sections and awards
The 19th edition of Documenta Madrid maintains the same awards structure as last year’s edition. That means that the festival will have two sections, an International one and a National one. One thing they have in common is the fact that they will both award three prizes each: the Jury Award for Best Film, worth €10,000 for each section, the Fugas Jury Award, also worth €5,000 for each section and which awards innovation and creative risk, and the Cineteca Madrid Audience Award, worth €1,000 for each section and awarded on the basis of votes cast by spectators both in person and online. The films selected for the Final Cut will compete for a cash prize of €4,000.

In addition, the jury may award a special mention for each category - National Competition, International Competition and Final Cut -, consisting of a diploma. And films in the National Competitive Section will also compete for the CineZeta Award, conferred by the young programmers of CineZeta, at Cineteca Madrid, which will also consist of a diploma. This prize, which was added to the festival for the first time last year, is awarded by the ten members of the team of young programmers at CineZeta, the Cineteca Madrid programme which invites young people under the age of 26 to learn at first-hand the craft of film programming, and whose creations can be seen on the screen of the Sala Borau hall every Saturday.

Participation and selection
The participation requirements published in the rules and regulations of the 19th edition of the Documenta Madrid Festival for the International and National competitions stipulate that all films must have been completed after 1 January 2021. Registration is completely free of charge and must be made exclusively online through the official Festival website, via this link. The deadline for submitting films for the national and international competitions will remain open until 20 March 2022.

On the other hand, as far as Final Cut is concerned, the participation requirements of the 19th edition of the Documenta Madrid Festival specify that films produced or co-produced in Spain that have finished shooting or are in their final production phase, may participate. Registration for this competition is also completely free of charge and must be made exclusively online through the official Festival website, via this link, until 31 March 2022.

Any queries you may have regarding interpretation of the rules and regulations or the film registration process will be dealt with by the festival team at info@documentamadrid.com.

Curators of DocumentaMadrid 2022
The artistical curators of the festival will be two prestigious international programmers, Mariana Barassi and Diego Rodríguez, who will work under the direction of Cineteca Madrid (film archive). 

Mariana Barassi is a film director and cultural manager. She has been in charge of the Residency Course for the Development of Ibero-American Audiovisual Projects since its creation in 2003, and of the Márgenes Work development space and the Márgenes Doclisboa-Festival audiovisual creation and research residencies. Among other projects, she has written and directed Chronical of a Storm, for Tornasol Media. She has co-directed the SISMO/Matadero Festival of In situ Creation, and she collaborates both as a curator and as a member of international juries for different audiovisual creation and development competitions and spaces.

Diego Rodríguez Blázquez is a film programmer, cultural producer, and founder and director of the Márgenes Madrid Independent Film Festival, since its creation in 2012 until 2021. He has directed different festivals and exhibitions such as Young European Cinema On the Move, a space in which creators can network and reflect on European cinema; the Lux Madrid European Film Festival, organised in the context of the Lux Awards; the Visual Fest for Audiovisual Creation and MRG Imágenes Full Time, a seminar on contemporary images. He is also producer of Women in Film and the Traveling Spanish Film Showcase Made by Women in the USA. He is currently vice-president of AEVOD (The Spanish Association of Video On Demand), PRÓXIMA (the Association of Independent Distributors of Original Language Films), and MATRIZ (the Association of Madrid Film Festivals).

DOWNLOAD THE DOCUMENTA MADRID 2020 RULES AND REGULATIONS

• ENGLISH RULES

ACCESS THE REGISTRATION FORM FOR THE COMPETITIVE SECTION

• FILM REGISTRATION

ACCESS THE FORM CORTE FINAL REGISTRATION

More information:

• www.documentamadrid.com
• info@documentamadrid.com
• prensa@documentamadrid.com