Oyola Fabián Festival Internacional de Cine Documental (5)

Festival start: 17 August 2026      Festival end: 21 August 2026

The Cultural Association ‘El Bujío’ of Segura de León (Badajoz), in its desire to pay tribute and remember Andrés Oyola Fabián, neighbour and friend of our town, tireless researcher and disseminator in the field of social and human affairs, organises, in collaboration and with the support of the Town Council of Segura de León and the Provincial Council of Badajoz, the Fifth Edition of the ‘Oyola Fabián International Documentary Film Festival (OFFCINEDOC)’.

Once the participating works have been received and as long as they comply with the aspects included in the Bases, a selection will be made by the organisation and they will be transferred to an international jury made up of professionals from the audiovisual field and from different subjects related to general culture, as well as to other members that we will call ‘popular jury’, who although they are not professionals in the field, have sufficient criteria to evaluate the selected works, understanding that in this way, a fair evaluation will be made that will include both the technical aspects and the cultural value and knowledge that the works contribute.

Depending on the number of works presented and selected, different screenings will be held during the week of 17 to 21 August 2026, in the open air and totally free of charge for those attending.

To conclude the Festival, the Closing Gala will be held on Friday 21st August 2026, where the prizes will be awarded to the winning works.

Cash Prizes: 3,500€

SHORT DOCUMENTARY CATEGORY

– OFFCINEDOC Award, endowed with five hundred euros (500 €), to the Best Documentary Short Film.

FEATURE DOCUMENTARY CATEGORY

– OFFCINEDOC Award, one thousand euros (1000 €), for the Best Long Documentary.

SPECIFIC AWARDS

– BUJÍO Award, five hundred euros (500 €), for the Best Documentary from Extremadura (documentaries directed by Extremaduran authors, produced by production companies based in Extremadura, or of which at least three quarters were filmed in Extremadura).

– CASTILLO Award, five hundred euros (500 €), for the Best Research and Analysis Documentary.

– ENCINA Award, five hundred euros (500 €), for the Best Documentary on Women, Gender and Equality.

– ZARAGÜEYO Award, five hundred euros (500 €), for the Best Documentary of Denunciation and Protest.

GENERAL CONDITIONS / FESTIVAL RULES

1- The organisation understands historical and social documentaries, in a broad sense, as those audiovisual productions, in the form of fiction or non-fiction, whose primary purpose and objective is to show, analyse, describe, explain or interpret, with a certain didactic or pedagogical orientation, the ways of life of a human group, present or past, in their multiple ethnological expressions, with a special ethical commitment to the great diversity of contexts, cultural aspects, historical circumstances, events of vindication and protest, or the diversity of political and social realities, present or past, in their multiple ethnological expressions, with a special ethical commitment towards the great diversity of contexts, cultural aspects, historical circumstances, events of vindication and protest, or diversity of political, economic, religious, aesthetic or symbolic realities, among others, of the world and its plurality.

2- Participation in the Festival will be open to all documentary audiovisual productions made between 1 January 2024 and 6 February 2026, and they must comply, without exception, with the minimum and maximum duration established for each of the two sections proposed in the ‘competition categories’. Works submitted in previous editions will not be accepted, those made by persons involved in the organisation, those with a tourist, advertising, commercial or business orientation, or those that uncritically promote or disseminate hate speech or thoughts of discrimination towards other groups. The Festival organisation has the sole authority to reject any entry that it considers to fall under any of these restrictions or other similar restrictions not specified in this point.
3- Each director may submit up to a maximum of two works for each of the categories proposed in this Festival.

4- Works must always be submitted in their original language. If this is not Spanish, the work must include Spanish subtitles, either partially or in full, depending on the use of other languages in the film. Documentaries in Spanish that contain parts that are unintelligible or difficult to understand in non-native contexts other than that of their production must also have Spanish subtitles, either partially or totally. English subtitles will be requested for films selected for the Official Section by the organisation, once the directors have been notified of their selection. Subtitles must also be adapted to the sociolect being translated and must meet minimum intelligibility requirements. Digitally generated or automatic subtitles will be penalised. Failure to include subtitles, where applicable, unclear translation, or the use of automatic subtitles may result in the exclusion of the work from selection. Subtitles must be embedded in the digital file of the documentary with a font size between 48 and 72 points. Alternatively, they may be attached in SRT format files with the same font size. It is recommended that subtitles be presented in yellow or white ochre shading, without a frame. Failure to present subtitles in an appropriate size may also result in the exclusion of the work from selection.

5- The organisation reserves the right to admit works, after consulting the jury of each edition, issuing a reasoned report of the decision to the directors who have requested it through the official means of the Festival.

REGISTRATION

6- Each director may submit works from February 6 to March 29, 2026. Any work submitted after this date will not be admitted to the competition. Once a work has been entered, it cannot be withdrawn.

7- Registration will be done exclusively online. The website of the Festival (https://www.offcinedoc.com) will indicate to those interested the space where to do it. Alternative means of registration will only be provided in circumstances of force majeure and after consultation with the organisers. In the event that a work is rejected, the organisation will inform the directors, during the following weeks after receiving the work, of the reasons for non-compliance and rejection, in order to rectify any possible errors within a period of no more than seven days from the date of notification to the interested parties.

SELECTED DOCUMENTARIES

8- The directors of the works or, failing that, their representatives, will be informed before 18 July 2026 about their possible selection for the Festival, and must provide, from then on and within 15 days, the necessary information for their cataloguing and programming that may be requested by the organisation, such as the press dossier, representative photo-shoots, English subtitles, trailers or slides, as well as a completed form authorising the Asoc. Cultural El Bujío, to the projection of their work to the audience, whether it has been awarded or is part of the Official Selection.

