19 CINETORO EXPERIMENTAL

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.

CINETORO 2026
Converging Boundaries
#MIRAYESCUCHADIFERENTE
Under the concept of Converging Boundaries, CINETORO 2026 proposes a curatorial framework inspired by the force of tectonic collision. Just as, in geology, a convergent boundary is the space where two plates collide to destroy the old and raise new mountain ranges and volcanoes, this edition seeks films in which the impact between languages generates new ways of seeing and hearing. We move away from the static reading of maps — those arbitrary divisions of dots and lines — to focus instead on the energy that emerges within the zone of contact, where the friction between the human and the non-human, or between the here and the elsewhere, constructs new narrative geographies.
CINETORO 2026 calls for works that explore processes of collision and emergence. We seek films that use experimentation as a tool to blur political and social boundaries, proposing perspectives that recognize the continuity of the jungle or the vastness of the desert beyond geographical fictions. How does perception transform when cinematic form itself becomes the result of a clash of forces?
In this edition, the border is not an impenetrable wall, but a living zone of creation; a space of formal risk that challenges pre-established categories and allows us to understand, through cinema at the margins, what new unions emerge when we dare to inhabit the liminal state. We seek films that inhabit the interstice: the space that exists precisely in the middle of the line, inviting audiences into a cinematic experience where genres do not simply intersect, but transform one another. We are interested in a cinema of hybridization where documentary, animation, and fiction function like tectonic plates in constant motion.
This is an invitation to a cinema unafraid of crossing and dissolving boundaries; a cinema that inhabits the periphery and the frontier in order to raise, from the margins, new and necessary mountains of imagination.
#ConvergingBoundaries #TheLiminal #Cinetoro2026 #SeeAndHearDifferently #CrossTheBoundary #ExperimentalFilmFestival #HybridCinema #ExperimentalCinema #ExperimentalNarrative

Totem Awards for Best film in the follow categories:

Imagined Vector / National Official Competition
Interlined Curves / Emerging Official Competition
Vanishing Points / Mid-Length Competition
Geometry of Difference / International Official Competition

RULES & REGULATIONS
Films submitted to the 19th edition of CINETORO Experimental Film Festival must comply with the following requirements:
Films must be between 1 and 50 minutes in length (please check the duration requirements for each section).
Films must have been completed between 2024 and 2026.
International films in languages other than Spanish must include subtitles.
Submissions must be made online exclusively through Festhome, FilmFreeway, and Shortfilmdepot.
Filmmakers must hold all rights to the artistic material included in the work.
The festival prioritizes national and international premieres.
Films not properly registered through the current open call will not be accepted.
Owners of selected films authorize in-person screenings during the festival dates.
CINETORO understands that the person responsible for the work (director, producer, distributor) owns the distribution and copyright rights. The festival operates in good faith regarding submitted materials and is under no circumstances responsible for disputes concerning music rights, image rights, authorship, or any elements composing the work.
The festival pays screening fees to national works.
Upon selection, Spanish-language films must include English subtitles. The festival does not provide subtitling services.

CURATORIAL PROCESS & SELECTION
The festival will program films and works into different sections according to curatorial criteria established annually by the programming committee. Information regarding the selected section will be communicated upon notification of selection. Selected works will be included in the festival’s official catalogue.
Selected films will be notified by email and published on the festival website in August 2026.
Once notified, selected works must submit the following materials online within the deadlines established by the festival’s film traffic coordination:
Digital file in .MOV / MP4 format (1920 x 1080) in original resolution with H.264 compression scheme or higher.
DCP file “Flat” 1:85:1 (Optional)
AUTHORIZATION: Signed License Agreement (template provided by the festival via curaduria@cinetoro.co)
Poster in JPG format, 72dpi, original size
1 photograph of the filmmaker/director in JPG format, 72dpi
2 still frames from the work in JPG format, 72dpi
Promotional photographs and publicity materials may be used by the festival organization to promote the selected work within the festival and related activities
Project trailer (Optional)
If you have any questions regarding the submission process, please contact us at curaduria@cinetoro.co
By submitting to this open call, filmmakers authorize CINETORO EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL to use all promotional materials provided, including but not limited to stills, descriptions, director biographies, and screening history, across all media formats for the express purpose of festival promotion and publicity.
Please note that CINETORO EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL may request authorization to use clips from officially selected films for television and internet promotion. However, excerpts will be limited to less than one minute, and no television broadcast of any work will be authorized without the direct consent of the filmmaker and/or producers.

Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Thanks for supporting experimental film.

    November 2023
  • Festivales que le apuestan a la descentralización del cine, y en ese proceso, logran programas, actividades e interacciones únicas entre participantes, espectadores y el equipo interno del mismo.

    December 2021
  • Fish Lily

    Great Festival! I am very happy to be able to showcase my work.

    December 2021
  • Thank you very much! Cinema needs such festivals!!!

    December 2020
  • Tomás Welss

    The most free, friendly and experimental film Festival of Latin America. Love it.

    December 2020