From Vilnius to Valladolid: First International Group of Moving Cinema Young Programmers Curates Programme for SEMINCI
European Film Festival Network Young Programmers for Young Audiences! or Young4Film for short, entered its third year of operation at the beginning of 2025 with the support of the Creative Europe MEDIA program. The five international film festivals that have been members of the network since its creation – Kino Otok – Isola Cinema International Film Festival, Beldocs International Documentary Film Festival, Vilnius Short Film Festival, Piccolo Grande Cinema and Cinehill Film Festival – were joined at the beginning of the year by Valladolid International Film Week– Seminci, which will host a very special Young4Film event in October 2025.
Representatives of all members of the network, which includes film festivals as well as three cultural organizations working in the field of film education – A Bao A Qu (Barcelona, Spain), Meno Avilys (Vilnius, Lithuania) and Kijufi(Berlin, Germany) – met in Vilnius in March this year, where we were kindly hosted by two Lithuanian Young4Film partners. In May, the first international group of Young Programmersusing the Moving Cinema methodology was formed. Each of the six film festivals in the Young4Film network invited two experienced Young Programmers to join the international group. The group of 12 met online throughout the summer to select a double-bill in which a film classic would be placed in dialogue with a contemporary film. The program will premiere in October at the Seminci festival and will be presented live by the Young Programmers, who will travel to the Spanish city of Valladolid, the venue of the Seminci festival, for this purpose. Mentor Martí Madaula (A Bao A Qu), who together with Julija Šilytė (Meno Avilys) is guiding the young selectors through the experience of choosing this special program, said:
“Since May, a diverse group of 12 young programmers—from six different European countries—has been meeting biweekly to watch and discuss 15 films selected from the 70 years of Seminci and 10 years of MovingCinema. It has been a pleasure to listen to their lively conversations, enriched by their varied backgrounds, sensibilities, and experiences. Each film sparked intense debates about the filmmakers’ choices, as well as broader themes that resonated deeply with the group. By September, after viewing and debating all the films, the group will curate a double program featuring one Seminci film and one from the Young4Film – Moving Cinema network, to be presented at Seminci 2025.”
The selection process is currently in its final stages, and we can’t wait to find out which films the International Young Programmers have chosen for their program. After its premiere at the Seminci festival, the program will travel around the network, as festivals will screen it as part of their year-round activities.
More infomation and pedagogical materials
Take a look at the catalogues featuring Young Programmers’ film selections from 2023 and 2024.
Many selections by Young Programmers were also accompanied with digital pedagogical materials. You can take a look at the digital pedagogical materials from 2023 and 2024.
In 2023 and 2024, all Young4Film network partners consistently pursued a wide range of endeavours towards sustainable thinking and action in the context of their film festival activities – in social, ecological and economic terms. We are proud to announce that by the end of 2024, we have completed and published a pioneering Sustainability and Social Awareness Charter for Young Film Audiences. The Charter offers a dynamic framework that is being tested and adopted by all participating festivals in the current edition of the project (2025-2026).
About Young4Film Festival Network
Our aim is to develop young audiences and promote European, especially non-national, films amongst the target groups of primary, secondary and university students. We entrust young programmers with the responsibility of becoming part of the festival teams, while their film programmes and promotional material are shared with young audiences at all the festivals within the network. The selected films are accompanied by original digital educational materials, which are made available to other film curators, film educators and teachers, ensuring that their reach extends beyond the Young4Film network and wider partnership. In addition to the six European film festivals, three cultural organisations working in the field of film education are also involved in the network’s activities: A Bao A Qu (Barcelona, Spain), Meno Avilys (Vilnius, Lithuania) and Kijufi (Berlin, Germany).
Our collaborative approach is based on the original Moving Cinema methodology, which has been developed since 2014 by the team of the Catalan organisation A Bao A Qu in collaboration with several international partners, with the aim of developing active young film audiences. It is precisely this past collaboration that has given us a shared understanding of the importance of developing young audiences and we will further build on our efforts in this area by considering the issues of sustainability, environmental awareness, balanced gender representation, inclusion, diversity and representativity.
The European project Young Programmers for Young Audiences! European Film Festival Network is coordinated by Kino Otok – Isola Cinema International Film Festival with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA and the Ministry of Public Administration of the Republic of Slovenia.