9- The works that make up the official selection will become part of the ‘Andrés Oyola Fabián Audiovisual Archive’, created specifically for this purpose at the Casa de la Cultura of the same name in Segura de León. By registering their work, the directors inevitably authorise its deposit for private consultation, research, or educational and pedagogical purposes. Likewise, these works may be used by the Festival organisation for cultural purposes, presentation, display, exhibition and dissemination, or in educational programmes, in different frameworks of action and collaboration with non-profit public entities.

10- The Festival organisers may create parallel and out-of-competition sections with material that has not been selected, but which is nevertheless considered to be of cultural interest, with a screening certificate recognising the audiovisual work. Likewise, works presented in previous editions, those made by people involved in the organisation, or those with a tourist or advertising orientation may be screened, if the organisation deems it appropriate due to their interest or quality, but always without being eligible for the Festival prizes.

COMPETITION CATEGORIES

11- The Andrés Oyola Fabián International Historical and Social Documentary Film Festival is divided into two competition categories, based primarily on the length of the films. There is a ‘Short Documentary’ category, in which entries must be at least 5 minutes long and no longer than 20 minutes. On the other hand, there is a ‘Feature-Length Documentary’ category, in which works must have a minimum duration of 20 minutes and a maximum duration of 90 minutes. The production and media used are at the discretion of the authors, although the audiovisual format of the works submitted must be .mp4 (H.264) or .mov, with an HD resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. This does not prevent technical quality from being positively evaluated for the acceptance of works or for the competition prizes. The maximum duration of the works in each of the categories includes the presentation of headers, opening sequences, acknowledgements, credits, or any additional information that may be included in the documentaries.

DELIBERACIÓN DEL JURADO Y ENTREGA DE PREMIOS

12- The Festival jury reserves the right to declare any of the prizes in the corresponding categories void. None of the prizes may be awarded ex aequo. There will be no distinctions parallel to the prizes in the form of diplomas, second prizes, accreditations, or similar.

13- The Jury will be composed of different personalities from the world of cinema, history, anthropology, humanities, audiovisual communication, as well as a representation of the local population and the organisation of the Festival, which will select its members for each edition, with a minimum of 60 and a maximum of 120 members between the Technical-Audiovisual Jury, the Historical-Anthropological Jury, and the People's Jury. The Jury will have an international character, equitable in relation to genre and plural in terms of thematic specialisations.

14- The works will be reviewed by the members of the jury anonymously and in groups of three (double blind) before the screening of the works, who in turn will send the organisation a reasoned evaluation and scoring report before the end of may.

15- The amount of the prizes will be paid by the organisation in the form of a bank transfer. The prizewinners will assume the costs of collection at any bank, if any.

16- It will be a sinequa non requirement to be present at the awards ceremony, which will take place on the last day of the festival, at the ‘Closing Gala’. Those directors who, due to force majeure or geographic conditions, cannot physically attend the awards ceremony, may delegate their presence, with prior justification to the organisation, to a third person who will act as a representative of the organisation. If any of the awarded directors is not present that day, or does not delegate his/her presence, the prize will be reduced to half of the total amount, the rest being used for the organisational purposes of the Festival itself for future editions.

17- The organisation will be responsible for informing the directors of the winning works in each category sufficiently in advance through the communication channels provided by them, and they must respond within a maximum of seven calendar days from the notification of the message for the acceptance of the prize. The organisers will also reserve, if possible at a lower cost, tourist accommodation in the town, or nearby towns, for the authors of the winning works, as well as for the members of the jury who wish to attend. The possible expenses derived from travel, accommodation and meals for the physical collection of the prizes, or for the attendance of the jury to the screenings, will be assumed by the interested participants, with the organisation of the Festival acting as mediator to obtain the most profitable, economic and optimal options.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

18- The Festival organisers shall be authorised to use excerpts from the selected works for public dissemination in the media. The authors themselves shall produce this trailer and submit it once they have been notified of the selection of their work and if requested to do so. The trailer shall be up to 1 minute long in the Short Documentary category and up to 3 minutes long in the Feature Documentary category. Likewise, the organisation reserves the right to screen the works in person or online, depending on the socio-health circumstances at the time of the Festival.

19- The directors of the works presented will be responsible for their authorship and originality, exempting the organisation of the Festival from any responsibility regarding plagiarism, the content of the work, or any other legal issue.

20- Participation in the Festival by means of registration implies full acceptance of the general conditions/bases of the competition, and the organisation alone will be responsible for the interpretation, application and appeal of the same. If you have any doubts about the rules and the registration to the Festival, please contact the organisation by e-mail at offcinedoc@gmail.com

21- This Documentary Film Festival is developed and carried out thanks to the disinterested and non-profit work of the Cultural Association El Bujío de Segura de León (CIF G06673305), which receives public funding in order to stimulate the life of rural areas and promote culture in all its dimensions free of charge. For this reason, if the same amount of public funding necessary to guarantee, at least, all the prizes mentioned above is not reached for this edition, the organisation reserves the right to modify the amount of the prizes, or even postpone or cancel the Festival, regardless of the stage of work in which it finds itself.

22- These regulations will be published in Spanish and English. For any problems arising from its interpretation, the Spanish text shall be taken as a reference and, subsequently, the Spanish legislation in force on this matter.