CINETORO EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL (18)

Festival start: 28 October 2025      Festival end: 02 November 2025

18 CINETORO EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL

CINETORO is projected as a transdisciplinary Festival-School, dedicated to curatorial practice and the training of filmmakers; building bridges between emerging talents and prominent national and international artists, and promoting analysis and criticism related to the production and thinking behind experimental cinema and animation.
We advocate for a cinema where poetry and art dialogue; that draws its limit beyond the perimeter of spectacularity, of technical correctness, of the topics and forms on the agenda. It is an imperfect cinema, which accepts its artisanal condition and is concerned with the recovery of the consciousness of corporeality; reflecting, problematizing and questioning the construction of image and sound.
Cinema with a territorial imprint, which redesigns, mutates and pronounces itself before the world. Resignifying the territory, transforming the perspective on rurality and providing the community with spaces for the appropriation of knowledge.

ABYSSAL CHANTS
Is what we hear alive?
#SeeAndHearDifferently:

18TH CINETORO EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL
From October 28th to November 2nd

A distant sound rumbles in the darkness of the room, a call coming from the abyssal depths of the ocean, a penetrating song that attracts and binds. The listener slips through a seam in time and plunges into the void.That leap entails risk, and an encounter with the unknown. Those films that jump, that search in the darkness, in the shadow, in the mystery, in the spectral, in the sound but also in the silence, are the ones that captivate us in this edition.

Sound as movement, can reveal the temporal dimension of an image —whether still or moving. Rather than merely supporting images semantically, sound may serve as their structural axis. We are looking for films that explore diverse relationships between image and sound or treat sound as plastic material. Whether through a conceptual approach where sound structures the film; or where the voice carries weight not just for what is said, but also for its qualities: the voice as a malleable medium, as revelation and reverberation; or where music, instead of simply accompanying the image, becomes a structural part of the film itself . Films that take shape through sound.

We want to dive into the depths of sound, so that with our eyes closed we can see and listen as we swim and immerse ourselves. From a theoretical or curatorial perspective, little exploration has been done in these waters

The abyssal chants act as a call, and this call is what we want to respond to, in this edition. We are looking for animations, documentaries, fictions, hybrid films and experimentations that resonate with these chants, with this call to see and hear differently.

#AbyssalSongs #DeepListening #Cinetoro2025 #LookAndListenDifferently #LeapIntoTheAbyss #FilmAndSound #ExperimentalFilmFestival #HybridCinema #ExperimentalCinema
#ExperimentalNarrative

Totem Awards for Best film in the follow categories:

Natal land without Landscape / National official Competition
Every sound is a tiny terror / Emerging Official Competition
Inside a sea horn / Medium-length film competition
Listen is to be touched at distance / International Official Competition

Submission Guidelines

Films submitted for participation in the 18th edition of Cinetoro Film Festival must meet the following requirements:

Works must be between 1 and 50 minutes long.

• Works must have been completed between 2023 and 2025.

• International non-Spanish language works must have subtitles.

• Submissions will be made online exclusively through the Festhome platform.

• Films must hold the rights to all artistic material appearing in the work.

• The festival prioritizes national and international premieres.

• Films not duly registered in this call will not be accepted.

• The owners of selected films consent to their in-person exhibition during the festival days.

• CINETORO understands that the person responsible for the work (director, producer, distributor) is the owner of the distribution and copyrights. The festival relies on the good faith of those responsible for registration and under no circumstances is liable for disputes regarding rights to music, image, or authorship of the work or its constituent elements.

• The festival does not pay screening fees.

• Upon selection, Spanish-language works must be subtitled in English. The festival is not responsible for any subtitling.


CURATION AND SELECTION

The festival will program films and works in the different sections as it deems appropriate. Sections are designed each year according to the criteria of the curatorial committee. You will receive information about the sections when you receive our email selecting your work. Selected works will be included in the official festival catalog.

Selected works will be notified by email and published on our website in September of this year, 2025.

Selected works, once notified, must send the following files to the festival organization via the Internet, within the deadlines required by film traffic control:

• Digital file in .MOV / MP4 format (1920 X 1080) in its original resolution with H.264 compression scheme or higher. // DCP “Flat” file 1:85:1 (Optional)

• AUTHORIZATION: Work Usage License (Completed and signed) the organization will provide the form via curaduria@cinetoro.co

• Poster of the work in JPG format, 72dpi, original size

• 1 Photograph of the director of the work in JPG format, 72dpi
CINETORO EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL Toro, Valle del Cauca – Colombia Corporación 1 1 ½ Contact: + 57 301 3163511 // curaduria@cinetoro.co

• 2 stills from the work in JPG format, 72dpi

• Photographs and promotional material of the work will be used by the festival organization to promote the work's participation within the festival framework and festival activities.

• Project trailer (Optional)
If you have any questions about the registration process, do not hesitate to contact us at curaduria@cinetoro.co

By signing the submission form, the filmmaker authorizes CINETORO EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL to use all submitted promotional materials, including but not limited to, stills, descriptions, director's biography, and film screening history in any and all forms of media for the express purpose of festival promotion and publicity. Please note that CINETORO EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL may request authorization from filmmakers to use clips from official selection films for television and internet advertising. However, the festival will limit footage to less than one minute and will not authorize television broadcast of any work without the direct consent of the filmmaker and/or producers.