Festival Internacional de Cine de Oriente (16)

Festival start: 03 November 2023      Festival end: 06 November 2023

The Festival Internacional de Cine de Oriente (FICO) presents its 16th edition, to be made between the 3rd and the 6th of November 2023, in the beautiful town of Guatapé, in the Antioquia region of Colombia.

The Festival Internacional de Cine de Oriente in this edition, recognizes the cinematographic production effort both national and international, and its official competition Vitascopio 2023 will be made up of national and international short films to be presented and awarded during the festival.

Under the main theme "Truth or post-truth, the crossroads of societies", will take place our official competition VITASCOPIO 2023, opening its doors to short film productions in fiction, animation and documentary, which will make part of the main short film competition to be screened along the general program throughout our festival, aiming to promote and stimulate the growth of cinema both in a local level as well as an international one.

The festival presents its Carlos Saura award to the best short film in our unique category, as well as a monetary reward of $1'500.000 Colombian pesos.

Additionally, the jury might also award honorific mentions.

Theme:
For the 16th edition of the Festival Internacional de Cine de Oriente 2023, the main theme of the festival will be "Truth or post-truth, the crossroads of societies" and will be taken into account for judging in all categories including fiction, animation and documentary. The projects presented which do not comply with this theme will not be taken into consideration for the 2023 edition of the festival.

Dates:
- Entry opening: July 7th 2023
- Entry deadline: August 31st 2023
- Notification date: October 10th 2023
- Festival dates: 3rd – 6th 2023

Categories:
Single category (including both national and international productions).

Duration of the films:
Short films under 30 minutes will be accepted.

Fees:
International Competition: US $5
National Competition: Free

Accepted Formats:
The festival accepts films made in 8mm, 16mm, 35mm or digital form, wich are to be presented digitalized. The screening copy of the film must be delivered in a minimum resolution of 1920x1080 and maximum of 4K, and the accepted formats are .mov and .mp4.
The screening copy of each film will be sent to the director of the official competition by the director or producer of the film and a .srt subtitle file in Spanish or English is required in case the film is made in a language different from Spanish.

Selection criteria:
For judging and selecting the films to be part of the competition, certain criteria will be taken into account, such as the coherence with the required theme, creativity, narrative originality, historic value, script, use of cinematic language, technical quality both in image and sound.

Some relevant aspects to be considered will be:
- Central theme
- Universality
- Cinematographic and historic value
- Cinematic language
- Symbology and metaphore
- The intention we have as promotors of creative processes in the region and the possible impact the film could have, as part of the process of shaping and educating audiences

Legal aspects:
The person responsible for the film (director, producer, distributor, etc) will sign a form regarding the copyright transfer to the festival, in order to screen the film within all the legal requirements stated by the festival and the Colombian law.

The jury will issue a verdict independently in which the winners of each category will be chosen. The awards can’t be declared deserted or non-given and will be handed to the winners on November 6th in the town of Guatapé at around 10pm, moment in which the winners will be announced. The festival will provide the official selection on October 10th announcing the competing short films for each category.