- The festival will host the presentation of the book collecting the scripts of the series La Ruta. The short film section will also offer a debate on the selection criteria for films in this format, featuring international industry professionals.
- Cinema Jove will present a harsh yet non-moralistic portrayal of adrift adolescence through the feature film On Our Own, directed by Romanian filmmaker Tudor Cristian Jurgiu.
The film avoids the circular narrative arc typical of the coming-of-age genre and instead lays bare, with remarkable sensitivity, the challenges of growing up in an environment marked by parental absence.
In this first rehearsal for adult life, the director employs an unobtrusive editing style that allows scenes to flow seamlessly from one to another. As a result, audiences witness the transformation of the house—from a place initially perceived as personal, intimate and safe into a setting where the teenagers resemble a group of castaways drifting amid the collapse of the family structure.
The story follows a perceptive and independent teenage girl who lives alone in a small Romanian village after her parents leave for Italy in search of work. Forced into maturity at the age of fourteen, she has learned to survive through sarcasm and emotional detachment. However, her fragile balance begins to unravel when she discovers that her parents are planning to divorce.
Writing the Phenomenon of La Ruta
During the day, the festival will host the official presentation of the book compiling the original scripts of the first season of La Ruta, the series that won Feroz Awards for Best Drama Series, Best Lead Actress for Claudia Salas, and Best Screenplay.
The publication, edited by the collective 70 Teclas and DAMA, will be introduced by its creators, Roberto Martín Maiztegui and Borja Soler, who will be joined by screenwriter Gabi Ochoa.
The event offers an opportunity to explore the writing process behind a television production that faithfully captured the cultural and social memory of Valencia in the 1980s and 1990s. The volume examines the creative decisions through which its authors traced the lives of five friends during the most significant years of the legendary Ruta del Bakalao.
Keys to the International Short Film Circuit
As part of its educational and industry programme, the festival has organised the round table discussion “Por qué unos cortos sí y otros no”, featuring Laurence Boyce, Head of Programming at Estonia’s PÖFF Shorts festival, and Amélie Quéret, producer at the French company Respiro Productions. Both serve on the jury of the Official Short Film Competition.
In this panel, the experts will engage in a candid discussion about the often invisible selection criteria and the essential strategies filmmakers need to implement in order to navigate the demanding international festival circuit successfully.
The CCCC Turns Pink
The day’s programme will conclude with a screening of one of the decade’s greatest cultural phenomena, Barbie (2023).
The film forms part of Cinema Jove’s traditional retrospective dedicated to the early career of an established filmmaker. This year’s edition pays tribute to Greta Gerwig (Sacramento, California, 1983), one of the directors who has profoundly redefined the role of women within the Hollywood film industry.
The retrospective traces her evolution from the austerity of radical independent cinema to the helm of major studio productions. Barbie stands as a prime example, chronicling the journey of the iconic plastic doll while delivering a sharp and intelligent critique of patriarchy.
The comedy received eight Academy Award nominations and won the Oscar for Best Original Song with What Was I Made For?. It also established Gerwig as the first woman to single-handedly direct a film that surpassed the historic one-billion-dollar mark at the worldwide box office.
