Olar (3)

Festival start: 12 November 2026      Festival end: 17 November 2026

The Latin American Women Filmmakers Observatory (Observatório Latino-Americano de Realizadoras, OLAR) is a platform that fosters dialogue between critical thought and audiovisual production across Latin America through a gender perspective. It supports initiatives dedicated to the circulation, preservation, and memory of films made by women, non-binary, and trans filmmakers from all countries and territories of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The third edition of our biennial festival, OLAR 3 – Latin American Women Filmmakers Observatory, will take place in November 2026 as an in-person event in the city of Carpina, Pernambuco, Brazil. The program will include open-air screenings, cinema screenings, school screenings, as well as educational activities and panel discussions.

OLAR does not provide airfare for participating filmmakers. However, we will seek to host filmmakers who are in Carpina during the festival screenings.

The OLAR Film Festival features the Sara Gómez Competition alongside parallel screening programs. Together, they form a program that reaches public spaces and schools throughout the city of Carpina, in the Zona da Mata region of Pernambuco, Brazil.

The Sara Gómez Competition aims to recognize, encourage, and celebrate filmmakers who are transforming Latin American and Caribbean cinema through the **Sara Gómez Award**. The competition is named in honor of the Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez, whose work explored the impact of the Cuban Revolution on marginalized communities and remains a landmark in Latin American cinema.

What do I need to participate?

To be eligible, you must be a Latin American filmmaker and have a short film of up to 30 minutes directed by cisgender or transgender women, travestis, non-binary people, transmasculine people, or trans men. Co-directed films with cisgender men are also eligible.

Films of any genre and subject are welcome, provided they were completed between 2025 and 2026.